News09 Winter2010
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The cover photo of the formwork for Paul Milstein Hall’s concrete dome shows how far we have come. The building now has what can legitimately be called an interior, and discussions with OMA are focused on the outfitting of the space—studio furniture, signage, and auditorium seating. We are not yet in the final stretch, but we are close. We’re on budget and on schedule for a fall 2011 opening, and you can expect a save-the-date message from me soon inviting you to campus to inaugurate the long-anticipated addition to our college and university. While we are able to celebrate this progress, our happiness was tempered this past August when benefactor Paul Milstein passed away; we join his family and friends in mourning. Milstein Hall is, of course, the most visible sign of expansion and renewal. But another transformation is occurring, one that is an essential complement to our physical improvements: we’re building our faculty ranks. The economic concerns of the past 18 months have not vanished; in fact, we are ever more vigilant regarding the use of financial resources, but with imminent retirements and dramatic shifts in the research foci of our disciplines, investment in the intellectual and creative capital of our faculty can no longer wait—and, fortunately, need not. This fall we launched searches for four faculty members and one senior administrator. Two positions are in CRP, building on the 75-year legacy of the department. In addition, I am delighted to announce the Richard Meier Professorship in Architecture. I am immensely grateful for the generous gift from Richard Meier and a consortium of his friends that made this professorship possible. A new term position,
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the Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic, centered on sustainable design, is the result of the generosity of architecture alumnus Hans Strauch and his brother Roger, a graduate of Cornell’s engineering program. We are also conducting a search for an executive director for our New York City program, and here too, this position is made possible by the remarkable support of longtime friends, the Gensler Family Foundation. I interpret this extraordinary support from so many quarters as not only a testament to our past excellence, but as a challenge to continue the difficult task of never being content with past excellence. I know I speak for the faculty in accepting the challenge, enthusiastically.
Dean Kent Kleinman GALE AND IRA DRUKIER DEAN OF ARCHITECTURE, ART, AND PLANNING
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AAP News
is published twice yearly by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, through the Office of the Dean. College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome, Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 (607) 255-5317 aap_newsletter@cornell.edu Editor Aaron Goldweber Assistant Editor Rebecca Bowes Contributing Writers Daniel Aloi, Anna Brawley (M.R.P. ’11), Rebecca Bowes, Seth Eden (M.R.P. ’10), Aaron Goldweber, Sherrie Negrea, Sarah Smith Design Paul Soulellis (B.Arch. ’90), Erik Vrielink/Soulellis Studio Copy Editor Laura Glenn Photography William Staffeld (unless otherwise noted) Distribution Coordinator Beth Kunz Cover Formwork for Paul Milstein Hall’s concrete dome. Opposite View of Milstein Hall from atop Baker Lab, October 2010.
News09 Winter2010
© November 2010 Cornell University Printed on Lynx Opaque, a Forestry Stewardship Council stock. Printed by Monroe Litho, Rochester, NY. Monroe Litho is certified by the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership and is an EPA Green Power Partner operating on 100 percent wind power.
Table of Contents
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NEWS: CRP celebrates its 75th Anniversary.
WORK: Tjaden vegetable garden; M.F.A. show; M.Arch.2 summer semester.
FOLIO: CRP: Beyond 75.
INTERVIEW: Congressman Hansen Clarke (B.F.A. ’84) talks to AAP News.
STUDENT PROFILE: Michael Lee (B.Arch. ’11).
ALUMNI: :output award winner; DIA design; POLLI-BRICKS.
NEWS: Drukier dinner; Nano exhibition; Stiller appointment; Architecture accreditation.
REVIEW: Dharma Bums exhibit; Preston Thomas symposium.
STUDENTS: Bangladesh work; Eidlitz Fellowships; Networked Art event; ULI competition.
FACULTY/STAFF: Gadeyne profile; Christopherson grant; Schack obituary; Tomlan travels to Cambodia.
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2 AAP News Nano Exhibit Accredita APA Awards CRP75 Sustainablility Church Restoration Journal of Arch
Also in attendance were: Robert Appel ’53 and Helen Appel ’55, Richard and Debbie Born, Ben and Bonnie Krupinski, Gene and Christine Pressman, and Dottie Litwin ’57. Guests dined on a ferro-fluid Drukiers for their gift, which created the table designed and built for the event by Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of architecture students Andrew Heumann Architecture, Art, and Planning. Attendees (B.Arch. ’12), Leslie Bristow Mignin at the dinner included the Drukiers, (M.Arch. ’11), Paul Joran (M.Arch. ’11), AAP Dean Kent Kleinman and his wife Lisa and Tansy Mak (B.Arch. ’12). Pincus, and President David Skorton.
ON SEPTEMBER 20, AAP HOSTED A CELEBRATORY DINNER AT AAP NYC, IN HONOR OF GALE AND IRA DRUKIER ’66. The dinner honored the
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tation Drukier Dinner y Workshop Stiller Trustee chitecture
PROFESSIONAL GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAMS RECEIVE ACCREDITATION AAP’s professional master of architecture (M.Arch.1) program has been accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). The graduate degree bolsters the professional programs offered by the Department of Architecture, which also offers a professional bachelor of architecture (B.Arch.). The accreditation of the highly ranked B.Arch. program was renewed by NAAB, which sent teams to Ithaca to review the programs last March and April. The M.Arch.1 accreditation is effective for a three-year initial term starting in January 2009, while the B.Arch. accreditation is effective January 2010, for a six-year term. Both accreditation terms represent the maximum duration for a reaccredited and initially accredited program, respectively. “Hosting two accreditation visits in one semester was an extraordinary undertaking requiring the hard work and diligence of many people, including administration, faculty, staff, students, and alumni,” said Professor Dagmar Richter, chair of the Department of Architecture. “The visiting teams’ reports speak to the strength of both programs and showcase the exceptional teaching, student work, and research of the department.” Four graduates of the architecture program—Stephen Fong (B.Arch. ’78, M.Arch. ’82), Robert Joy (B.Arch. ’72), Daniel Kaplan (B.Arch. ’84), and Susan Rodriguez (B.Arch. ’81)—attended the accreditation visits as observers. “The M.Arch.1 program has demonstrated its commitment to architecture education and the students,” says the NAAB report. “The visiting team found that a focus on the architect’s leadership role permeates the Cornell M.Arch.1 program. … The students in the program are highly engaged in shaping the purpose and identity of their academic community.” The report noted the advantages of having the M.Arch.1 program within a major research institution like Cornell, which has an “expectation for crossdisciplinary learning at all graduate levels.” It also mentions the opportunity to formalize the connection with other disciplines within AAP, like city and regional planning, and the professional program in landscape design in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Both the undergraduate and graduate review teams determined that with the construction of Paul Milstein Hall, the condition of the college’s facilities, which had been a major area of concern, was no longer an accreditation obstacle. “Construction is under way on Paul Milstein Hall. … It will expand the facilities available to the professional program in architecture and will provide needed and useful flexible space,” says the report. “This significant investment, made at a time of increasingly scarce resources, is a major accomplishment by the program and the college. It is a heartening acknowledgment by the university of its commitment to professional architectural education.”AAP
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UNPACKING THE NANO The world may soon be profoundly changed by a single object, one which the typical American could buy using a credit card. In June, India’s Tata Motors began production of the world’s most affordable car: the Tata Nano. Selling for a mere $2,500, the Nano is financially within reach for 500 million Indians. And with 250,000 produced in 2010, this car is the equivalent to the second coming of Ford’s Model T. The Nano is poised to socially, physically, and environmentally revolutionize India— the world’s largest democracy, a nuclear power, and a place of vast and underused resources—and could also spark a monumental change felt across the globe. Cornell University’s exhibition, Unpacking the Nano, is the first in the United States to explore the car’s design and potential impact while also serving as a critical assessment of U.S. auto culture. The exhibition features a production Nano dismantled and suspended in air in its 2,000 constituent parts, and assigns weight, price, and environmental impact to the 1,400-pound car. The exhibition also features an intact Nano, a Tata Motors’ concept vehicle consisting of two used motor scooters welded together, and a 25-foot-diameter balloon representing the Nano’s annual emissions, which will float in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art’s sculpture garden.AAP Exhibition January 15–March 27, 2011 Symposium “The Price of the World’s Most Affordable Car” March 10–11, 2011 aap.cornell.edu/events/nano
STILLER NAMED UNIVERSITY TRUSTEE Dalia Stiller (B.Arch. ’84) was appointed to the Cornell University Board of Trustees in June. Stiller has served on the AAP Advisory Council since 2008, and is currently an architectural consultant for Woolbright Development, Inc., the fastestgrowing retail real estate developer in Florida. Stiller becomes the sixth graduate of AAP to serve on the Cornell University Board of Trustees. Past graduates include Earl R. Flansburgh (B.Arch. ’53), Thomas Jones (’69, M.R.P. ’72), Jill N. Lerner (B.Arch. ’75), current trustee Ratan Tata (B.Arch. ’62), and Philip Will Jr. (B.Arch. ’28). Stiller’s daughter, Cristina Stiller ’12, is a double major studying history and American studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.AAP Credit: Photo provided.
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4News 01
Celebrating 75 Years of Transforming Planning Nearly 140 CRP alumni returned to Ithaca on October 15 and 16 to celebrate a remarkable 75 years of the department’s leadership and excellence in planning education. Among a full slate of talks, panels, and social activities, the weekend featured a speech by Professor Emeritus John Reps (M.R.P. ’47) on CRP’s early history, bringing to life the founders of the department with his characteristic wit and honesty. “Taking the time to review the last 75 years of planning education at Cornell provided everyone with the opportunity to see where they stood in the development of our ideas,” says Professor Michael Tomlan (Ph.D. ’83), who directed the weekend’s activities. “Equally important, the anniversary celebration allowed us to reflect on how the values that we have shared over the years can be the platform for renewing the commitments of the department in the near future, as we search for the next generation of faculty.” Other highlights included alumni-led conversations exploring contemporary issues facing planners, and a celebration of five retiring faculty—Lourdes Benería, Pierre Clavel, Bill Goldsmith, David Lewis, and Porus Olpadwala. “The 75th was informative, fun, and energizing. The large number of attendees, including students, and the enthusiasm of the CRP alumni for the program, department, and the faculty and staff was really obvious,” says David Sheffield (’55, B.Arch. ’60, M.R.P. ’61), who attended with his wife Allison Sheffield ’56. An exhibition in John Hartell Gallery featured an interactive timeline on which alumni were invited to add events and memories to the collective history of the department. “I had a wonderful time reconnecting with classmates, professors, and the values and principles I learned at Cornell that have served me so well in my career,” says Amy Kates (B.S. URS ’86, M.R.P. ’87).AAP
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The book, Transforming Planning, edited by Professor Ann Forsyth and Associate Professor Neema Kudva, was released at the event and served as a central piece around which to examine CRP’s history. To purchase a copy, contact Sarah Subin at sbs17@cornell.edu or (607) 255-9987. Read about the event details: aap.cornell.edu/crp/75/ See the new department history webpages: aap.cornell.edu/crp/history/
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CORNELL JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE ISSUE 8: RE LAUNCHED The Cornell Journal of Architecture issue 8: RE, a special re launch issue, in development since fall 2009, contains 20 interrelated essays and conversations by contributors in many disciplines from within Cornell University, beyond Ithaca, outside the United States, and even beyond the living world. The issue’s theme, RE, declares that every creative act is reiterative: that in rethinking, recombining, reshuffling, recycling, and reimagining aspects of the world around us, we produce work that establishes new future trajectories. Interwoven themes in the issue reflect the interconnected strands of technology, history, theory, and intuition that necessarily reinforce each other in architectural education and practice today. Through engagement with a broad range of contributors, the issue embodies the kind of correspondence implied by the theme. In this spirit of dialogue, the Journal includes not only the contributor’s response, but the question, article, or image that provoked it. The Journal was researched and developed in the form of a two-semester class, Sojourns: Excursions in Architectural Publications, taught by Visiting Assistant Professor Caroline O’Donnell, who is also editor-in-chief of the publication. Contributors: Michael Ashkin with Nathan Townes-Anderson, Ila Berman, Keller Easterling, Mark Jarzombek, Philip Johnson and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Lydia Kallipoliti, Kent Kleinman and Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Hod Lipson, Greg Lynn, Alex Mergold, Mark Morris, Spyros Papapetros, SMAQ: Sabine Müller Andreas Quednau, Dagmar Richter, David Salomon, Andrea Simitch, R. E. Somol, Yehre Suh, Kazys Varnelis, and John Zissovici. A link to purchase issue 8 will be on the Journal’s website. Scanned versions of the previous seven issues are being rolled out over the next several months. cornelljournalofarchitecture.cornell.edu Check the website for details about launch events in New York City and Ithaca in early 2011.AAP
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HPP RESTORES WEST VIRGINIA CHURCH Every year, Historic Preservation Planning (HPP) students get some hands-on preservation experience during an annual “Work Weekend.” This year, two faculty members, 21 CRP graduate students, four alumni, and other volunteers traveled to the former coal mining town of Mullens, West Virginia, to work on the Wyco Community Church, a gothic revival structure built in 1917. The Wyco Community Church was recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located in the National Coal Heritage Area. The church is also on West Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Places list. Five years ago, the church was acquired by the Rural Appalachian Improvement League (RAIL), a nonprofit organization with the mission of alleviating the root causes of poverty
PLANNERS WIN MULTIPLE APA AWARDS
Two Master of Regional Planning (M.R.P.) students and the Organization of Cornell Planners (OCP) were honored with awards at the annual American Planning Association’s (APA) conference in New Orleans in April, while a spring semester workshop received an award from the APA’s New York Upstate chapter in September. Kate McCarthy (M.R.P. ’10) and Eric VanderMass (M.R.P. ’10) were awarded the Economic Development Division Graduate Scholarship for their paper titled “Industrial Wind Farms, Economic Development, and Land Use: What Planners Need to Know.” They prepared their paper in conjunction with a fall 2009 CRP workshop titled “What Local Policy Makers Need to Know About the Green Economy.” “This is the second award for M.R.P. students in this field in two years,” says Susan Christopherson, the J. Thomas Clark Professor of City and Regional Planning, “and we’re already planning for next year!” Also recognized at the April conference was the OCP, which received the Best Practices Award for a Planning Student Organization. The $1,000 award is the result of the group’s fall event titled “Social Justice and Unincorporated Communities: A Symposium.” The daylong event, organized by OCP and sponsored by the Department of City and Regional Planning, featured keynote speakers on topics of social justice and unincorporated communities. McCarthy, the former OCP president, accepted the award at the New Orleans conference on behalf of the group. The most recent award went to Visiting Assistant Professor Katia Balassiano’s spring semester workshop on the Marcellus Shale drilling initiative in Tioga County, New York, which received the APA New York Upstate Chapter’s Outstanding Student Project award. Working in close partnership with Tioga Investigates Natural Gas (TING), a countywide taskforce assembled in March 2009 to address public sector impacts and opportunities related to natural gas drilling, workshop participants identified points of economic, environmental, and social vulnerability within Tioga County communities. The award was presented at the Chapter’s annual conference in late September. “These awards attest to our strengths in teaching students to write for a policy audience and in the field of economic development,” says Christopherson.AAP
in southern West Virginia. The group hopes that the restoration of the Wyco Community Church and other historic structures in the area will lure more tourists to the economically depressed region. When the church was abandoned, RAIL began contacting universities across the country to help with the volunteer restoration effort. This year, Cornell chose the Wyco church from a number of different projects for their work weekend efforts. During their time at the church, the students completed tasks ranging from removing and reglazing windows to painting interior walls. “Cornell put in 700 hours of volunteer labor that would have cost a contractor over $20,000,” says Dewey Houck, director of RAIL. The HPP program has practiced materials conservation and building
restoration by stabilizing and/or repairing more than a dozen buildings, including a hop barn, a market, and a theater. The Wyco church is the second church that the program volunteers have worked on. “Generally, the structures we ‘adopt’ are owned by nongovernment organizations or are surplus public property,” says Professor Michael Tomlan, HPP program director. “So, the activities at the Wyco church were quite in keeping with the usual scope of work.” “In the end, we were happy to work on the Wyco church,” says Don Johnson (M.A. HPP ’11). “We all gained a respect for Mullens, West Virginia, and coal mining communities. It is our hope that other underrepresented communities are able to preserve their heritage as well.”AAP
SUSTAINABILITY WORKSHOP DRAWS YOUNG PLANNERS AND SCIENTISTS TO CAMPUS Twenty-two scholars and professionals recently attended
“Managing Transitions to Sustainable Communities and Regions,” a workshop with substantial CRP involvement held on campus in June. “Climate change challenges communities to both mitigate and adapt to its effects,” says CRP Chair and Professor Kieran Donaghy, who, along with Natalie Mahowald, professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Ruth Kroeger (M.R.P. ’10), organized the event. “And while climate change and greenhouse gas emission limits are being discussed at the global level, implementation of international agreements must be carried out at the local level where planning expertise may be lacking. We wanted to hold a workshop that would address issues of managing local transitions to sustainable lifestyles.” The five-day meeting included sessions on systems engineering, project management, simulation modeling, forecasting, computation and visualization, and political mobilization. Participants came from 10 countries, and from such diverse fields as the humanities, economics, sociology, engineering, and geosciences, as well as industry, and nonprofit and governmental organizations. At the end of the workshop, working groups were formed to develop white papers on the topics of models and scale, governance, the definition of sustainable community, and the relationship between individuals and communities in sustainability transitions. Each group will submit its completed white paper to an appropriate scientific journal. Funding for the workshop was provided by Cornell’s Center for a Sustainable Future, and the National Science Foundation’s program for the Analysis, Integration, and Modeling of the Earth System’s Young Scholar’s Network.AAP
01 Professor Emeritus John Reps delivers his talk about the early history of CRP during the opening session of the 75th anniversary celebration in Statler Hall. 02 Norman Krumholz (M.R.P. ’65), at left, discusses his four decades as a professional planner in a packed John Hartell Gallery. 03 Cornell Journal of Architecture cover. 04 The Wyco church work site. Photo: Greg Prichard. News09 Winter2010
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6 Work Thesis Studio Changing Lanes Annual Cornell M.F.A Show Outside>In>Inside>In: Sarajevo B-H
The Tjaden Grounds Department Presents Photosynthesis, by Maggie Prendergast (B.F.A. ’10). The vegetable garden, located in front of Tjaden Hall, was installed in June 2010 and remained in place until October. The project was done for Prendergast’s thesis and raises issues of land use, sustainability, local food production, and public art.AAP
Digital Pottery Series #02, by Jungwook Lee (M.Arch. ’10), is from his thesis studio with Associate Professor Jonathan Ochshorn and Visiting Assistant Professor Gisela Baurmann. “This work developed from my research about weaving structures which are central to my thesis,” says Lee. “Eventually, it will develop as a building project in Manhattan.” Lee’s work was on display as part of the architecture department’s No Assembly Required exhibit in John Hartell Gallery, organized by Tulay Atak, visiting assistant professor and new exhibition coordinator. The exhibit investigated the impact 3Dprint technology has on design. In addition to Lee, the exhibition featured the best 3D prints by students and recent graduates of architecture including: Yu Ying Goh, Sebastian Hernandez, Ian Janicki, Richard Jolta, Zongye Lee, Giffen Ott, James Pelletier, Chiayu Peng, Isaac Sharkan, Christina St. John, Ryan Trinidade, Sonia Smythe Vierra, Seok Yoon, and Xiang Zhang.AAP
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The diverse artistic practices being explored in the art department’s Masters of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) program were on full display during the annual Cornell M.F.A. show in early May at Flux Factory in Long Island City. Exhibitors included Robert Andrade (M.F.A. ’11), David Dixon (M.F.A. ’10), Gabrielle Jesiolowski (M.F.A. ’10), Gabriela Jimenez (M.F.A. ’11), Justin Martin (M.F.A. ’10), Lena Masur (M.F.A. ’10), Andrea Minicozzi (M.F.A. ’10), Ruth Oppenheim (M.F.A. ’11), Benjamin Rubloff (M.F.A. ’11), and Farideh Sakhaeifar (M.F.A. ’11).AAP
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Edith Fikes, a Ph.D. student in History of Architecture and Urban Development, has begun fieldwork for her master’s project, Outside>In>Inside>In: Sarajevo B-H. Her inquiry aims to identify and photographically comment on consistencies and inconsistencies in values across political, economic, social, and cultural forces for urban development. Ongoing research will assess the usefulness of deploying current theories of indeterminacy in the formulation of open models for urban growth and development in the city, as well as demonstrate the relevance of indeterminacy theory to research methods and academic discourse. She invites all ideas, comments, and questions. Email her at jf459@cornell.edu. News09 Winter2010
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CHANGING LANES was the theme of the M.Arch.2’s summer sem Director of Graduate Studies and Visiting Associate Professor Ma and focus of the degree program. The degree track now starts wi incoming and exiting students overlapped in seminars, studios, re addition, and featured presentations by Anthony Vidler, Joan Ock Summer High Line project by M.Arch.2 students Kang Huidan (M.Arch. ’10) and Zeng Fanbo (M.Arch. ’10).
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emester at AAP NYC, organized by Chair Dagmar Richter and Mark Morris, reflecting changes made to both the sequencing with the New York City semester, which meant that this summer reviews, and exhibitions. A lecture series was another new ckman, Andrew Zago, Christiane Sauer, and others.AAP
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10 Review
GUEST SPEAKERS FALL2010 2A+P/A JAI AILI AGENCY ARCHITE MARIO CARPO MARK CASTIGLIONE PETER CHRISTENSEN CAROLYN CHRISTOV-BAKARGIE JENNIFER DILL DAVID ERDMAN KURT FOSTER FABRIZIO GALLANTI JÖERG GLEITER WER RONALD KNAPP JOE KURMASKIE CLOVER LEE WILLIAM MACDONALD GWEN MACFARLAN MARK MORRIS ROSEMARY O’LEARY JOAN OCKMAN HYUNGMIN PAI ALI RAHIM COLE ROG SEARLE HERMAN SIEVERDING PATRICK STARR PETRA TODOROVICH ANTHONY VIDLER H
The Dharma Bums exhibit in September featured the work of Chinese artist Jia Aili. Living and working in Beijing, Jia Aili narrates private moods rather than public events of modernday China. His intense and emotionally charged work reflects the individual’s vulnerability in a rapidly changing society. The exhibit was curated by prominent Beijing-based art critic Feng Boyi and organized by Elisabeth Meyer, associate professor of art.AAP
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IFTIKHAR DADI,
01 The Dharma Bums exhibit in September featured the work of Chinese artist Jia Aili. 02 Dadi (second from left) delivers a gallery talk on the Tarjama/Translation exhibit at the Johnson Museum in September. 03 From left: Panelists Joan Ockman, Hyungmin Pai, and Christian Otto at the Preston Thomas Symposium. Photo: Robert Barker/University Photography. 04 Dagmar Richter (at right) and other panelists at the Preston Thomas Symposium. Photo: Robert Barker/ University Photography. 05 Image from the Rowe x Ungers exhibition.
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associate professor and newly named interim chair of the art department, cocurated Tarjama/ Translation: Contemporary Art from the Middle East, Central Asia, and Their Diasporas at the Johnson Museum of Art from August to October. The exhibition featured contemporary artists from the Middle East, Central Asia, and their diasporas, whose works use different methods of translation. Encompassing a variety of media and artistic strategies, the exhibition examined the different ways that artists engage with people, objects, images, and ideas traveling across geographic spaces, media forms, histories, and personal contexts.AAP
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TECTURE KATE ALLEN A. BALASUBRAMANIAM GISELA BAURMANN MIA BIRK GIEV LIVIA CORONA KEVIN DALY JOHN DAVIS BOB DEAN ODILE DEC NEIL DENARI ERNER GOEHNER JOSEPH GRIMA FRITZ HAEG JEFFREY INABA JOHN JURAYJ AND MICHAEL MALTZAN XOLELA MANGCU SEBASTIEN MAROT TOM MCDONOUGH OGERS LYNN M. ROSS JENNY SABIN SALOTTO BUONO PHIL SANDERS BERNI HÅKON VIGSNÆS AL ZELINKA
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PRESTON THOMAS SYMPOSIUM EXPLORES ARCHITECTURE PEDAGOGY This year’s Preston Thomas Memorial Symposium, Shaping Architects = Shaping Architecture, examined concepts central to the teaching of architectural design. Drawing on the experiences and insights of a core group of challenging educators, the conference addressed a matrix of critical issues: teaching arrangements and ideologies of foundational programs in architecture; techniques and theory as determining factors in the design processes; and the effect of architectural discourses on larger social constructs. Discussions among speakers, faculty, and students amplified and interrogated the presentations. Dagmar Richter, architecture chair, and Christian Otto, professor of architectural history, organized and led the symposium. In addition to Richter and Otto, speakers included Gisela Baurmann, Mario Carpo, Kurt Forster, Jöerg Gleiter, Werner Goehner, William MacDonald, Sebastien Marot, Mark Morris, Joan Ockman, Hyungmin Pai, and Anthony Vidler. The Preston Thomas series is funded through a gift to AAP from Ruth and Leonard B. Thomas of Auburn, New York, in memory of their son, Preston. Find videos of lectures and discussions at aap.cornell.edu/multimedia/ptms.cfm.AAP 03
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Miss something? If you can’t get to an AAP event, you can watch or hear many of them at aap.cornell.edu/ multimedia. Coinciding with the “Shaping Architects = Shaping Architecture” symposium, Lecturer Yehre Suh organized the Rowe x Ungers: Untold Collaborations on the City During the 1960–70s at Cornell exhibition in John Hartell Gallery in late August. The exhibition explored the conflict and commonality of the work of former AAP professors Colin Rowe and O. M. Ungers.AAP
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Nicolas Martin (B.Arch. ’12), Veil of Restoration, for third-year independent study with Visiting Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Mark Morris.
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Folio 13 CRP: Beyond 75 News09 Winter2010
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14 CRP: Beyond 75
As CRP celebrates its 75th anniversary, John Reps, Kieran Donaghy, and Neema Kudva sat down to discuss how far planning has come and where it needs to go. Here are excerpts from that conversation. Fred Edmundson, instructor, and students working on a physical planning project in a posed picture. Photo: Cornell University Archives.
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The Beginning of CRP “What is the core of our charge as planners? And where are the boundaries? We’ve been dealing with these questions since I started here in the 1940s, and I’m sure we’ll continue to deal with them far into the future.” —John Reps
KD John, when you came here, how was the planning curriculum originally put together? And what was the thinking behind the department’s expansion?
payroll, so these communities would insights and scholarship that the next welcome and often make use of CRP. generation of planners would ingest and eventually go out and practice. NK When you talk about the trained planner, what did the trained planner JR That’s right. The department bring to these places that the people reflected the different perceptions JR In the late 40s and early 50s, who were working in the cities of planning in professional practice when I was here first as a student didn’t? for many, many years, and then and then as an instructor, the we began to develop specialties in department had two big studio JR A very good question. We were other directions like planning history courses: the design course, which able to spend a lot of time thinking or heuristic gaming. We developed was a site planning course, and about what the problems in the a whole group of specialized a field problem. A field problem urban area were and how they individuals who began to write and consisted of preparing a master plan related to one another. Most people lecture around the world on these for a nearby town, such as Auburn, working for the cities didn’t have that subjects. And that’s when we really Cortland, Horseheads, etc. time. For the first four or five years, began to ask, “What is the core of the department’s program closely our charge as planners? And where KD So was the original department matched the way planning was are the boundaries?” We’ve been perceived as a de facto planning practiced around the country. By the dealing with these questions since agency for all the small towns in this 60s, of course, things had changed I started here in the 1940s, and I’m area? rather drastically and very quickly as sure we’ll continue to deal with them Barclay Jones joined the faculty and far into the future.” JR Well, those studio projects began to introduce social science certainly did help the local techniques and developed a whole NK And in a way, I think this pursuit communities. When I was planning series of new courses. of specialization in the social director in Broome County, I actively sciences broadened the rift between recruited students to do term papers KD The recruitment of Jones and the way the profession works and the on places like Endicott and Johnson the people who followed was a very way planning schools teach planning. City. I was taking advantage of all the significant development, because semi-professional skills that we had. I they were social scientists and JR Well, in Cornell’s case, that rift don’t think that any of the small local not traditional planners. This shift is what split our department in two. towns had a trained planner on the allowed CRP to begin contributing Some of us believed that the physical
city should still be the focus of planners. Others saw planning more as the descriptive and analytical rather than a prescriptive system. And it was on that basis that we split and became two departments. That lasted for four or five years, with both departments continuing on, somewhat to the surprise of each group, who thought the other would wither and die. [Laughter] NK But the department survived… JR Yes it did. And it came back together. I personally was not in favor of that reunion, but as with so many other things I was proven wrong. And I don’t know what happened, but we all then became much more amicable to one another. I would sum it up by saying that after that reunion, we lived happily ever after. Or maybe that’s just my perception because I haven’t been to a faculty meeting in some years. [Laughter]
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16 CRP: Beyond 75
Where We Are Today “Regardless of where we may live, our actions have some global consequence. It’s about understanding how the world is interconnected.” —Neema Kudva
KD I think today’s challenges are much more complex than in the past. I don’t want to say that when the program began we lived in simpler times, because quite clearly we didn’t. JR We lived in simpler perceptions. It wasn’t a question of simpler problems. KD Yes, I think that’s the better way to put it. But quite clearly what happens in complex adaptive systems is that each intervention you make to address one problem begets conditions … NK … and unanticipated consequences. KD Yes, the law of unintended outcomes and consequences. And now we have so many problems of great importance including the increase in human-made engineered systems that shape and penetrate most aspects of our daily lives, the increasing interdependence of all communities through globalization, the looming environmental crisis, the decay of a generation of urban infrastructure systems that have reached the end of their service lives, and the fact that billions of the world’s people still don’t enjoy minimally acceptable living standards. These problems raise very challenging questions: Do we rebuild for the past? Do we build for the future? If so, how? Do we need to develop a planning capacity that addresses poverty, equity, fiscal design, and institutional questions? If I think about developing a planning curriculum that addresses all of those things, it seems almost impossible. You’d never get out of school! [Laughing] JR It’s really remarkable to think about the impact of globalization on this curriculum. In my time, the outside world (outside the United States), was just not something we were concerned with. We had hardly any students here from the developing world: they would apply, but we had zero money for fellowships or scholarships. We admitted some very able people, but most of them were not able to come. So when you talk about globalization, I’m curious to know roughly what percentage of the students in our student body come from outside the United States? NK John, I don’t know if that’s the right metric, because we still don’t have many students from outside the United States; maybe four people in the class. I think the larger question is how many will go out and practice outside the United States? And if you look at figures from professional associations, the private consulting firms that are growing and turning a profit are the ones that work in Asia. When I talk about globalization,
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I’m referring to an understanding of how global forces have an effect at the local level. Regardless of where we may live, our actions have some global consequence. It’s about understanding how the world is interconnected. One part of how we respond is integration of global concerns across the curriculum, but it’s also about thinking through how one should work and plan in a global world. We have to consider what globalization means to people across communities here in the United States and the global South. To many people, globalization is all about loss and being colonized. We have to acknowledge and incorporate that into planning. KD You know it’s interesting. When the maintenance people were cleaning out David Lewis’ office after he retired, there were file cabinets filled with reports of international development projects he had done. He appears to have been a oneperson industry in this area of on-theground international development planning. And that became one of the signature elements of the department. I remember that there were teams of students from places like Tanzania or Venezuela who came to work with David on projects, and would then go back to their countries during the summer. And then when they graduated they more or less hit the ground running as a team of trained international development professionals. They had a sense of what the natural next thing to do was, and they had acquired the technical skills along the way to be able to implement it. One of the things that I think is essential to the success of this department is that it has on hand people who have been very successful professionally themselves who can pattern and help mold students. NK I need to play devil’s advocate here. I know we advocate for this relationship between practice and educating planners, and it sounds like we’ve done it ever since this program started. But we also know now that the ways in which planners (academics or otherwise) worked in Africa and other parts of the world actually created more problems than they solved in the long run. There was a lack of understanding of the ways in which existing informality was integrated in different parts of the world, of the ways that land use, planning, politics, power, and race were considered. So in a way, professional practice was perpetuating practices that were extremely problematic. KD I think that we must realize that planning is a profession that is constantly undergoing change, and that we need to be self-critical of the practices in which we engage and also pass on to the next generation of planners.
NK But look at the way many professional planners and planning consultants currently practice. There are still all of these projects that are stuck in a superimposed, “master plan,” technocratic kind of mode from 40 years ago that John described. It’s fascinating to me how international practice is so mired in perspectives that we know don’t work anymore, and in practices that we work against in the American context. When in America, we seem to be able to see the nuances of planning and politics differently. We seem to understand that if you’re working on a comprehensive plan you have to bring in the communities you’re working with to really think through these questions in an inclusive, integrative way. We understand change as emerging, in part, out of long processes of organizing in difficult circumstances. And yet the minute we cross the ocean, all that falls away. And planning is reduced to the plan. KD Yes. NK But why is this? What’s going on? Is our descriptive and analytical work inadequate? I don’t think so. I think there is a lot of descriptive analytical work going on that actually captures the complexities of these cities. KD Well, I have in front of me the U.N. Habitat’s Global Report on Human Settlements and they are echoing strongly the themes that you are stressing. They are arguing for the need to change planning curricula to bring in a deeper appreciation of informality. The report says that, “there is a significant need for updating and reform of curricula in many urban planning schools, particularly in developing and transition countries where urban planning education has not kept up with current challenges and emerging issues. Urban planning schools should educate students to work in different world contexts so as not to limit their mobility and the applicability of training and skills. And urban planning education should include tuition in ethics and key social values including recognition and respect for social differences, as planning is not ‘value-neutral.’”
The Infrastructure Challenge Remarks by Robert Young (M.R.P. ’96), CRP 75th Anniversary, October 16, 2010 After 150 years of modification, expansion, and neglect, the infrastructure system created during the great wave of urbanization in the first half of the 19th century is failing. The cost to maintain and extend the provision of water, electricity, highway, rail, air, and seaport facilities is estimated to be $41 trillion globally over the next 20 years. Matching this demand for capital under current circumstances would be extremely difficult, but it is only part of the infrastructure challenge. The changed relationship between social and ecological systems brought about in creating the original infrastructure system has significantly damaged the earth’s ecological infrastructure, the planetary framework that underpins all of our urban and rural systems. The necessities of these systems should not be considered as separate items; the social and ecological infrastructure systems work together, and we do not have the capital to restore and maintain them. What is needed is a new, synergistic strategy that addresses the social and ecological systems simultaneously, providing pubic goods and ecosystem health, thereby healing, in part, the rift wrought by modernity. The centerpiece of this new strategy will pivot on the development of green infrastructure, which may be defined as “[a]n interconnected network of natural areas and other open spaces that conserves natural ecosystem values and functions, sustains clean air and water, and provides a wide array of benefits to people and wildlife.” (Benedict and McMahon, 2006). Other technological and design innovations such as green roofs, net zero energy systems, living buildings, and urban eco-districts can also be included in this definition. Early large-scale examples of these efforts are being made in the public and private sectors, both domestically and in developing countries. Philadelphia, for example, has committed $1.6 billion over the next 20 years to address the city’s water quality. Finding traditional grey infrastructure options cost prohibitive, the city has adopted a green infrastructure strategy that includes rain gardens, permeable pavement, green roofs, rain barrels, bio-swales, and a new system of taxing impermeable surfaces. Following Philadelphia’s example, New York City recently incorporated similar features in its own green infrastructure strategy, including the acquisition of 77,000 acres of land to further protect its watersheds. Officials estimate the incorporation of green infrastructure will save the city $2.4 billion in total costs. Green infrastructure should not be misperceived as only a public sector and developed world phenomenon. In the summer of 2010, Siemens Corporation launched the African Green City Index, the first large-scale research effort to assess the environmental performance of 16 major African cities and identify opportunities to deploy green infrastructure strategies to increase their sustainability. The study will include cities in Algeria, Angola, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Tunisia, and represents a significant part of Siemens’ future growth strategy. The modern infrastructure challenge is also a pedagogy challenge. Just as creating the original infrastructure system brought forth planning as a new profession, answering this new infrastructure challenge in both its social and ecological manifestations will bring forth a renewed planning field that heals old divisions between society and ecology and in doing so, lays the ground work for the next chapter of global civilization. Cornell’s Department of City and Regional Planning is uniquely situated to accomplish this task. Its remarkable resources that orient planning toward international and domestic issues of social justice are within a short walking distance to premiere programs in architecture, landscape architecture, natural resources, and ecology. And at the center is planning, the field that ties them all together. That is our pedagogical challenge.
01 From left, John Reps, Kieran Donaghy, and Neema Kudva discuss the past, present, and future of planning at Cornell and beyond.
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Training Today’s Planners “Where in the curriculum do we put the piece that acquaints people with enough material substance and challenges them enough so that they can experience growing in that evaluative dimension?” —Kieran Donaghy
KD So how do you get across to planners today that they need to constantly engage in moral and aesthetic learning as well as technical learning? How do they learn to adapt to make the value judgments for a changing situation? That’s something that we need to work on. When John talked about the original curriculum and those two studios where things really came together for students, I realized that we don’t have anything close to that now, where people can synthesize all the different aspects of a situation. Obviously I recognize that a single studio experience won’t accomplish that—even two or three studio experiences won’t accomplish that. But where in the curriculum do we put the piece that acquaints people with enough material substance and challenges them enough so that they can experience growing in that evaluative dimension? How do we equip students to make these important prescriptive decisions that you’re telling us we need to be able to make? NK Again, I would use the word prescriptive with great hesitation, because I think the moment we begin to make these prescriptive decisions is often the moment we begin to go wrong. I’ve been thinking more and more about how we separate out these prescriptive decisions. I was talking with John (Forester) the other day and he made a distinction between normative ideals and
prescriptive actions. In the case of Mumbai, for example, how do you plan a city, how do you plan neighborhoods that acknowledge the importance of equity in the face of informality, the difficulties of implementing participatory practices and yet craft a plan that can accommodate a diversity of conditions—one that is loose enough and less controlled by the regulatory instruments that planners impose most stringently? Can one think of planning cities in those terms? KD The problem is that planning is and always has been a Janusfaced profession. It looks behind and tries to preserve what’s good, helping to implement the decisions people have consciously made to prevent themselves from doing things against the public good. At the same time, planning is a future-looking profession which tries to safeguard decisions that people with a better understanding should make in the future so that we don’t condition those decisions on imprudent longlived investments which are made now and might preclude other more appropriate types of development or other types of institutional design. And that’s awfully hard to do. Lou Hopkins talks about the four I’s of planning—the fact that planning is likely to be undertaken when decisions are interdependent, where there is incomplete information, where the decisions that you make
are mostly irreversible, and where they cannot be made incrementally. I.e., you cannot build half of a water treatment plant. So, planners are accustomed to working in difficult decision environments. But, with one eye on the past and present and one eye on the future, planners are challenged to help solve the problems of one generation without encumbering the next. JR What a daunting process. It makes you think you should go into something like medicine or law! [Laughter] NK What if we just took those four I’s and set up a curriculum? What would it look like? JR In all of this discussion, I haven’t heard either one of you speak once about the physical city and the planning function applied to that. This brings up the value of the studio experience that Kieran mentioned a minute ago. You learn an enormous amount from other students when you are in a room with them day after day. We can do that at AAP, and we can put more emphasis on the physical city, which I think has been … KD … underserved. JR Underserved is putting it a little mildly but let’s stick with that. We now have a small but very good real
estate program. We have people who are interested in bringing planners and architects together in the annual competition for the planning of a major segment of an existing city. That’s a real-life scenario. I think a good many of the issues that have arisen in recent years about the department’s lack of emphasis on the physical world would be met if this type of integrative project were an essential part of the curriculum. Planners, architects, landscape architects, civil engineers, and people from other scientific fields need to collaborate on the “meat and potatoes” world of everyday life in the city. I haven’t heard either of you talking about parks, streets, or public transportation—the kinds of things that are faced by people every day. You talk a lot about other countries and other issues, and I don’t underestimate the importance of that, but I think many of our students are going to be working in and for urban communities in this country. And I’m not sure that we prepare them as well as we could. NK I think John is right. But when I was trying to talk about how one thinks about the bones of the city, especially in environments like Mumbai, I was thinking about public space such as streets, parks, waterfronts, sidewalks, and other areas that belong to the public as opposed to being controlled as private property. And if everyone News09 Winter2010
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18 CRP: Beyond 75 The Future of the Field of International Planning
Remarks by Katharine Rankin (Ph.D. ’99, M.R.P. ’95), CRP 75th Anniversary, October 16, 2010 CRP occupies a crucial niche in international planning studies. Its clear grounding in a tradition of progressive planning means that it has stood at a critical distance from the hegemonic centers of international planning practice. This critical progressivism is what distinguishes CRP from the other major planning programs in the States, and I am proud to have had my training here. I think if there were one unified direction international planning studies could take, it would be to play a key role in challenging market-led approaches to development that are based on problematic assumptions about the entrepreneurial capacity of the poor. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, when we’re hearing more about Keynes, Polanyi, and even Marx in surprisingly mainstream venues, economic development continues to conflate the market with social rationality, perpetuating the misguided expectation that market inclusion can resolve social inequality. This conflation is particularly pernicious in the context of international planning, where we’ve seen the emergence of a series of popular treatises on entrepreneurial self-help development, like C. K. Prahalad’s Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, that aim to recast the economic vulnerability of the poor as an opportunity for investment and that have achieved the status of accepted truths at centres of knowledge production like the World Bank. In light of these developments, international planning studies can and must do three things: • Expose the global political economies that produce poverty, and advocate interventions that balance market with social rationality. • Play a key role in reminding all of us in planning of the dynamics of imperialism and neocolonialism in which we are complicit. Not for the sake of promoting guilt and inaction, but for the sake of practicing planning in a way that is fundamentally accountable to poor and marginalized people. • Help to forge strategic translocal alliances by pointing out and cultivating links among struggles for the right to the city, and combating the racism and economic localism that typically emerge during times of economic retrenchment that we are witnessing today, when cities and movements in the global North may be tempted to turn inwards to the problems facing their core constituencies. To further the advancement of these goals, three curricular priorities come immediately to mind. First is an explicit commitment to incorporating the contributions of critical development studies in the curriculum, in order to probe the relationship between planning, imperialism and neocolonialism; challenge conventional North/South maps of where development takes place; and ascribe political agency to the intended beneficiaries of planning practice Secondly, we must pursue a commitment to the best features of an admittedly controversial ‘area studies’ approach to international studies—a commitment, that is, to bringing in scholars with deep knowledge of a particular region through language and cultural familiarity, who can, in turn, mentor students in the kind of engaged planning practice that is deeply connected to context. We want to disavow students of the allure of global planning tourism. Finally, we should commit to representing perspectives on international planning from the global South, including innovations in research methods designed to capture perspectives of non-literate and marginalized groups, subaltern critiques of international planning, and alternative planning paradigms and practices. This last area of curriculum development can find expression in the core curriculum as well as the international planning stream. Innovations and critique from the global South stand to benefit all planners, and students will be encouraged to recognize unexpected similarities across connected historical geographies.
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has a right to the city, and that right is central to the way one designs cities like Mumbai. There is also the question about basic infrastructure— drinking water, sewerage, roads … Public amenities are for the public good, whether it’s the United States or anywhere else. But we have to be aware that the challenges of designing these services are different in each context given the differences in communities, in regulatory systems. But John is right: We don’t do a good enough job with bringing these ideas into physical planning.
studio to run because there were real time differences in terms of how a studio is seen in architecture and planning and elsewhere. There are also issues around skills, and those came up because the projects were all infrastructure-based—designing a system for latrines, and how recycling and stream cleaning would work, for example—and the architects were unhappy that they didn’t have these single projects that they could really build. It was quite interesting.
KD There’s also a New York Citybased course this semester, a largeKD However, there are a few things scale, physical planning workshop that we are doing. We have a prep that’s being led by Bob Balder of the course this semester for students New York City group Gensler. He’s who will participate in the urban taking 18 students to the city, mostly land institute competition in January. second-year master’s students and And traditionally we do involve real landscape architects, to examine estate, landscape architecture, civil successes and failures, conduct engineering, and planning students, post-occupancy audits, and learn and we would like to get additional how firms (like Gensler) that deal participation from architecture. with these large-scale projects are conceiving of them over time. On NK We also recently had a studio the staffs of such firms are planners, in Nairobi, Kenya that included architects, and civil engineers who all students from architecture, landscape must work together. architecture, civil engineering, and planning. It was a really difficult JR That is the real world. That is how it works.
KD Exactly. Planners today face not only design issues, but also very technical questions and communicative questions. You’ve got to think about interest groups, stakeholders, and professional standards. We want to immerse the students in a situation at that level of complexity, to show them what might be in store for them if they want to think beyond being a small-town or a small-city planner. The New York City workshop students are also going to learn Autodesk Revit and Civil 3D, and other state-of-the-art software packages, which, quite frankly, they should already be learning but they’re not. (Of course, we should be teaching the skills augmented by the software, not the software packages per se.) It’s clear that we have a lot of work to do in this college, not only in starting the conversation between students who will be architects, planners, landscape architects, civil engineers, and people who do the finance, but we need to get the methodologies, the information technologies and the software programs in the labs and in the hands of the students who will be part of this common conversation.
The Cornell Difference “We are as much a university that belongs to the world as we belong to the United States.” —Neema Kudva
NK For me, the interesting thing about Cornell, as we discussed earlier, is that a small percentage of people come here because they are interested in working in the smaller towns as John described it in the early days. My sense is that now, a larger percentage is coming to be part of something that is truly global, big, large—in terms of ideas, opportunities. We are as much a university that belongs to the world as we belong to the United States. KD I think what’s also important about Cornell is that when people come here they know that they have available all of these wonderful courses across the campus. They can take what they perceive to be the core courses, but they can put together a highly customized program that meets their particular needs. That’s fairly unique among the top-tier planning schools. People know that it’s going to position them professionally in a much better way, and so they come with a certain sense of hope. They may end up taking developmental sociology or a course in the law school, or they
might take a course with Richard Miller in the philosophy department. They graduate with a very unique kind of transcript; it’s the Cornell transcript, and it furthers the reputation that this is a place that you can come if you have these progressive sentiments, or it’s a place you can come if you really want to optimize your chances of doing international development planning work. JR Are we really that different from MIT or Berkeley or Penn or North Carolina? NK Yes. I think the way we’re different is that we emphasize working locally much, much more than they do—regardless of where in the world you may choose to work. Kathy Rankin also spoke of keeping a critical distance from power centers. We emphasize issues of equity.
There are some students who come here because they anticipate being able to engage in international development planning. That’s the number one attraction for students coming in. Second, there’s this progressive tradition and people say I’m coming here because I’m looking for those credentials. They may need to go back to a particular type of community and raise hell. NK Or do so in the context of shaping more formalized planning processes within the public sector. KD There are also our alumni. When people like Norm Krumholtz, Dick Klosterman, or Ken Reardon go into cities and engage in this particular style of planning it reflects back on the institution they came from. People see their work and say, “I want to go to Cornell.”
KD What also needs to be kept in mind is that each of those other programs you mention appeals to a different subset of prospective students because of its reputation.
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Looking Ahead “Planners are not philosopher kings. We are people who collaborate with other people—that’s what we have to learn how to do well.” —Kieran Donaghy
KD Looking ahead, as we try to come to terms with some of the critical problems I mentioned earlier—like crumbling urban infrastructure, increasing interdependency and vulnerability of urban societies, and the challenge to adopt more sustainable lifestyles—there will be at the center of planning efforts people who do design well.
NK But they also had a manual, didn’t they? Something that children got in school?
NK Absolutely.
KD That’s right. And the plan of Chicago actually got built. It took 50 or 60 years, but it had the support of those generations of schoolchildren who had been effectively inculcated with this civic vision of how their city was going to improve and evolve.
JR Yes, Wacker’s Manual. Generations of schoolchildren grew up with it. And those same school children grew up voting on bond issue after bond issue.
KD And working hand in glove with them must be people who understand the behaviors of circulation patterns, energy use, changing demographics, aging of the population, different educational needs, how crime rates are impacted NK So in all these places we are by the way designs are laid out … talking about, the education process is part of what needs to happen. NK … how the economy is going That is a crucial piece of participato function because we are at a tory planning, that’s what planning point where our energy supplies are at the local level when done well— changing. And the way our energy through community organizers or supplies are going to change is really the public sector—should do. going to impact the physical city. KD And one of the biggest KD Absolutely. It’s all tied problems that our students need to together, and it has to start with be acquainted with and need to be education. If you look at the history ready for is fighting the rearguard of planning in Chicago, the first actions against the naysayers who planning commission of the city are opposed to planning and its was essentially a real estate office. principles. It’s difficult to recruit It’s employees went block to people into a profession where they block educating residents about constantly have to defend the very Burnham’s plan and selling a set of role that they play in society and the infrastructure improvements to the purposes that they serve. People different communities. confuse planning with regulation and government, which it is not. It is something else. It is helping
a society come to grips with very challenging problems, and managing the changes that are necessary to get us from one period of living to another. Not only do we have to fight the rearguard actions, but we must be constantly vigilant about whether or not what we’re putting before the students is actually helping them to cope with these problems. NK It goes back to the issue of learning to ask the right questions so we can address the urban problems we face, and how those questions are shaped by the contexts within which they emerge. KD Look, I just want to say that planners are not philosopher kings. We are people who collaborate with other people—that’s what we have to learn how to do well. My personal view is that future planners will need to develop better skills in working with stakeholders and communicating issues of greater complexity than those of our contemporaries. And by stakeholders I mean landowners, taxpayers, developers, firms, environmental regulatory agencies, and public works departments in addition to the usual participants like engineers, landscape architects, and central budgeting offices. Planners will need to understand what the objectives and issues are for each of those groups, and know how to clearly articulate implications of the various courses of action in any proposed plan.
NK People. Communities. Future planners need to integrate, not just collaborate. KD Exactly. They will need to be able to do most of what contemporary planners are asked to do and much, much more. JR Have either of you ever read Rick Olmsted’s statement about planning from the early 1900s? He was the younger son of Frederick Olmsted, a very distinguished planner and one of the brightest stars we ever had in the field. And Rick Olmsted says, in effect, that this whole thing is too damn complicated. KD It is. [Laughter] JR He had been doing master planning, and he came to the conclusion that it was too complicated. NK It is too complicated! But we cannot not try. How can we not try?
Planning Education: Recommendations for the Next Phase of CRP’s Curriculum Remarks by Kenneth Reardon (Ph.D. ’90), CRP 75th Anniversary, October 16, 2010
Dramatic changes taking place in local communities require us to reflect upon the quality of the planning education Cornell is offering its students. As someone who experienced the transformation of my intellectual and professional life sitting in class with Professor(s) Jones, Isard, Clavel, Goldsmith, and Forester, I feel a special obligation to participate in the conversation regarding insuring excellence in planning education and practice as we begin the second 100 years of the American city planning profession. Towards this end, I would encourage the department to consider the following changes to make an outstanding planning program even better: • In light of the degree to which powerful global forces have touched every local community, the department might think about eliminating its international planning program in favor of an overall pedagogical approach that places all planning within its appropriate global
context, but does not ghettoize global concerns within its own program. • Explore the establishment of new joint programs with colleagues in anthropology, public health, civil engineering, environmental sciences, and government to better prepare future students for the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of contemporary planning practice. • Provide enhanced training in research methods that prepare future practitioners to use mixed-methods research techniques to answer increasingly complex environmental, economic, and social urban policy questions. • In light of the growing demands of local residents, the department should reinforce the preparation students receive in participatory action research methods which will allow them to include all stakeholders in a meaningful way, at each and every step in the planning and design process.
• Introduce CRP students to advanced theory and methods in communications studies that prepare them to design social media strategies to share information and elicit local shareholders’ input regarding the solution of critical urban issues. • Train would-be planners in the theory, methods, and practice of directaction organizing, as practiced by Saul Alinsky and his followers, to assist economically and politically marginalized groups in gaining their voice in critical public investment decisions affecting their communities. • Strengthen the department’s connection to the world of urban policy making and city planning practice by establishing “Policy Maker in Residence” and “Planner in Residence” programs. By sharing his stories of practice and wisdom, Norman Krumholz had an enormously positive impact on generations of students. He is an ideal role model to be used as an inspiration for establishing these programs.
• Enhance CRP’s contribution to the growing national and international discourse regarding how to build the just city by establishing a first-rate urban policy journal to which students, faculty, alumni, and friends contribute articles examining the unfinished business of American democracy—the dismantling of the structural barriers to environmental, economic, racial, and gender justice through progressive planning and design. Kenneth Reardon is Professor and Director of the Graduate Division of City and Regional Planning at the University of Memphis.
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20 CRP: Beyond 75
The booming northern suburbs and disappearing wetlands of Malad and Goregaon in Mumbai, where slum settlements, malls, call centers, office complexes, and high-rise housing are being built at breakneck speed. Photo: Neema Kudva.
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Student News 21
ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS LEARN MORE THAN BUILDING IN BANGLADESH
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After hearing from Chi Chi (B.Arch. ’13) about the wonderful time she had in Bangladesh during the summer of 2009, we decided to find jobs there for the summer of 2010. We were hired as interns in the planning, design, and construction of Panigram Resort, a new eco-resort near Jessore, conceived of by Kristin Boekhoff ’97. Boekhoff’s goal is to create a sustainable resort using only local materials, labor, and resources. We traveled to Bangladesh in May with fellow Cornellians Timothy Chen ’13, David Hoffer ’10, Katrina Lee ’11, and Trang Pham ’12. We all shared a three-room apartment in a small village in Jessore, which was an hour by rickshaw from the resort construction site. We didn’t have access to electricity during most evenings, and until the mosquito nets arrived we shared our beds with a variety of bugs! Our meals were mostly prepared by our housekeeper, Ajeena, and usually consisted of rice and potatoes. Luckily it was mango season, which meant that each meal ended with a generous helping of the fruit. Our assignment at the resort was to design the information center, a structure used to inform visitors and workers about the design and progress of the project during the construction phase, and to later serve as an exhibition hall and resource center for guests. We worked on the design for about three weeks and after agreeing on the final sketch, we built mud, stick, and chipboard models, as well as a digital parametric version that let us calculate and adjust final dimensions. The construction of the project was extremely green. There was virtually no carbon emission, as no modern machines were used, and bamboo, the primary material used in the building, was cut, connected, and drilled by handmade tools. Posts and beams were kept straight using water levels, jute cords, and plumb-bobs, and the walls and structure base were made with mud mixed by workers at the site. Every detail and member was custom made on site without any prefabricated material or scaffolding, using only handmade elevated platforms—in essence, a parametric design realized by the most primitive tools. By the time we left Bangladesh, much of the building was complete. In early July we held the “Panigram Design Charrette,” an official meeting of everyone involved with the project, including high-ranking officials from the Bangladesh government and military, as well as investors. The days leading up to the meeting were spent preparing food, decorating the meeting space, and doing our best to design and create the official meeting documents—not an easy task given the absence of anything resembling a Kinkos! We also worked with Katrina Lee on social initiatives in the town where the project site is
located. These projects included English classes (which were a real hit with the kids), surveying land, and visiting medical clinics and schools. Living in Bangladesh was a remarkable experience, and helped us appreciate the many things we take for granted—such as clean water, the ability to eat just about any food at any time, and basic technology. We left Bangladesh with hundreds of new friends, and having learned much more than building techniques. —Caio Barboza (B.Arch. ’13) and Viet Nguyen Hoang (B.Arch. ’12)
2010–11 EIDLITZ FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENTS Six projects have received 2010–11 Robert James Eidlitz Travel Fellowships. They include: Josephine Alcott (M.L.A. ’05): The Ancient Water Tanks of Crete; Nikole Bouchard (B.Arch. ’05): Rising Tides/Changing Lives; Cem Sinan Kayatekin (M.Arch. ’10): The Misuse and Myth of a Constant Vernacular; Adriana Rodriguez-Pliego (B.Arch. ’08) and Brian Raby (B.Arch. ’07): A Media Luz: The Lighting Geometries of Barragan and Goeritz; Melissa Simonetti (B.Arch. ’06): Walking the Camino de Santiago; and Summer Sutton (B.Arch. ’09): The Walls of Fes: Al-Qarawiyyin University and the Veils of Transcendental Space. The annual competition is open to fifth-year seniors and graduate students studying history of architecture and urbanism, architecture, and landscape architecture, as well as alumni of these fields who graduated within the last five years. Sadie Boulton Eidlitz established the fellowship in 1938 as a memorial to her late husband Robert. Both Robert and Sadie are Cornell alumni, graduating in 1885 and 1884, respectively. Sadie Eidlitz designed the fellowship to supplement professional education through travel-based study.AAP
01 Viet Nguyen Hoang standing next to the information center skeleton. Photo: Katrina Lee. 02 Caio Barboza creating a model of the information center at Panigram Resort in Bangladesh. Photo: Katrina Lee. 03 Caio Barboza sketching at the work site. Photo: Katrina Lee.
MOAAP AND EMBRIZ-SALGADO WIN SOAR AWARDS
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The Minority Organization of Architecture, Art, and Planning (MOAAP) recently received the Class of 1963 Diversity Awareness Award, and Alberto Embriz-Salgado (B.Arch. ’14) received the Outstanding Contribution by a First-Year Student Award. Both awards are sponsored by Cornell University’s Student Organizations Awards and Recognition Committee (SOAR). The Class of 1963 Diversity Awareness Award is given to the student organization or program house that is most successful in using formal learning, informal learning, or both to promote understanding, respect, and amicable relations among students of different races and cultures. Khaleel Atiyyeh (B.S. URS ’10), Fernando Montejo (B.S. URS ’10), and Giselle Denbow (B.F.A. ’10) served on the executive board for MOAAP. The award for Outstanding Contribution by a First-Year Student is presented to a student who has demonstrated outstanding participation in a registered student organization. Embriz-Salgado was given the award for his participation in the American Institute of Architecture Students based on his potential for advancement to a leadership position, overall attitude, ability to work effectively with other students, and ability to facilitate decision making.AAP News09 Winter2010
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22 Student News Bolton Brawley Cab Haine Kelleher Kim Koenig Linn Mon Siu Wong
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2010 AWARDS, HONORS, FELLOWSHIPS UNIVERSITY AWARD The Merrill Presidential Scholar Karl Man Ho Chan (B.S. URS ’10)
COLLEGE AWARDS Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Medal Stephen Colerick Clipp (B.Arch. ’10), silver Kyriaki Thalia Kasabalis (B.Arch. ’10), bronze Wilma W. Lam (B.Arch. ’10), bronze Andrew Lerner Schwartz (B.F.A. ’10), bronze Mengni Zhang (B.Arch. ’10), bronze
ARCHITECTURE AWARDS Alpha Rho Chi Medal Molly L. Chiang (B.Arch. ’10) Christopher Werner (M.Arch. ’10)
Department of Art Distinguished Achievement Award Clifford Patterson II (B.F.A. ’10) Charles Baskerville Painting Award Justin Patrick Martin (M.F.A. ’10) Elsie Dinsmore Popkin Painting Award Mollie Ruth Miller (B.F.A. ’10) Edith Stone and Walter King Memorial Prize Rachel Simkover (B.F.A. ’11) William (Colin) Smith (B.F.A. ’11) Lauren Valchuis (B.F.A. ’11) Jacqueline Zdrojeski (B.F.A. ’11) 2010 Post-Baccalaureate Award Sarah Lauren Carpenter (B.F.A. ’10) Mollie Ruth Miller (B.F.A. ’10) Andrew Lerner Schwartz (B.F.A. ’10)
American Institute of Architects Henry Adams Medal and Certificate of Merit James C. Pelletier (B.Arch. ’10), medal Hilary Pinnington (M.Arch. ’10), medal Timothy Austin Liddell (B.Arch. ’10), certificate Greg Serweta (M.Arch. ’10), certificate
CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING AWARDS
William S. Downing Prize Stephen Colerick Clipp (B.Arch. ’10) Wilma W. Lam (B.Arch. ’10)
American Institute of Certified Planners Outstanding Student Award Katherine Lynn McCarthy (M.R.P. ’10)
Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal Andrew M. Nahmias (B.Arch. ’10)
Peter B. Andrews Memorial Theses Prize Waiching Wong (M.R.P. ’09)
Award for Best M.Arch.1 Thesis Koren Chi Kei Sin (M.Arch. ’10)
John W. Reps Award Grant S. Johnson (M.A. HPP ’10)
Award for Merit and Distinction in M.Arch.1 Design Studio Savina Kalkandzhieva (M.Arch. ’10) Nam Suk Oh (M.Arch. ’10)
Urban and Regional Studies Academic Achievement Award Danielle Elizabeth Schlanger (B.S. URS ’10) King Hang Esther Wong (B.S. URS ’10)
ART AWARDS John Hartell Graduate Award David Bruce Dixon (M.F.A. ’10) Faculty Medal of Art Sarah Lauren Carpenter (B.F.A. ’10)
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Thomas W. Mackesey Prize Leah Sayer Coldham (M.R.P. ’10) Ruth Elizabeth Kroeger (M.R.P. ’10)
Kermit C. Parsons and Janice I. Parsons Scholarship Daniel Kim (B.S. URS ’10) Kerry James Quinn (B.S. URS ’10)
Department of City and Regional Planning Graduate Community Service Award Emily Rebecca Hamilton (M.R.P. ’10) Danielle Nicole Bergstrom (M.R.P. ’10)
Professor of architecture Werner Goehner led an eight-week summer studio titled Istanbul: Hybrid Culture-Palimpsest City. Following in the footsteps of Le Corbusier’s pilgrimage to Istanbul in 1911, the program familiarized students with the multifaceted culture of Istanbul, its struggle for identity, and its similarities and differences with the West. Students were housed near the Galata Tower in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul. A derelict shipyard along the Golden Horn served as a site for an urban design project, which at the end of the term was exhibited in the Mimar Sinan University located directly on the Bosporus. The studio toured other parts of Turkey, including visits to Ankara, Cappadocia, Konya, Catal Huyuk, and Izmir. Following the tour, Goehner directed a twoweek-long design workshop in Yahsibey on the Aegean coast, sponsored by the Emre Senan Foundation. Five Turkish architecture students joined the seven Cornellians in analyzing and documenting a number of Aegean villages, and getting to know firsthand the rural conditions of Turkey. Field trips to Aigai and Pergamon added to the overall experience.AAP
Robert P. Liversidge III Memorial Book Award Jonathan Hartmann Wellemeyer (M.R.P. ’10) Upstate New York Chapter of American Planning Association Student Projects Award Masterplan for Parksville, Town of Liberty, New York: Jessica Fortune (B.S. URS ’09) Elizabeth Horwitz (B.S. URS ’09) Amanda Lee Huang (B.Arch. ’10) Meghan Thoreau Jacquet (M.R.P. ’10) Vladimir Micic (M.R.P. ’10) Victoria Obetoh (B.S. URS ’09) Mia Ovcina (B.Arch. ’10) Urban and Regional Studies Community Service Award Khaleel Jamal Atiyyeh (B.S. URS ’10) Kendra Michelle Chatburn (B.S. URS ’10) Fernando Montejo (B.S. URS ’10) Jeremy Bachrach Siegfried (B.S. URS ’10) Portman Graduate Student Award Meghan Hayes (M.R.P. ’11) Ethan Warsh (M.R.P. ’11) Chairman’s Award Hasang Cheon (B.S. URS ’10) Christopher Charles Koenig (M.R.P. ’10)
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AWARDS Michael Rapuano Memorial Award Christopher Hardy (M.L.A. ’10) American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Honor Zachary Boggs (M.L.A. ’10) Christopher Hardy (M.L.A. ’10) American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Merit Christian Gruber (M.L.A. ’10) Huicheng Zhong (M.L.A. ’10)
01 Turkey design studio students overlooking Pergamon. Photo: Werner Goehner. 02 T-shirt detail from Greg Gyulai’s clothing company, Façade. 03 Scenes from the Uncurateable Art Event.
NATHANIEL GUEST RECEIVES BURTON Nathaniel Guest (M.A. AWARD HPP ’11) received a Burton Award for Legal Achievement for his article “Putting History on a Stone Foundation: Toward Legal Rights for Historic Property,” which considers the applicability of a famous work by Christopher Stone to historic property. Stone’s book, Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects, galvanized environmentalists at a critical time in their movement’s history. Guest, who studied law at Temple University, argues that the preservation movement is also at a crossroads, and maps out a legal basis by which it might choose a better path forward. His article suggests that legal standing for historic properties is a way of forcing a consideration of their value in decisions about their fate, something current laws do not do adequately. The Burton Award for Legal Achievement, in association with the Library of Congress, was established to reward and encourage effective legal writing. Award recipients are selected from nominations by deans of all of the law schools in America, as well as from nominations by managing partners of the 1,000 largest U.S. law firms. Guest’s article is 1 of 15 selected as this year’s Burton Award winners.AAP
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abalfin Chua Guy Guest Gyulai ntejo Nash Quinn RoureParera M.R.P. Students Teach Planning Classes at Ithaca Charter School This past spring, six first-year Master of Regional Planning students taught a series of three city planning classes to a 10thgrade class at Ithaca’s New Roots Charter School. The classes combined field studies, interactive group sessions, and self-guided work. “It was a challenge deciding what about planning we wanted to teach, especially because we are still learning a lot ourselves, but ultimately we thought staying ‘close to home’ would make planning more visible and relevant for the New Roots students,” says Anna Brawley (M.R.P. ’11). The students’ final analyses focused on three Ithaca sites in transition: the Commons, the Women’s Community Building, and the former P&C grocery store in the Fall Creek neighborhood. At the end of the series, the 10th-grade students designed a brochure of recommendations and prepared a public presentation to local officials on their findings. The MRP team included Brawley, Celia Benton (M.R.P. ’11), Andrew Bielak (M.R.P. ’11), Karla De Leon (M.R.P. ’11), Victoria Demchak (M.R.P. ’11), Tom Knipe (M.R.P. ’11), and faculty adviser Professor Ann Forsyth. The 2009–10 academic year was the first year of operation for the New Roots Charter School, and this effort was the first urban planning project to be funded by the Graduate Student School Outreach Program (GRASSHOPR).AAP
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Anna Brawley (M.R.P. ’11) spent the summer working as an intern in Chicago with Landmarks Illinois, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on historic preservation in Chicago and statewide. She also volunteered with the Joy Garden at Northside College Prep High School in Chicago. The Joy Garden is a sustainable landscape project managed by Urban Habitat Chicago, a nonprofit organization of architects, landscape architects, and planners who manage local projects that highlight sustainability, local food production, environmentally friendly construction and deconstruction of buildings, and educating the public about nature in the city. Each year, CRP’s Urban In July, Edson Cabalfin, a Ph.D. candidate and Regional Studies faculty invites qualified in HAUD, presented an excerpt of his dissertation individuals to apply to the honors program and research, “Nation as Spectacle: Politics of Identity complete an honors thesis. Daniel Kim (B.S. in the Architectures of Philippine Pavilions at URS ’10), Fernando Montejo (B.S. URS ’10), International Expositions, 1887–1998,” at the Kerry Quinn (B.S. URS ’10), and Esther Wong international conference “Asian Countries as (B.S. URS ’10) were the 2010 participants. Exhibited at World Expositions: Revisited in a Invitations to the honors program are based Global Historical Perspective,” held at Leiden, The on GPA standards and the completion of several of the major’s required courses. The honors thesis Netherlands. The International Institute for Asian asks the student to investigate a specific research Studies and Leiden University sponsored the conference. Cabalfin also began his appointment question with the support of one faculty adviser as assistant professor in the School of who oversees the project. Architecture and Interior Design at the University The following are snapshots of the honors of Cincinnati in fall 2009. students and their theses: An ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion Daniel Kim: “USA’s Influence on the Korean Fellowship has been awarded to Richard Guy, Education System During the U.S. Military a Ph.D. candidate in HAUD. Guy is one of 70 Government in Korea, 1945–1948” selected from a pool of 1,150 applicants to The subordination of the Korean education receive the award this year. He will spend the system under a U.S. military government, and fellowship period writing and conducting research the development of South Korean education at several archives in Europe, working toward a after the World War II liberation from Japanese dissertation on society and space aboard ships of rule are the focus of Kim’s thesis. He aims to the Dutch East India Company. clarify the intentions of U.S. policies for Korean Greg Gyulai (M.Arch. ’13) has recently education, and how these policies affect Korean launched Façade clothing company, a line of education today. graphic T-shirts featuring designs inspired by art, music, and culture. Gyulai started the company Fernando Montejo: “Evolving Concepts after completing a printmaking course as an of ‘Green’: An Analysis of the Environment undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. Dimension of the 21st-Century Olympic Games” Montejo discusses the unfolding of a “green” Gyulai will be releasing new designs in the coming months, and also hopes to expand into other dimension of the Olympic Games, reviewing the policies that have been adopted to ensure that the clothing as well. Andy Linn (B.Arch. ’11) spent the summer Games incorporate environmental protection and sustainable development into their agendas.
URS SENIORS SELECTED TO SUBMIT HONORS THESES
Kerry Quinn: “Linking Retail and Transit Units: A Historical Analysis of Philadelphia’s Market Street East” The goal of Quinn’s thesis is to explain the history and development schemes of Market Street East in Philadelphia, including a discussion of past commercial growth patterns and railroad use in the city, and a detailed analysis of the site’s comprehensive redevelopment that spanned the 30 years from 1954 to 1984.
with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where he worked with five others on the Venice Biennale exhibition project. The team included two other Cornellians: Miriam Roure Parera (B.Arch. ’09) and Lawrence Siu (M.Arch. ’11). This past summer, former visiting fellow and current M.Arch.1 candidate Alison Nash (B.F.A./ B.A. ’98, M.Arch. ’14) worked with Wilka Roig (M.F.A. ’05) and Gabriella D’Angelo, an Ithacabased architectural designer and educator, on a public art project called Plan Against Loneliness. The project consisted of the design and fabrication of a bench, Seat Against Loneliness, a public installation and performance, a lecture about the project, and the publication of a pamphlet to enable the project to be replicated in other cities. The project was funded in part by the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County and the Cornell Council for the Arts.AAP
CORNELL WINS 2010 ULI COMPETITION A Cornell team was awarded the Honorable Mention for its submission in the 2010 AWARD Urban Land Institute’s Urban Design Competition. East Village Squares was selected as a top-ten
proposal out of 112 entries nationwide. The team was led by Dan Kelleher (M.R.P. ’10) and included Zachary Boggs (M.L.A. ’10), Maureen Bolton (M.L.A. ’10), Chris Haine (M.S.P. RE ’10), and Chris Koenig (M.R.P. ’10). This year’s challenge was to better integrate a 74-acre site in the East Village neighborhood situated between downtown San Diego and the I-5 corridor. Teams were tasked with opening up connections to the surrounding amenities, creating a catalyst for investment interest and development Esther Wong: “The Last Edge: Two Fights capital, and determining what the market would support. for Preservation and Waterfront Planning in Team entries were on display at a reception in the Big Red Barn in March. The competitors and Hong Kong” faculty advisers from CRP, the Program in Real Estate, Landscape Architecture, and the Johnson Wong examines the background of Hong School gathered to view the submissions. Kong as a colonial port, the course of events and This year, a record number of Master of Regional Planning students participated in the two-week actors involved in the fights for preservation, the competition. In addition to the East Village Squares team listed above, other competitors included wider context of harbor-front planning and design, Andrew Buck (M.R.P. ’11), Kevin Dowd (M.R.P. ’11), Matt Gonser (M.R.P. ’11), Yanni Jin (M.R.P. changes in preservation and planning policies, ’11), Julie Johnstone (M.R.P. ’11), Kyongwha Jung (M.R.P. ’11), Rita Kwong (M.R.P. ’11), Sara and reflections on future developments in the Lepori (M.R.P. ’11), Aki Marceau (M.R.P. ’11), Lee Pouliot (M.L.A. ’10), Sueaee Shin (M.R.P. ’12), postcolonial territory.AAP Jen Swartz (M.R.P. ’11), Josh Yost (M.R.P. ’11), and Xiaowei Zhang (M.R.P. ’11).AAP
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STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN “NETWORKED ART” EVENT Inspired by Maurice Benayoun’s visit to campus during the spring, a group of Cornell students participated in a global, networked exposition in April called the Uncurateable Art Event. Students in Visiting Assistant Professor Renate Ferro’s Relational Art, Media, and Movement class displayed Disembodied Juxtaposition, a conceptual project that incorporated live and streamed video and still imagery to create an intervention with Benayoun’s Art Collider, a platform that allows for the connected formation of time-based art. Benayoun’s aim for the platform is to form a collaborative approach toward media art creation through a system of peer-to-peer or artist-to-artist production. During the opening of the Uncurateable Art Event in Paris, approximately 20 visitors were observed while students
Ilana Cheyfitz (B.F.A. ’10), Yuxiou Du (B.F.A. ’10), Zoe Gutterman (B.F.A. ’12), Andrew Heumann (B.Arch. ’12), Emily McAllister ’11, and Nicholas Martin (B.Arch. ’12) streamed videos, still images, and live feeds into the remote location. The Art Collider enabled the students to analyze data visualizations that provided information about the project’s interactions that were happening in real time. The group in Ithaca was able to share its project and view works being streamed from other locations, including the San Francisco Art Institute; the School of Visual Arts, New York City; Kunstuniversität Linz (Interface Culture Lab), Austria; Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada; La fonderie de l’image, France; and the University of California–Berkeley; as well as other remote sites.AAP News09 Winter2010
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Students explore La Facultad de Ingeniería at the Universisdad de la Republica in Montevideo, Uruguay. The trip was part of the summer studio Latin America III: Urbanism, Landscape, and Architecture Argentina-Uruguay-Brazil with architecture’s Associate Visiting Professor Jim Williamson, Manuel Colon, and former associate professor Milton Curry (B.Arch. ’88). Photo: Thena Tak (B.Arch. ’09).
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Student Profile
Michael Lee: From Architect to Artist in a Single Year A few weeks before the opening of his September group show in Olive Tjaden Gallery, Michael Lee (B.Arch. ’11) revealed that he “doesn’t really know what we are going to put in the exhibit. But we [Lee, Eric Bernstein (B.Arch. ’11), and Danny Salomon (B.Arch. ’11) have a month to figure it out—I’m sure we’ll be fine!” The approach may seem cavalier, especially for a young man who until last fall considered himself an architect in training, not an artist. But after a year that included three successful gallery shows in Italy, an internship with a well-known working artist, and earning top grades in a 15credit semester abroad, it’s easy to see where Lee’s confidence comes from. “There aren’t many students who decide to spend a full year in Rome, and even fewer who are able to make it a productive experience,” says Margherita Fabrizio, director of the Cornell in Rome program. “But when I first met Michael, I knew he was someone who would make the most of every minute he had there. That he accomplished everything he did in a new discipline (art) makes his success even more compelling … but not really surprising, knowing what a driven and talented person he is.” Lee, who is at once humble, charming, and completely focused, decided to try his hand at art after arriving in Italy in the fall of 2009 for the Cornell in Rome program. “Just being in the community of artists in Rome, plus influence from professors Shara Wasserman and Luana Perilli, all motivated me to give it a try,” says Lee. He spent an enormous amount of time in the studio in the early fall, developing his newly found passion. After trying a variety of media, Lee focused on ink on paper. “It’s all about a development of a place and idea,” Lee says of his work. “I almost always use a technical Rapidograph pen, and incorporate many architectural forms such as sections and axonometrics into my drawings.” After getting comfortable with his artwork, Lee further immersed himself in the art world by pursuing an internship. With the assistance of Wasserman, Lee secured an interview with Pietro Ruffo, a contemporary artist well known in Italy and beginning to gain recognition internationally. He set off to meet Ruffo, who lives 45 minutes
away from the Cornell in Rome palazzo, carrying a portfolio of some of the only art he had ever created. And what seemed like a long shot became an immediate success. “We just clicked during the interview,” says Lee. “Ruffo started out as an architect, and his work is still very focused on construction.” Once at work, the two became quite a team, working together on a series of drawings that Ruffo used in several publications, and a series of sculptural installations presented in Rome’s Contemporary Art Museum, MACRO, and other art foundations around Italy. At the same time that Lee was working with Ruffo, he stayed focused on his own work and created a series of drawings for Perilli’s fall semester course, Special Topics: Painting and Drawing. Ruffo was immediately taken in by them, and showed them to a gallerist friend. The result was an invitation to 22 Rooms, a group show of 22 artists, including Enzo Cucchi and Alessandro Mendini, which took place at the Casa Testori in Milan in June. Lee, the youngest artist in the show, exhibited a continuation of the original drawings done for Perilli’s class. “22 Rooms was really exciting,” says Lee, “but it was also sort of a fluke—a big-time opportunity that just fell into my lap. I was expecting to go through the usual process of looking into galleries and building a relationship with one to develop a show in the future. That was something I really wanted to try.” Perilli agreed to work with him on an independent study during the spring semester with the goal of creating a portfolio of work that he could take to gallerists. Lee developed four larger, more detailed works (6' x 3' in size compared to his earlier 18" x 24" pieces), and then, “I bugged Luana to plunge me into the art world of Italy,” he says, laughing. Along with three other Cornell students, Lee worked with Perilli and her gallery contacts and was eventually invited to display in Multi-Meda, an exhibition featuring five Sundays of contemporary art. (See “Rome Students Invited to Gallery Exhibit” on this page for the full story.) But Lee wasn’t finished in Italy yet. During the spring semester, at the suggestion of former instructor Gabriele Mastrigli, Lee took his
portfolio to the Z20 Galleria of Sara Zanin. Lee knew that Wasserman was acquainted with the gallery owner, but decided not to mention the connection. Instead, he presented himself to the manager simply as a young artist, not a student. “The idea to approach the gallery was completely personal—I thought I would have more success if I showed no affiliation to schools,” says Lee. “It was my first step in becoming completely autonomous in dealing with and promoting my work professionally.” The result of his unannounced visit was an invitation to exhibit his work at Transience, a show including five other artists, in September and October 2010. Lee’s participation in that group show was such a success that plans are underway for a solo show at Z20 Galleria sometime in the spring of 2011. Lee credits a large amount of his success in Italy to being able to converse with industry people in their native language. In addition to classroom study of Italian before coming to Rome, Lee took the time to practice his conversational skills regularly with a group of Italian students. “It really sets me apart,” he claims. “It shows professionals that I’ve made arduous preparations and am serious about setting up shop in the country despite my age.” After the success in Italy, Lee and his fellow Rome scholars Bernstein and Salomon thought it would be fun to have an exhibit in Ithaca.
“The idea to show in the AAP galleries was a thought brewing in each of our heads from way back, and it was sparked into collective existence after we had so much fun participating in the art class and gallery visits in Rome,” reveals Lee. “We chose Tjaden over Hartell so that we could continue to mingle with art students—we were able to do that for the first time last semester in Rome, and thought it would be great to physically continue the dialogue between the fields of art and architecture.” After the Tjaden Gallery exhibit, Lee set off immediately for his next adventure, a three-month RAUM 142 fellowship in Berlin, where he will work and live with six other artists. After Berlin, he plans to complete his final semester at Cornell in the spring of 2011. Lee’s long-term plans are somewhat less clear. “I want to work hard enough before graduation to be able to call myself an artist. After that, I’d love to spend a few years in Europe doing some residencies and meeting interesting people and doing interesting things. But who knows!” —Rebecca Bowes
01 View of Eric Bernstein’s The Tourist Series (2010), postcards on cardboard, 60 cm x 85 cm each. From Multi-Meda exhibit.
Rome Students Invited to Gallery Exhibit
Four Cornell in Rome students were invited to show their work at Parco Meda, a local Roman gallery, on two Sundays in May. The students, Eric Bernstein (B.Arch. ’11), Emily Soo Mi Choi (B.F.A. ’11), Taery Kim (B.F.A. ’11), and Michael Lee (B.Arch. ’11), and their professor Luana Perilli organized the show called Multi-Meda with Micol Di Veroli, an independent curator. The exhibition’s goal was to break down the social and cultural barriers that often permeate the work of contemporary art, and to try to bring a broad view of today’s work into the eye of the local public. “It is very important for Cornell students to step out into the Roman art scene and get feedback from the professionals involved,” says Perilli. “Rome is more and more becoming an active city for contemporary art, with many museums, galleries, and foundations to support these artists. This experience is proof that Rome, besides its rich historical side, brings real opportunities to young artists.” The students expressed enthusiasm about the show and their semester in the Rome program. “I’m hoping this is the first step of something bigger, but either way I’ve met amazing people and learned valuable lessons about the life of an artist,” says Bernstein.AAP
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Baseera Khan (M.F.A. ’12), Tired Mountain 2 (2010), paper and latex installation, 20" x 20".
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News09 Winter2010
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Faculty&Staff News Ashkin Azis Clav Graves McDougal Hirsch McGrain M London Calling Mark Morris, director of graduate studies in
NEWS
The sculptural work of Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Michael Ashkin was included in the Triennale Kleinplastik Fellbach 2010 in Germany. CRP professor Iwan Azis has been named the new head of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB’s) Office of Regional Economic Integration. In this role, Azis will oversee ADB efforts to help member countries pursue closer regional ties and eventually a more globally connected Asia. Azis has taken a leave from Cornell. Pierre Clavel, professor of city and regional planning, published a book in October. Activists in City Hall: The Progressive Response to the Reagan Era in Boston and Chicago examines how the cities’ mayors (Boston’s Raymond Flynn and Chicago’s Harold Washington) achieved their objectives by incorporating neighborhood activists as a new organizational force in devising, debating, implementing, and shaping policy. Clavel also had two articles published recently: an op-ed in the American Planning Association’s magazine, Planning, titled “What the Progressives Can Teach Us” appeared in the August/September 2010 issue; and “The Progressive City: Notes on Chicago and Harold Washington” appeared in Progressive Planning, the magazine of Planners Network. Visiting Assistant Professor Renate Ferro’s recent two-part conceptual project, Private Secrets/Public Lies, sponsored by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, was featured earlier this month on the Hemispheric Institute (HEMI) website. The project encourages viewers to consider what happens when the collective, gestural performance of writing and editing personal information takes place within the sphere of digital technology. After becoming director of Graduate Studies in January, John Forester gave seminars and a public lecture as the John de Grove guest professor at Florida Atlantic University in February, and was the Josephine Jones lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in March. Forester also spent three weeks in June at the University of Amsterdam, continuing his research on responses to urban conflict; then traveled to Italy, where he gave a lecture at the University of Florence, and co-led a multistakeholder governance workshop in Bologna for regional officials in Emilia Romagna. Professor Ann Forsyth of CRP has completed nearly three years of monthly blogs at Planetizen, the main planning news service, and has recently started the Healthy Metropolis blog at healthymetropolis.blogspot.com. She has also recently published several coauthored articles including: “Health Impact Assessment for Planners: What Tools Are Useful?” in the Journal of Planning Literature (24, 3:231–245); “Finding Food: Issues and Challenges in Using GIS to Measure Food Access” in the Journal of Transport and Land Use (3, 1:43–65); “Higher Density and Affordable Housing: Lessons from the Corridor Housing Initiative” in the Journal of Urban Design (15, 2:269–284); and “Six Assessments of the Same Places: Comparing Views of Urban Design,” also in the Journal of Urban Design (15, 1:21–48). Visiting Critic Anthony Graves (M.F.A. ’09) and art lecturer Graham McDougal held a joint exhibit in London this past August. Featuring photographs, paintings, lighting, site-specific sculpture, a 35 mm slide projection, and an audio track, the exhibit, titled Graham McDougal & Anthony Graves, took place at the Gallery St. Vitus. The exhibition was organized by Stefanie Hirsch (B.F.A. ’09), and supported by the Strategic Opportunities Stipend Program through the New York Foundation for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts, administered by Broome, Chemung, Schuyler, Steuben, Tioga, and Tompkins counties by the Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes. Associate Professor Todd McGrain’s Birds of Paradise is on view in Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland, Oregon. The installation—part of his Lost Birds Project series—is made up of five bronze sculptures of extinct birds and is up through the end of the year. McGrain was interviewed for Oregon Public Broadcasting and featured in Audubon Magazine Online. In recent months, Visiting Assistant Professor Aleksandr Mergold (B.Arch. ’00) and Jason Austin’s (B.Arch. ’00) firm Austin+Mergold LLC (A+M) has had several projects of note. Austin co-led a design-build technology seminar with the Tyler School of Art’s architecture department in Georgetown, Maryland. The architecture
01 students studied vernacular building forms and construction methods of Mid-Atlantic agricultural homesteads and incorporated their understanding of proven sustainable practices into their designbuild project, The Farmer’s Deck. James Bowman (B.Arch. ’06) worked as a construction assistant on the project. A+M was also featured twice on designboom.com: once for a series of “rowhouse” birdhouses influenced by Philadelphia’s iconic row homes and aimed at drawing the public’s attention to aviary urban habitats; and again for A+M bowler, part of hat-itecture, a pop exhibition organized by architect-turned-milliner Gabriela Ligenza, along with design duo you&me, as part of the London Festival of Architecture in July 2010. Vince Mulcahy, associate professor of architecture, completed a film last spring as part of a pilot project for Cornell Cybertower. The film, Cornell Arts Quad, Accident or Design? is a formal analysis of the quad, addressing its important operative characteristics. Mulcahy and Aleksandr Mergold have also recently coauthored a book on foundational architectural teaching. ELEMENTALINSTRUMENTAL documents the pair’s work with the first-year design curriculum at Cornell over the past two years and attempts to make an argument for what is important to address at the beginning of one’s architectural education. “Determining the Average R-value of Tapered Insulation,” a manuscript by Associate Professor Jonathan Ochshorn, has been accepted for presentation at the 2011 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Winter Conference in Las Vegas in January. Caroline O’Donnell, visiting assistant professor in architecture, and Troy Schaum, former visiting critic in architecture at AAP NYC, took second place in the prestigious Europan 2010
competition with Urban Punc., a plan to transform the eastern German town of Leisnig into a more livable environment. The plan punctuates Leisnig with interwoven linear parks that would connect the urban center with historic sites, a train station, and the suburbs. O’Donnell delivered a presentation on the project to the Leisnig mayor and city representatives in July. The city hopes to proceed with the project and is working on finding an appropriate site. O’Donnell also recently published “Sex Cells: Genetics, Variation and Architecture” in volume 37 of thresholds. Earlier this summer, Visiting Assistant Professor Carl Ostendarp participated in a benefit exhibition at the Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York. Ostendarp also held a solo exhibition of paintings this fall at MTL Gallery in Montreal, as well as a group exhibition at Artjail, Brooklyn, curated by Eric den Breejen (M.F.A. ’06). Ostendarp is the 2010 recipient of the Watts Prize in Fine Arts faculty award. Maria Park, assistant professor of art, had two solo exhibitions during the summer and fall: Counter Nature appeared at Margaret Thatcher Projects in New York City in June and July; and Counter Nature II appeared at Toomey Tourell Fine Art in San Francisco in October. Architecture Professor Kevin Pratt was highlighted in a column on emerging technologies that focused on the use of wind turbines in urban areas in a recent issue of New Scientist. Nez Perce Crossing, a painting by Kay WalkingStick, professor emeritus in art, hung in the National Association of Women Artists gallery in May and June 2010. The painting reflects the long journey of the Nez Perce across the northwest in 1877. Another piece by WalkingStick, Wallowa Mountains, appeared in the PBS series Art Through Time: A Global View in September. WalkingStick was also featured in the April issue
GADEYNE COMBINES HISTORY WITH ARCHAEOLOGY IN ROME After 10 years as an instructor in the Cornell in Rome Program, Visiting Lecturer Jan Gadeyne continues to be fascinated with the history and mysteries of the city. He shares that passion with his students, weaving the urban history of the city into a study of its literature, architecture, and infrastructure. His class, the Topography and Urban History of Rome in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, emphasizes how complex the urban landscape of Rome is after 3,000 years of history. “Although I am primarily an archaeologist, I am very aware of the influence of the history of the city on its present image and development. For my students, I slice the city up into layers that century after century have not only been put on top of each other but at times have also fused into each other,” says Gadeyne. “The bottom line is that Rome is really the sum of many different Romes, and that it has always recycled itself, both in its spaces and in its materials.” Gadeyne works with students to understand the transformation of Rome from being the capital of a vast empire with almost one million inhabitants into a town of approximately 20,000 people in the early Middle Ages. He uses the city as a guide to understand how this was possible and what this type of shift did to the urban landscape and culture. “Taking Jan’s course was one of the best decisions I made during my semester in Rome,” says Ross Eisenberg (B.S. URS ’12). “Immersing us in the more fascinating, famous, and hidden parts of Rome’s many layers from the city’s infancy to modernity, Gadeyne bestowed on us a much deeper understanding of Rome that really helped me appreciate the context of where I was.”
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architecture, had a packed itinerary on a recent trip to London. He first participated in two Ph.D. review sessions at the Bartlett School of Architecture as a guest critic. Dissertations in architectural history and theory were presented. Morris’s summary of the event was later published as “Ten Anxieties Associated with Doctoral Research in the Field of Architecture” in Bartlett Works. Morris then attended the Unconventional Computing and Architecture conference at the Building Centre, offering the introduction to the working session. The conference examined new technologies and materials capable of self-assembly and organization. His essay on the topic, “Dream a Little Dream,” will appear in an AD anthology next year. Finally, Morris delivered an evening lecture, “Model Agency,” to a full house in the University College London’s Darwin Theatre as part of the International Lecture Series. “The lecture took place just before the last week of studio when students were starting their own final models. It was announced via Twitter so everyone took a break and came by,” Morris says. By tradition, the evening concluded with colleagues at the Jeremy Bentham pub. Bentham, whose embalmed body is still displayed in the University cloisters, is known to students as the originator of the panopticon and inspired the founding of the university.AAP of Western Art Collector magazine. CRP professor Mildred Warner, Romebased faculty Gregory Smith, and Cornell Ph.D. candidates Carlotta Fioretti and Claudia Meschiari were invited to present their paper documenting the pedagogy of teaching an international planning studio course to American college students in Rome, at the American Collegiate Society of Planners conference in Minneapolis in October. Warner also hosted an international tour of two U.S. child-care policy advocates, Anne Mitchell, past president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and Louise Stoney, principal of the Alliance for Early Education Finance. The team visited innovative child-care programs and policy makers in Italy, The Netherlands, and England. In April 2010, Warner organized a session on “Multigenerational Planning” for the American Planning Association national conference in New Orleans. She coauthored and oversaw the production of three new issue briefs for that session: “Multigenerational Planning— Linking the Needs of Children and Elders,” “Child Care and Community Development,” and “Parks, Open Space and Recreation: Expanding Lifestyle Amenities for Families.” Mary N. Woods, the Michael A. McCarthy Professor of Architecture, delivered the Harry A. Halverson Memorial Lecture in American Architecture at the Department of Art and Architectural History at Wellesley College this past spring. Her presentation, “Eyes of the Flaneuse: Women Photographers in New York City, 1890s–1940s,” was drawn from her 2009 book, Beyond the Architect’s Eye. Woods also lectured at the University of Pennsylvania and New York Public Library on this subject. Her profile of Rahul Mehrotra, “Working in Mumbai and Beyond,” appeared in the spring issue of Habitus, a journal of contemporary residential work in Asia. It is the first profile of an Indian architect to appear in this Australian publication.AAP
Outside the classroom, Gadeyne has been working on the excavation of a Roman villa in Artena (40 miles southeast of Rome) for over ten years. As the codirector of the excavation, he has supervised the uncovering of 12,000 square feet of the complex, including the atrium, a peristyle that originally had 28 columns, a private bath complex, and several rooms with mosaic pavements. The villa dates to the first century BC, and was built on top of an artificial terrace dating back to the fourth/third centuries BC. The site continued to be occupied until the early Middle Ages. Last year Olesya Vodenicharska (B.Arch. ’10) worked on the dig, along with students from Temple University and the American University of Rome. —Rebecca Bowes
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01 The model of London showing all current proposed additions to the city on display during the Unconventional Computing and Architecture conference at the Building Center, London. Courtesy New London Architecture. 02 William Staffeld’s award-winning photo. 03 Susan Christopherson. 04 Traditional frame house in Cambodia. Photo: Michael Tomlan. 05 Jan Gadeyne. Photo: Robert Joy (B.Arch. ’72).
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As chair of the senior board of advisers for the Global Heritage Fund, Professor Michael Tomlan, director of Historic Preservation Planning, recently visited Cambodia to work with Hok Sokol, a Cambodian architect engaged in collecting, relocating, and retrofitting some of the oldest traditional frame houses in Siem Reap province. “The majority of the population of Cambodia dreams of owning or occupying an airconditioned concrete apartment or brick house with modern conveniences,” Tomlan says. “For most, living in a traditional single-room frame house built on tall stilts with a thatch or tile roof is difficult, as the houses require continuous upkeep. But by working with carpenters and masons, those who wish to enjoy affordable open-air living can still do so, while the traditional construction skills are kept alive among a new generation.”AAP
AAP photographer William Staffeld’s untitled photo was one of two top choices for the “People’s Choice” award, voted on by over 130 people who attended Ithaca’s State of the Art Gallery’s 21st Annual Juried Photography Show in March.
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Christopherson to Study Economic Impact of Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Drilling As the debate over the environmental safety of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania and New York continues, one issue has received little attention: the economic impact on communities of companies developing hundreds of wells. Susan Christopherson, the J. Thomas Clark Professor of City and Regional Planning, is studying the effects of natural gas drilling operations on the economy and infrastructure of rural communities over the Marcellus Shale rock formation, which extends from New York to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. A recent $100,000 grant from the Ithacabased Park Foundation will help fund Christopherson’s proposed $300,000 study, which will examine issues including the effects of increased gas drilling on schools, public health and safety, and transportation systems, “and the cost to communities, relative to the income to be derived from drilling,” she said. “The question is, ‘What is going to be the cumulative effect of this kind of activity?’” says
Christopherson, who specializes in economic development. “People are looking at this question from an environmental perspective, but almost no one is looking at it to assess its long-term economic effects.” Energy companies must use a procedure known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to penetrate the dense rock formation. The process involves pushing water treated with chemicals into wells at high pressure to induce cracking in the surrounding rock and release the natural gas. Pennsylvania has been issuing permits to companies that drill natural gas wells using hydraulic fracturing, but in New York, state officials are developing an environmental impact statement to assess the effects of drilling before any permits are granted. One example of the impact on communities where drilling will take place is the effect on road usage from increased truck traffic, Christopherson says. Trucks will need to transport water to the well pads and then move the contaminated water to disposal sites for treatment. Workers hired to drill the gas will also increase the populations of communities sitting atop the Marcellus Shale, increasing traffic on county roads. “Someone will have to pay to ameliorate the costs, which will include road deterioration, increased noise, and negative effects on air quality,” she says. “The question is, who pays and how?” Another question is the effect an increase in natural gas drilling will have on other industries in the region, such as agriculture and tourism. “We don’t want to negatively affect the other industries that are important to our economy to do this,” Christopherson says. “This is a region with small agricultural communities, many low-income people, limited government capacity, and little land use regulation. This kind of development presents citizens and local government with major challenges.” Christopherson worries about a “boom town” effect created by the surge of companies that want to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale. “We have had many resource-driven booms in the U.S., like the Gold Rush, where you get lots of people coming into an area in order to extract natural resources and then leaving,” she says. Her hope is that gas drilling could create a long-term investment in the economy of the Southern Tier. “I think they could capture some economic benefit,” she says, “but it has to be done very carefully. There has to be planning to protect the environment. What people rarely recognize is that good environmental planning and regulation will also produce better economic outcomes.”AAP
MARIO SCHACK, FORMER CHAIR OF ARCHITECTURE, DIES AT 81 Mario Schack, Baltimore architect, Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor Emeritus, and former chair of the Department of Architecture, passed away on June 17 following complications after surgery. Schack taught architectural design at Cornell from 1963 to 1965, and then joined the young firm of Rogers, Taliaferro, Kostritsky & Lamb (RTKL) in Baltimore. At RTKL he was involved in large-scale urban design projects in Cincinnati and Baltimore, including St. Mary’s Convent in Annapolis, Baltimore County Library in Catonsville, the Southwest High School in Baltimore, and Charles Center South in Baltimore. In 1975 Schack returned to Cornell as chair of the Department of Architecture, where he worked with the late Dean Kermit C. Parsons to establish AAP’s center in Washington, DC. He was the center’s director until 1989. Schack also played a seminal role in the establishment of Cornell’s graduate Program in Real Estate, and advocated for the inclusion of design in the program’s curriculum. After completing his term as chair, Schack established his own architectural practice, MLS Associates, in Baltimore. In partnership with Perkins & Will, he designed the Snee Hall Geological Sciences Building (1982–84) on Cornell’s Engineering Quad. In 1993, he rejoined the Cornell faculty in Ithaca, served as director of graduate studies in the field of architecture, and was awarded the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Chair for Architecture. He retired in 2004. Schack received numerous design awards during his career, including one for the Geological Sciences Building at Cornell University. He was a registered architect in Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, and was inducted into the American Institute of Architects (AIA), College of Fellows in 1980. An active member of the AIA, he served as chairman of the Baltimore Chapter Public Education Committee from 1968 to 1970, and as treasurer of the Maryland Society of Architects from 1970 to 1972. Schack was born in 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. He began his studies in architecture at the Vermont Institute of Technology, after which he went on to attend Cal Poly, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, and finally Harvard University, where he received a master of architecture in 1961, and a master of regional planning in 1963. AAP
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30 Alumni News Aksoy Anselin Rebo Carreiro Cecere Chapman Charalam Kato King Kinnard Lin Nieves Oga Schwarz Thompson Tower Voltaire Notes from These Alumni, Visit aap.c
Above / Two new alumnus-designed buildings are helping to improve and expand facilities at Cornell. The 200,000-square-foot Physical Sciences Building (top right) that opened this fall is designed by Fred Koetter (M.Arch. ’75) and Susie Kim (B.Arch. ’71) of Koetter Kim & Associates, and the Martha Van Rensselaer north hall addition (top left) by Darko Hreljanovic (B.Arch. ’77) of Gruzen Samton is scheduled to open in fall 2011.
Above / Douglas Teiger’s (B.Arch. ’82) firm Abramson Teiger Architects was awarded the Dream Home award for 2010 Contemporary Home of the Year for the Krmpotich residence in Caspar, Wyoming. The one-story home was designed to reflect the arid landscape around it, and is oriented to allow strong prevailing winds to blow over it in an aerodynamic manner. Primary rooms are positioned to have views of the hills and town in the distance. The house was also featured on the cover of Mountain Living magazine.
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Above / As the manager of aviation for Denver International Airport (DIA), Kim Day (B.Arch. ’77) oversees the fifth busiest airport in the nation and the tenth busiest in the world. Day, who came to DIA two years ago from the Los Angeles airport system, recently unveiled renowned architect Santiago Calatrava’s design concept for Phase I of the airport’s South Terminal Redevelopment Program. The plan includes a train station, a signature rail bridge, a 500-room hotel and conference center, and an open-air plaza connecting the new complex to the existing Jeppesen Terminal. Calatrava, who designed the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Olympic sports complex in Athens, Greece, is a Spanish sculptorengineer who is best known for his bridges and stations. The $650 million project is the first major enhancement to the airport since its opening 15 years ago, and will provide DIA a passenger rail link to downtown Denver, which lies 23 miles away.
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bold Benton Better Campanella 31 ambous Dubyak Fang Handel Karr awa Oppenheim Pergl Sbrissa e Zelinka To See Recent News and cornell.edu/alumni/news/.
Below / Earth Award goes to POLLI-BRICKS POLLI-BRICKS, billed as the world’s first 100 percent carbon neutral building cladding and made entirely from recycled plastic bottles, was recently awarded a 2010 Earth Award in the product category. The product is a creation of Arthur Huang’s (B.Arch. ’03) company MINIWIZ. The Earth Awards are chosen by a selection committee that is made up of leading entrepreneurs, designers, architects, conservationists, and thinkers, including Richard Branson, Terence Conran, Peter Head, Jane Goodall, Bill McKibben, and Ken Yeang, among others. Above / Savina Kalkandzhieva (M.Arch. ’09) received a 2010 :output award for City Densifiers, an examination of the critical built conditions in Las Vegas. The annual :output competition is the biggest international competition for students in design and architecture.
Above / Michael Singer (B.F.A. ’67) led the recent redesign of 12½ acres of waterfront in West Palm Beach, Florida. The $30 million project includes a park, water gardens, two boat piers, walkways, and a “living dock,” in which native mangroves, spartina grass, and oysters live. The opening in February 2010 drew nearly 80,000 people.
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Alumnus with a B.F.A. Successfully Engages the Art of Politics that artists engage in. Knowledge is overrated! AG Would you say that your art has made you a better politician? HC Yes! I know if I draw or paint or express myself in that domain of visual communication, I get into a different frame, a different zone—it’s like a different dimension for me. Working in that dimension makes me more effective as an elected official because I’m able to maintain my authenticity. Art keeps me grounded—a term that’s overused—but it’s appropriate. Heaven forbid we have frustrated artists representing us in government! Monstrous things would happen! [laughing] In all seriousness, the way that art affects me makes me a better representative of people because I’m more open and better able to listen. What people are looking for in their elected officials these days is for people to serve them authentically, and you get that by being yourself as a human being, and I get that by drawing and painting. My art is an expression of who I am and how I react to the world. AG How did you end up in politics? HC It actually started at Cornell. I was a student trustee first, and then I was class president. Being a student trustee helped me understand exactly how I could help people. It was the first time I was ever elected for an office, and then I sat on a board that helped set policy for the university. I immediately thought, “Hey, I can make a difference doing this in this realm.” And I liked that realm. I remember being in the basement of what was known as Franklin Hall [now Olive Tjaden Hall] and working on a lithography stone and thinking: “This is going to be my last work right now because I’m going to focus my efforts on communicating though words as a law student.” That’s what I wanted to do, and at that time, I thought that was the most effective way that How does your practice of art come into I could make a difference in the world. I knew play in your career? I wanted to go to Washington, DC, and I did through the Cornell in Washington Program. That Art has had an enormous impact on how experience was how I got into law school in DC, I have performed as a public official. I’m more and then, because I was in DC, I got a job on a effective, more open-minded, more decisive, more political campaign. aware, more responsive, more clear and focused AG Is it really true that you ran against Ann and willing to serve when I’m also expressing Coulter for your student trustee seat? myself visually as an artist. HC Yes! We did run for the same seat, which is I did not express myself as a visual artist for very comical in a way. I haven’t seen her since almost 20 years after leaving Cornell and going I talked to her in Willard Straight when we were to law school. That was a big drought for me. I both students. I was campaigning and walked up had accepted the fiction that I had to abandon to her to ask her to vote for me and I realized: Oh art and obtain analytical tools so that I could be my God, this is my opponent! And, yes, I beat her effective in the world. I see now that focusing just and was elected trustee. on analysis is a primitive way of looking at the AG So how did you get back into art after taking world and describing it. I feel human analysis is an extended break? totally overrated. The path toward enlightenment HC Even though I didn’t create art for nearly 20 is more in concert with the authentic expression years, it wouldn’t let me go, probably because I
Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November, Hansen Clarke (B.F.A. ’84) is a man who’s always lived a unique and unpredictable life. The son of a Bangladeshi immigrant father and African-American/NativeAmerican mother, Clarke grew up in an impoverished neighborhood of Detroit. Raised by his mother after his father’s death when he was eight years old, Clarke received a full scholarship to study art at Cornell. His mother died during his freshman year, leading to poor academic performance and a consequent loss of scholarship money. With the help of family and friends—and the advocacy of Professor Emeritus Zevi Blum—Clarke returned to Cornell, and graduated with a B.F.A. with a focus on painting before continuing on to Georgetown law school and a nearly two-decade-long career in politics. He continues to paint and credits his practice of the visual arts with grounding him and allowing him to be a strong elected official. A few weeks before his election to Congress, he spoke by telephone with Aaron Goldweber, AAP News editor.
My art is an expression of who I am and how I react to the world. AG HC
had the foundation from studying it in college. It hounded me—every week for the 18 years that I didn’t express myself. It was there constantly. And, when there is any point of time in my life when I’ve had dramatic positive changes it’s because I started drawing again. When I was running for Congress, my election in the primary was seen as a stunning upset because I defeated a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee (Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick)—someone who served in office for 14 years and was former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. For her to lose in a national context appeared to people to be astounding. But, for me, when I was running, I knew that whether I won the election or not, I had a lot to look forward to. I knew that at the end of my term in the Michigan State Senate, I’d either be a member of the U.S. Congress or I’d be a full-time artist. And both of those prospects were so exciting to me. AG Why do you have a B.F.A.? HC When I was student, whenever I was back in Detroit, I was asked that incessantly: why are you studying art? It created doubt in my mind about the choice that I was making, and it was one reason I decided to go to law school—because I knew that was an acceptable way to participate in society. But my B.F.A. helped me to get elected to Congress and will help to make me a better congressperson and a more effective public servant. It’s the one academic achievement I am most proud of: I have a bachelor of fine arts from Cornell University. It took much of my life to really see the value in it, but now it’s so important to me. Art and Cornell showed me how it can all be interrelated. Cornell offers a unique opportunity in the Ivies for a young person to explore all those different things. It’s important for students to choose a major that’s a part of their vocation and calling in life, regardless what the job market says. There is enormous value in that. AG What do you most remember about studying at Cornell? HC After all these years my art training at Cornell is invaluable to me because it allowed me to express myself—mainly through Norman Daly and Zevi Blum. I owe Zevi. He was an advocate for me, and gave me a chance to come back to Cornell when others in the administration didn’t want to because I didn’t do well academically at first. Zevi fought for me, and I’m grateful for what he did. He gave me an opportunity, and I try to do the same for people as well. Only at a place like Cornell would I have been able to develop my skills as an artist, run for office, and take other courses, like in government with Ted Lowi, all at the same time. That is an extraordinary experience. AG What are you producing now? Do you use your art to explore your heritage?
HC Because of time constraints, I work small right now—9" x 12" or 18" x 24" at the largest—with Arches watercolor blocks and ink. My art only indirectly reflects my background. It’s definitely manifested in it, because I’m Asian and African American and Native American. So it’s there—certain shapes I was exposed to, like paisleys, I use derivations of those; seeds and things like that. I’m totally against the arbitrary standard of beauty that Western and American culture promote—I think that’s totally ridiculous. So, many times I may have a view of power and grace in a feminine form who many would consider grossly overweight. Or, with no hair. Or, not being of European descent. Some people don’t really like that. They don’t get it. I guess I am making a sort of statement because it’s how I view things aesthetically. AG Do your constituents know that you’re an artist? HC They are probably not very aware of it. As an artist I work alone. It really is for me a different space than when I’m analyzing a law or trying to make an argument. So, when I’m in the realm of looking at magentas and oranges—which offers unlimited possibilities with the way you can configure all the shapes and colors and lines—I’m working alone, but it opens me up for my “other” job as an elected official. But my art, it’s usually kept private. I haven’t been too involved in the actual culture of art, but I do believe in the value of the visual arts as a way to help develop Detroit economically, the way it did for Manhattan. So, I’d like to use my position in Congress to promote the power of the arts personally, academically, and as an economic development tool—I’d like to be a spokesman for the visual arts.AAP
Photo: AP
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Andrew Fu (B.Arch. ’14), Untitled (2010), fiber print, 8' x 10'. Another photo of Fu’s won the 2010 Cornell University President’s Winter Card competition. News09 Winter2010
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Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 aap.cornell.edu
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