UTSOA PROGRAMS RANK IN TOP FIVE

The School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin has been ranked fifth in the nation in both its undergraduate and graduate programs by DesignIntelligence, a journal that produces the only recognized rankings for accredited bachelor's and master's programs in architecture in the United States. The graduate program ranking is the highest achieved by a public university in the nation.

The undergraduate program in interior design, the smallest in the nation, was ranked 10th. The graduate landscape architecture program, with only three graduating classes, was ranked 12th. Dean Fritz Steiner was recognized as "one of the most admired educators of 2010," based on input from hundreds of design professionals, academic department heads, and students.

DesignIntelligence is the bimonthly journal of the Design Futures Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank whose executive board includes representatives from some of America's most widely known design firms, schools, and manufacturers.

THE BACKYARD COMPETITION

Winners have been announced for "The Backyard Competition," sponsored by Direct Events in collaboration with the School of Architecture. Many innovative and exciting visions for the new Backyard were produced for the competition, and the quality of the final submissions was excellent.

Direct Events, owners of The Backyard concert venue in Bee Caves, sponsored the competition for UTSOA students to design a sustainable concert venue. Owner and president of Direct Events, Tim O'Connor, was very pleased with the outcome of the competition and impressed with our students' abilities. He was particularly interested in those issues that affect the long-term potentials of environmental sustainability.

Architects for the project, Sixth River Architects, who designed the Austin Music Hall and the Bass Concert Hall renovation, assisted in the competition.

Associate Professor Dean Almy organized, managed, and coordinated the event with Sixth River Architects and Direct Events.

The jury was composed of Jeff Peterson, producer, Austin City Limits; John Grable, FAIA [B.Arch. '76], John Grable Architects, Inc.; Jennifer Orr, Jennifer Orr Landscape Design; Associate Professor Juan Miró, Miró Rivera Architects; and Wilfried Wang, O'Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture, Hoidn Wang Partners, Berlin.

The jury worked hard to determination the competition winners, closely examining each project at length. A total of six entries participated in the final judging of the competition. The ideas delineated in the submissions represented the school and the work of the individual teams well.

The award presentations were made on October 20, and the event was well attended by students. The winning teams are:

First Prize (split between two teams, $3000 each)

• Team 004: Don Xu, Regina Ramos, Jung Soo Lee, Ik Joo Le
• Team 001: Chris Emens, Delia Conache, Tom Cox

In each of these entries, the jury pointed out the subtleties, the light touch of their approach to the landscape, and the topography. In particular, the jury noted the approach to an informal and flexible arrangement applied to the parking strategy, as well as the ability of the stage areas to be transformed and adapted to different crowd sizes and to handle different types of programs and events beyond the large musical venue. Both entries were cited for their sense of place in the regional context of the Hill Country.

Third Prize ($500)

• Team 003: Kristina Loomis and Melissa Echavarria

The jury appreciated this team's approach to sustainability that was thoroughly researched and carried through within the scheme.

In addition to $6500 in prize money, Direct Events generously donated $1500 to each of the student organizations (AIAS and ASLA) that handled details of the competition.

The school would like to thank landscape architecture student Ryan Buckley, architecture student Nina Marie Wilson, and alumnus Cameron Campbell [MLA '09] for their help in organizing and coordinating many details of the competition.

Congratulations to everyone on their efforts in representing the School of Architecture.

DEAN'S JOURNAL — CHINA

Peking University invited me back to China to participate in a Landscape Urbanism Conference, hosted by the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture and Dean Kongjian Yu. I arrived on October 28 and stayed in a converted courtyard house in a hutong neighborhood in the heart of the city. The autumn weather was wonderful and little finches skipped around the courtyard of Jihouse Hotel below a yellow-leafed ginkgo tree.

On Thursday, October 29, I met with Kongjian Yu, the editors of the Landscape Architecture China magazine, and about 30 doctoral students from Peking University. The Graduate School occupies one floor of a new building at the university, with another floor housing Kongjian's firm, Turenscape, and the magazine. The doctoral students are engaged in projects ranging from mapping the landscapes of the nation to detailed research sites in Beijing and other cities.

Late that day, I visited the Olympic Green with the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. Even on a Thursday afternoon, the area was crowded with tourists and other visitors. Clearly, the Olympic site remains a popular place to visit.

The following day, Professor Li Di-Hua of the Peking University faculty took two other conference speakers and me to Tianjin to visit a Turenscape project. Along the way, we traveled on a new expressway parallel to the new high-speed rail line between Beijing and the Tianjin. The drive takes two hours, as compared with 30 minutes by the bullet train. The project, Qiaoyuan Park, was impressive even on a brisk autumn day. Kongjian Yu's design involved reclaiming a brownfield into a park with a series of stormwater catchment ponds at various elevations with native plants.

The weather turned cooler on Saturday as the conference began. The conference featured an impressive group of speakers, including Hu Cunzhi, the deputy minister of Land Resources; Kelly Shannon, an urbanist from Leuven University in Belgium; Tony McCormick from Australia, one of the designers of the Sydney Olympics; ecologist Bart Johnson from the University of Oregon; Haruto Kobayashi, a leading Japanese landscape architect; Charles Waldheim, the new landscape architecture chair at Harvard; Dennis Pieprz, the president of Sasaki; Wang Li of the Shanghai Planning Department; and Gerdo Aquino of SWA and USC. Lively panel sessions were held with prominent practitioners and academics. The conference attracted some 500 attendees from all over China and was so popular that people had to be turned away. The interest is indicative of the growing popularity of landscape architecture in China, now with approximately 170 academic programs as opposed to only one program in the 1990s.

A central theme of the conference was expressed by Kelly Shannon who asked: "Can landscape save Asian urbanism?" Certainly, considerable optimism was expressed in response to her question. For instance, Charles Waldheim observed, "landscape has emerged as the medium by which the city is formed."

On November 1, the second day of the conference, an early snow blanketed Beijing. The finches at the courtyard were moved indoors and everyone put on warmer clothing. Snowmen appeared on the Peking University campus. Dean Kongjian Yu noted that this was "the best and earliest snow in the past decade" and that "if we have snow, we will have a most productive year."

Monday morning was even colder but had incredibly blue skies. The smog had disappeared and the snowy mountains to the west and north of Beijing were clear in the distance. I give a lecture at Tsinghua University before heading to the airport. I was greeted by many old friends at Tsinghua, many of whom expressed an interest in doing another joint studio with our school.

I hurried to the airport to catch my flight to San Francisco, which was cancelled; so I spent another evening in Beijing, but this time at a high rise on the 3rd Ring Road, instead of my quaint hutong courtyard. At least the views were spectacular from my thirteenth-floor room. While waiting to depart the next morning, I learned the good news that both our undergraduate and graduate architecture programs were ranked 5th in the nation by the most recent DesignIntelligence survey. In addition, our undergraduate program was the second "most admired" by other architecture deans.

In San Francisco, I attended the annual Urban Land Institute Conference. The big take-away message, articulated by keynote speaker Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist, is that the nation is entering a period of "paranoid optimism" concerning the future. Several participants mentioned to me that they are beginning to recruit new employees again, so I came away optimistic (and not very "paranoid").

A highlight of the conference was the announcement of the Urban Land Institute J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development going to Amanda Burden, chair of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Department of City Planning. She moderated a session of city planning directors on November 5, devoted to "What Makes a World Class City?" City planning directors from Portland, Seattle, San Diego, and San Francisco participated. They focused on the importance of sustainable development, good design, dense development near public transit, and clear visions for the future.

Back in Austin, I attended the reopening of the LBJ Library and Plaza, designed by Overland Partners, on November 13. The new plaza features gardens of native plants dedicated to Lady Bird Johnson.

—Fritz Steiner

FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP

The school is pleased to recognize the following six assistant professors, who were all selected to receive 2009-2010 University Research Grants.

• Michael Beaman, "Advanced Digital Mapping of Rwanda Using GIS," $4560
• Danelle Briscoe, "Milling Stone Using BIM Software and Digital Fabrication," $6000
• Fernando Lara, "Favela Buildings: Understanding the Construction Process of a Significant Hidden Portion of the World's Built Environment," $4700
• Ming-Chun Lee, "The Community-Technology Convergence Framework for Community Action," $6000
• Elizabeth Mueller, "Mapping the Relocation of Low-Income Households: A Social and Ecological Assessment," $6000
• Igor Siddiqui, "Spatial Tessellations: Interior Design, Digital Fabrication, and Geometric Patterns," $6000

On October 26, 2009, Miró Rivera Architects (MRA) received an Honorable Mention award for the Trail Restroom at the International Biennial Architecture Prize Competition organized by the Barbara Cappochin Foundation. Associate Professor Juan Miró, AIA, and Rosa Rivera travelled to Padova, Italy, to accept the award at the ceremony held on the Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi. Miró also lectured on the work of the firm as part of the two-day activities of the Biennial. The Restroom, selected out of 395 entries from 50 countries, is on exhibit at Padova's Piazza Cavour in the Tavolo Dell'Architettura designed by Zaha Hadid. "The exquisite simplicity of this project and its total adaptation to the surrounding context are fundamental elements worthy of mention," noted an international jury that included architect Kengo Kuma. The other four projects recognized in the international category were from Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan. The selected projects are featured in the exhibition's catalog and in Casabella, one of the most prominent architecture magazines published in Italy.

MRA also continues to receive international and local recognition for its work. On October 8, MRA's work was selected to be in the travelling exhibit "Madrid 100% Arquitectura," previously shown in Chile, Puerto Rico, and currently showing in Bogotá, Colombia. In September, the Trail Restroom received a Critic's Pick Award in the 2009 Best of Austin Awards from the Austin Chronicle.

As part of their continuing service to the architectural community, both Miguel Rivera, AIA, and Juan Miró, AIA, served as jurors in several AIA Design Awards competitions this year. On November 3 and 4, Miró served on the 2009 AIA San Antonio Design Awards Jury and lectured about the work of the firm at the Center for Architecture of San Antonio.

Austin-based Alterstudio's East Windsor Residence is Architecture Record's November House of the Month. Alterstudio principals, Professor Kevin Alter and Lecturer Ernesto Cragnolino, recently completed the 4,200-square-foot house near downtown Austin.

Architecture Record reports in the article that the homeowner experienced so much joy being involved in the realization of the house "that apparently he is ready to put the house on the market and have another one built, with Alter as architect again. 'I'm hooked,' he says."

"In a neighborhood of early twentieth-century brick chateau-style residences, this house [is] modern and eye-catching."

"The rooms are well proportioned and have several eye-catching details (a punched window in one, an inverted one in another, built-ins including cabinetry and a bed in the guest suite), but the most notable feature has to be the rain screen. From the dining room, two 10-and-a-half-foot sections of the screen dramatically unfold to reveal some of the amazing views of Austin's extensive greenbelt and the city beyond. 'This house is all about looking out,' says Alter, who took pains with the design to downplay the view to the west, with its unsightly power lines and neighboring houses above, and keep the focus on the northern, southern, and eastern views."

The home was featured on the AIA Austin 2009 Homes Tour.

Associate Professor Dean Almy has been appointed by the Austin City Council to a three-year term on the Waterfront Planning Advisory Board. He will serve as vice chair of the committee.

Dean Fritz Steiner contributed the lead article in Ciudades 12, the 2009 edition of the annual urban design and planning journal by Spain's Instituto Universitario de Urbanistica de la Universidad de Valladolid. Professor Steiner's article is titled "Nature and the City: Changes for the First Urban Century in the United States."

Associate Professor Juan Miró also contributed an article, "Teotihuacan: Searching for the Perfect Dialogue Between City and Nature," in the same edition of Ciudades.

"Architectural Spaces," an exhibition curated by Assistant Professor Francisco Gomes, has opened at The LoDi Project Gallery in Raleigh, North Carolina. The exhibition includes work in a variety of media from artists located throughout the country.

Gomes + Staub, the architectural practice of Francisco Gomes and Dabney Staub, designed the gallery space, which is an adaptive reuse of a derelict industrial building in downtown Raleigh. The gallery, founded by artist Georges LeChevallier, opened its doors to the public in early October.

Raleigh/Durham's Independent Weekly covered last month's gallery opening: "[T]he architects who designed the space for The LoDi Project, a new gallery in Raleigh, kept the original floors of the remodeled former furniture factory. They've been painted in dark tones and stretch across the space in expressive, uneven slats--a study in contrasts against the sleek, contemporary structure of the white space. It's a way of honoring the history of the space, an architectural homage to its forebears."

ALUMNI CONNECTIONS

ALUMNI UPDATES

The Arts Alliance Mobile Performance Venue project, designed by Various Architects, continues to get attention and win international design awards. This time at the World Architecture Festival Award in Barcelona, Spain, held November 4-6.

Jim Dodson [B.Arch. '95] of Various Architects and Stephen Melville of Ramboll, UK, presented the project to the jury and audience of fellow architects.

Various Architects is a collaborative design office started in 2008 by Jim Dodson and Ibrahim ElHayawan.

"Waterin' the Work Mules," a bronze statue by Austin architect/sculptor Bob Coffee, FAIA [B.Arch. '61], was dedicated on November 3 in the Dallas suburb of University Park. The 3/4 life size statue honors and depicts the artist's late father, Roy Coffee, as a boy watering a pair of work mules on the family's Wise County farm in 1910. Roy Coffee served as mayor of University Park for twenty years.

Coffee was also the "Featured Artist" in the "Up the Chisholm Trail Art Exhibit" in Georgetown, Texas, this past September. He held a one-man exhibit at the University of Texas Club in October and will serve a third year as president of the Texas Society of Sculptors.

Visit Bob Coffee's website to see more of his bronze sculptures.

ALUMNI EVENTS

We want you to stay involved and connected to the school, so please join us for one of our many upcoming alumni events:

• American Planning Association (APA) Convention Reception
  New Orleans, Louisiana
  Saturday, April 10, 2010 (tentative)

• American Institute of Architects (AIA) Convention Reception
  Miami, Florida
  Thursday, June 10, 2010 (tentative)

• American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) Conference Reception - NeoCon World's Trade Fair
  Tuesday, June 15, 2010 (tentative)
  Chicago, Illinois

• National Trust Conference Reception
  Friday, October 29, 2010 (tentative)
  Austin, Texas

We are continuing our effort to find (and maintain) the most accurate contact information for all of our alumni. Stay in touch with former classmates—update your record and contact preferences by logging on to the university's online alumni directory.

More details will be available on the School of Architecture alumni web page as events approach. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact Stacy Manning at smanning@austin.utexas.edu or 512.471.0617.

CAREER RESOURCES FOR ALUMNI

The Career Services Center provides services and resources to all alumni of the School of Architecture. Alums may register on Career Source to search for seasoned positions, as well as freelance opportunities.

Did you know that as an alumnus of the University of Texas, you have access to valuable career tools such as AccessUT and Texas Exes Career Services?

AccessUT is an online job and internship database within the university's Hire Texas web site that allows students and alumni to view postings from employers searching for their next hire. It also provides employers a free, centralized place to post professional, career-related job and internship opportunities for students and alumni.

The Texas Exes offers important career services such as one-on-one career consultations, resume critiques, coaching, online career assessment tools, seminars, job-searching resources, networking opportunities, and a Virtual Career Center.

We want you to connect with our current students!
If you have internships, or part-time or full-time positions available for UTSOA students, contact the Career Services Center to post your opportunities on Career Source. You can also contact the Career Services Center to learn more about career events, including Career EXPO, Career Week, portfolio reviews, on-campus recruiting, and mock interviews.

Career Week 2010
Registration for Career Week 2010 began October 15. Career Week is our annual spring on-campus recruitment event that allows employers the opportunity to interview pre-selected candidates from our current student body for part-time, full-time, and internship positions. This spring's event is scheduled for March 30-April 1. For more information, log into Career Source.

STUDENT CONNECTIONS

STUDENT AWARDS AND HONORS

Fifth-year architecture student Spencer Cook has been awarded the Mike Wacker Award by Texas Parents, the Parents' Association of The University of Texas at Austin. Spencer was one of only two students campus-wide to receive the award this year.

The Mike Wacker Award has become a symbol of courage and perseverance for students who face extreme adversity. It is named for UT graduate and former Longhorn basketball player Mike Wacker. Nominees for the award are students, who like Mike, give their best and exemplify personal sacrifice, dedication, esteem, conviction, and faith. This award is presented only when a truly extraordinary student is nominated.

Spencer's successes at the university and the School of Architecture were recognized at a Celebration of Leadership Dinner, presented by Texas Parents and the University of Texas Student Government, on Friday, November 6.

Third-year architecture student Daniel Morrison was awarded a commission for a large scale installation sponsored by Art Alliance Austin. The installation will be featured during Art City Austin, April 24-25, 2010, which will be held along the banks of Lady Bird Lake.

Daniel's winning proposal to Art Alliance Austin features "sheer walls comprised of thousands of interlaced cardboard modules that serve to relay captivating environmental graphics while encouraging a reconsideration of materiality. Formally, two distinct halves demarcate the boundaries of Art City Austin while prescribing patron traffic. Graphically, the installation serves to incite curiosity amongst patrons while invoking a reexamination of a humble material with which we are in constant contact; single-wall corrugated cardboard."

For the proposed installation, thousands of cardboard boxes will be harvested from the dumpsters of local businesses to be re-cut as unique modules. After being catalogued and digitally archived, the printed information of each module's face can be processed as part of a larger graphic mosaic.

Daniel become aware of this opportunity through his Design V instructor, Lecturer Jack Sanders [M.Arch. '05], who strongly encouraged the entire studio to submit proposals. Sanders' involvement with the venture was invaluable to the design process.

AIAS/ASLA STUDENT ART AND DESIGN AUCTION

On Saturday, November 21, at the Pine St. Station Gallery, 1101 East 5th Street, The University of Texas at Austin AIAS Chapter will be co-hosting with the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) a Student Art and Design Auction as its annual fundraiser. This year's event will bring the community together for an evening of entertainment, while highlighting the creative endeavors of UTSOA students.

Proceeds will support the school's AIAS and ASLA programs throughout the year. Activities include internal support through portfolio workshops and design competitions, and outreach efforts like community service events with local youth and representation at national conferences.

In addition to enjoying the event on Saturday, November 21, please consider a donation of any amount to help offset costs associated with event logistics, such as venue rental, refreshments, and live music during the event. Donors' names will be prominently featured on city-wide announcements and materials displayed at the event.

We invite you to stand in support of rising architects by contributing to this unique event. Please feel free to contact our Student Chapter at aias.utaustin@gmail.com for more details.

SUPPORT UTSOA

IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO MAKE A TAX-FREE IRA GIFT IN 2009

Would you like to make a tax-free gift from your IRA to the School of Architecture without paying income taxes on the rollover? It's not too late to make a gift this year, but please contact us by December 1.

We are excited to let you know about the extension to the charitable rollover law that allows people 70½ and older to give directly to UT Austin from their IRA's—without having to report the amount as income. Gifts may be up to $100,000 per person in 2009—the last year the law is in effect. Now is the time to act; contact the Office of Gift Planning by December 1 to take advantage of the charitable rollover law for 2009.

Office of Gift Planning, University Development Office
Toll Free: 866.488.3927
Phone: 512.475.9632
Email: giftplan@www.utexas.edu

END OF YEAR GIVING

Our school turns 100 in 2010, and as we celebrate our history and look toward our future, we are thankful for all the support from alumni and friends like you. Our faculty and students are committed to a high standard of excellence in their work. We need to support the efforts of current—and future—community planners, landscape architects, interior designers, architects, architectural historians, and specialists in historic preservation, sustainability, and urban design.

We encourage you to remember the School of Architecture this holiday season by making your Annual Fund donation today to ensure that we continue doing the best work possible. It is very easy to make your gift online, and you may designate your gift to a program of your choice.

Our students and faculty need your support to be able to create the best plans for our cities, communities, and environment.

We encourage you to be a part of this future by making your tax-deductible contribution to the School of Architecture by December 31.

EVENTS

For the latest updates, check out the online UTSOA Calendar.

EXHIBIT

November 9 – November 27
Mebane Gallery
Goldsmith Hall (Monday-Friday, 8-5)

Installations by Architects:
Curated by Sarah Bonnemaison and Ronit Eisenbach

Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives.

Ronit Eisenbach is an associate professor of architecture and chair of the Kibel Gallery at the University of Maryland. She teaches design to majors, as well as a general education undergraduate course, "Introduction to the Built Environment." An interest in thinking through making and refining perception has led her to teach a series of situation-based, design-build studios that frame elements of architecture such as light, color, space, and movement.

Eisenbach's installations and maps have been exhibited in the U.S. and abroad in venues such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Graham Foundation, the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Art Gallery of Windsor, Princeton University, and the streets of Tel Aviv. These temporary works explore how perception of subjective, invisible, and ephemeral objects affects understanding and experience of place.

Her new book (with Sarah Bonnemaison), Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design, explores the rising importance of installations as professional and pedagogical tools of architecture that can serve as a vehicle to generate public dialogue about the built environment.

PRESENTATION

Tuesday, December 1
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Auditorium
11:30-1:00
4801 La Crosse Avenue, Austin, Texas

Steve Windhager, Ph.D.
Director of Landscape Restoration,
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

"What is the Sustainable Sites Initiative?"

The Sustainable Sites Initiative is an interdisciplinary effort by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the United States Botanic Garden to create voluntary national guidelines and performance benchmarks for sustainable land design, construction, and maintenance practices.

The central message of the Sustainable Sites Initiative is that any landscape—whether the site of a large subdivision, a shopping mall, a park, an abandoned rail yard, or even one home—holds the potential both to improve and regenerate the natural benefits and services provided by ecosystems in their undeveloped state. While there are existing standards for sustainable structures, there are no comprehensive guidelines for those who want to create and measure sustainable landscapes. The Sustainable Sites Initiative Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009 is intended to be a tool for those who design, construct, operate, and maintain landscapes, including but not limited to planners, landscape architects, engineers, developers, builders, facility managers, horticulturists, governments, land stewards, and organizations offering building standards.

For more information, write to: info@sustainablesites.org.

You are invited to bring your lunch to the presentation or purchase one in the café.

LUMINATIONS AT THE WILDFLOWER CENTER

Saturday and Sunday, December 12 and 13
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
4801 La Crosse Avenue, Austin, Texas
6:00-9:00 p.m.

The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center invites the public to enjoy gardens lighted with more than 3,000 luminarias, 5,000 twinkle lights and hammered copper torches and to listen to music of the season from local bands, quarters, and choirs. Admission is free with two canned food items for the Capital Area Food Bank.

The McDermott Learning Center will feature a display of trees decorated by local community groups and charitable organizations, and the café will offer a special menu of festive holiday items to purchase.

Frosty the Snowman will be with the little ones, so don't forget the camera. Children will enjoy crafts—creating snowflakes, wreaths, and ornaments in the Visitors Gallery.

For more information, visit the Wildflower Center web site.

CENTER LUNCH FORUM SERIES

Roughly every other Friday during the fall and spring semesters, The Center for American Architecture and Design hosts a Friday Lunch Forum Series. The aim of the series is for faculty and students to meet in an informal atmosphere to debate topics and to share ideas about history, practice, theory, and new directions for architecture.

All Center Lunch Forums take place at 12:00 noon (CST) in Battle Hall, Room 101, and via LIVE WEBCAST. (Download RealPlayer here. It's free.)

Visit the Center website for updates and to access the live webcast. The final forum of the fall semester is:

• November 20, Vincent Snyder, "Texas 2-Step: Formal Literacy"

CITY FORUM SERIES

City Forum is a planning and urban issues speaker series hosted by the Community and Regional Planning Student Organization (CRPSO) and the Community and Regional Planning Program (CRP) at The University of Texas at Austin. The bi-weekly speaker series is intended to broaden the curriculum in the CRP program by presenting the experiences, perspectives, and insights of scholars, community leaders, practicing planners, and policy makers who engage in timely issues.

For questions, comments, or suggestions related to City Forum, contact Kathryn Howell.

Friday, November 20
Speaker: Fernando Costa, FAICP
"Comprehensive Planning: The Fort Worth Experience"
Location: Goldsmith Hall, Room 3.120, noon to 1:30 p.m.

In cities across the United States, comprehensive planning is used to fulfill legal mandates, establish growth and development strategies, and provide opportunities for residents to play a role in defining the future of their communities. In a previous City Forum, panelists explored Austin's progress on the current Comprehensive Plan, including timelines, public participation. and challenges and opportunities. This City Forum will explore the comprehensive planning experience in Fort Worth and discuss possible lessons for Austin. This is the second in a series of City Forums devoted to Austin's comprehensive planning process, developed and presented jointly by the Program in Community and Regional Planning and the City of Austin.

Fernando Costa is a nationally acclaimed city planner with a career of leadership spanning 32 years, including ten years as planning director for Fort Worth and eleven years as planning director for Atlanta. He has served as Assistant City Manager for the City of Fort Worth since April 2008. In this capacity, he oversees and coordinates the activities of several departments, including planning and development, transportation and public works, aviation, water, and environmental management. Fernando is the founder and chair of Vision North Texas, a public/private partnership that promotes sustainable development in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. He serves as a part-time faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches courses in city planning and management. He is also chair of the national Planning Accreditation Board.

EXHIBIT

October 5 – December 12
Materials Lab
West Mall Building, Room 3.102 (Monday-Friday, 9-6)

Constructions in PAPER

Current students from three UTSOA studios explored the material properties of paper in their first assignment of the semester. Each studio assignment was different in their program and design requirements; however, collectively through analog and digital methods of manipulation - folding, bending, perforating, ripping, scoring, crushing, weaving, and/or cutting - each form of representation provides a unique designed component and assembly of parts. Generative and iterative explorations are seen three-dimensionality and in form and surface.

The work on display is a collaboration from Design 5 Architecture with Assistant Professor Michael Beaman, Design 5 Interior with Assistant Professor Igor Siddiqui, and Vertical Studio with Assistant Professor Danelle Briscoe.

EXHIBIT

September 8, 2009-January 15, 2010
Visual Resources Collection
Sutton Hall 3.128 (Monday-Friday, 8-5)

"The Passage to the New: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1938, Photographs by Christopher Long"

During the mid-1980s, Christopher Long, professor in architectural history at The University of Texas at Austin, photographed the built environment in Central and Eastern Europe. Awarded a Fulbright to study at the University of Vienna, Long researched his dissertation on the life and work of architect and designer Josef Frank.

Trained as a cultural historian, Long began a self-taught crash course in architectural history. He walked the streets of Vienna, Hungary, and Poland. He visited and observed every Frank building and photographed other examples of Viennese modernism, including buildings by Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Adolf Loos. He photographed during the cold winter months, when light was clearest, in order to overcome Austria's overcast weather and capture building façades often veiled in the shadows of their neighbors.

From 1994 to 1996, Professor Long lived and taught in Prague. He shot images of a city in transition, being rebuilt after the fall of communism.

The Visual Resources Collection (VRC) collaborated with ARTstor, a digital library of over one million images licensed by the University of Texas Libraries, to catalog and digitize over two hundred of Professor Long's slides. The exhibit represents a selection of images from ARTstor's Christopher Long: Central European Architecture collection.

Funding for lectures and exhibits is provided in part by: Brightman/York Endowed Lecture Series in Interior Design, Edwin W. and Alyce O. Carroll Centennial Lectureship in Architecture, Bluford Walter Crain Centennial Endowed Lectureship, Gensler Exhibitions Endowment, Herbert M. Greene Centennial Lectureship in Architecture, The Wolf and Janet Jessen Centennial Lectureship in Architecture, Karl Kamrath Lectureship in Architecture, Jane Marie Tacquard Patillo Centennial Lectureship, Edwin A. Schneider Centennial Lectureship in Architecture, School of Architecture Exhibitions Fund, and Wilsonart Endowed Lecture Series in Interior Design.

CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The Center for Sustainable Development is proud to announce the Grand Opening of the Thermal Lab on Monday, December 7, at 5:00 p.m.

This innovative laboratory, located on the south face of the West Mall Building on the UT Austin campus, will be used to conduct thermal experiments in a real-scale environment for various façades, glazings, ventilation systems, window treatments, and passive solar lighting techniques.

STAFF DEVELOPMENT

Visual Resources Collection Director Elizabeth Schaub has been appointed as the Implementation Co-Chair for the Summer Educational Institute. The Summer Educational Institute (SEI) is a joint initiative sponsored by ARLIS/NA and the Visual Resources Association Foundation that provides an intensive educational experience for visual resources professionals. Her appointment will take effect from 2010 through 2012.

CONTACTS

In this fast-paced world, there's a lot of news to keep up with. We know you are doing great things, and we rely on you not only to share your stories, but also to keep us up-to-date on your contact information so that we can share our stories with you. Alumni, please send your news and contact updates to Associate Director of Constituent and Alumni Relations Stacy Manning at smanning@austin.utexas.edu. Students, faculty, and staff may send updates to eNews editor Pamela Peters at p.peters@mail.utexas.edu.

UT-Austin School of Architecture
soa.utexas.edu

Dean's Office
512.471.1922, fax 512.471.0716

Center for Sustainable Development
Assistant Director, Barbara Wilson
bebrown@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.2709

Center for American Architecture and Design
Administrative Associate, Christine Wong
christinewong@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.9890

Assistant Dean for Development
Julie Hooper, jhooper@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.6114

Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs
Jeanne Crawford, jcraw@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.0109

Program Coordinator for Graduate Affairs
Rosemin Gopaul, gopaul@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.0134

Associate Director of Constituent and Alumni Relations
Stacy Manning, smanning@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.0617

Career Services Center
Director, Carrie O'Malley
carrie.omalley@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.1333

Materials Lab
http://soa.utexas.edu/matlab, 512.232.5969

Visual Resources Collection
http://soa.utexas.edu/vrc/, 512.471.0143

Architecture and Planning Library
www.lib.utexas.edu/apl/, 512.495.4620

Publications Editor
Pamela Peters, p.peters@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.0154

Event Coordinator
Alley Lyles, alyles@austin.utexas.edu, 512.471.8187

Webmaster
Christopher Rankin, crankin@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.3703

UTSOA Mailing Address
The University of Texas at Austin
School of Architecture
1 University Station B7500
Austin, TX 78712-0222