AAP News 11

News11 Winter2011

News11 Winter2011

Dean’s Message This fall AAP crossed not one, but two important thresholds. On August

24, 2011, the doors of Milstein Hall slid open and 200 students took possession of the studios. Within days, models were hanging from the trusses; within weeks, work covered every surface of the studio plate. The myriad diagonal views and fluid spaces linked by the complex section of the building are already promoting new patterns of use within, and the urban room under the northern cantilever is producing the kind of ad hoc public interactions typical of vibrant public spaces. Of course, Milstein Hall was designed not just as a destination, but also as connective tissue, and AAP is now able to begin to reconfigure and reprogram the spaces contiguous to the new structure. We are well on the way to having all architecture faculty offices out of ill-suited rooms and up into Sibley Hall near the new studios. With offices no longer filling the first floor of Rand Hall, we will be able to significantly expand our analogue and digital shop to serve all AAP students. And, most important to those of us who are incorrigible bibliophiles, we have made concrete progress towards solving the serious risk posed to our library holdings with a provisional move of the Fine Arts Library (FAL) out of Sibley Hall into the third floor of Rand Hall. This project—the design and construction of a 16,000-square-foot art and design library housed on the second and third floors of Rand Hall—is a top capital priority for AAP. By relocating the FAL, faculty and students can move seamlessly from the west wing of Sibley Hall through Milstein Hall to the far east end of Rand Hall, providing a new continuous horizontal datum for academic programming across the architecture and planning departments.

Opening Milstein Hall has been momentous. But the second threshold we are crossing is arguably even more transformative.

We have moved beyond the defensive posture of the past two years and are assertively searching for new faculty. This year we are conducting five faculty searches; two years ago we had zero.

This upward trend in faculty renewal is important in several ways.

Like many other colleges, we have a sizable demographic bulge in our faculty ranks, and we need to ensure that junior faculty are brought on board to ramp up their research and creative practices as senior members enter retirement. From a fiscal perspective, these searches signal that we have confidence and resources to invest again—prudently, to be sure—in long-term commitments.

This is due, in no small measure, to the remarkable support for faculty renewal the college has experienced over the past year, including two new endowed professorships. And finally, search equals change. Searches compel departments to confront their core values and assess the evolution of their disciplines. The search process itself is revelatory as select scholars and practitioners come to Ithaca to share their most compelling research and creative work. New faculty members bring novel agendas, expanded networks, and innovative pedagogies, invigorating the intellectual milieu and securing the foundations of our future excellence. The intellectual life of the college is defined by its faculty, and recruiting and hiring faculty is our most consequential action, both academically and fiscally.

I sincerely hope you can join us on March 9 and 10, 2012, for our “Celebrate Milstein Hall” event to experience first hand the transformations in AAP. This will be a time for you to reconnect with classmates, meet the faculty, see the work of the students, and meet with me to share your thoughts about our future path.

Academic programming will culminate in what I spontaneously promised the graduating class of 2009: a party not to be missed!

Dean Kent Kleinman GALE AND IRA DRUKIER DEAN OF ARCHITECTURE, ART, AND PLANNING

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, Rebecca Bowes, Gwen Glazer, Aaron Goldweber, Sherrie Negrea, Jonathan Rusch (M.A. HPP ’12), Erica Sutton (B.F.A. ’12) Design Studio Vrielink Copy Editor Laura Glenn Photography William Staffeld (unless otherwise noted) Distribution Coordinator Beth Kunz Cover View of Milstein Hall looking east down University Avenue. Photo: Matthew Carbone.

Opposite Students look down into Milstein Hall’s auditorium.

News11 Winter2011

© December 2011 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&Events

Meier and Stella; Tafel Professor; New AAP Faculty

Work

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AAP Profiles

Aaron Gensler (M.Arch. ’13) and Paul Farmer (M.R.P. ’71)

Barker; Budd; Corkery; Cunat; Kang; Kwee

Student News

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Faculty&Staff News Mata Hire; Warner Policy Research; Owens Leads CCA; Faculty Books

Recent Awards; Rome Internship; Schoolhouse South Africa; M.F.A. Catalog

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Moscow Studio

Alumni News

Lim Sculpture; Lerner AIA NYC President; Master Plan for Hanoi; Cloues Preservation Work

News11 Winter2011

2 News&Events

Meier and Stella Discuss Art, Design, and Their Friendship Art and design took center stage as two of the fields’ renowned practitioners—architect Richard Meier (B.Arch. ’56), above at left, and artist Frank Stella, above at right—discussed the intersection of their disciplines, their work, and their lives at AAP’s inaugural Eli Broad Lecture on September 12 at the Morgan Library in Manhattan.

Moderated by Kent Kleinman, AAP’s Gale and Ira Drukier Dean, the sold-out event attracted 250 alumni and friends of the university, who were able to witness this rare public conversation between two lifelong friends.

Meier and Stella met in the late 1950s, sharing a studio at times and collaborating on a number of projects. As their professional statures grew rapidly through the 1960s, they remained both personally and professionally close to each other.

“Our friendship has lasted a long time, and I don’t

think it can end,” said Stella. “You can work together and have a friendship, and it’s … the friendship [that’s most important].”

With an easy rapport on stage, Meier and Stella took turns presenting examples of each other’s projects, commenting on the relationship between art and architecture. About Meier’s seminal Douglas House overlooking the shores of Lake Michigan, Stella, clearly moved and inspired by the work, commented that it had “overwhelming pictorial value”; and about the Smith House in Darien, Connecticut, he said that it resembled “a brushstroke in the landscape.”

“I learned from Frank that art excludes anything that is not necessary,” said Meier. And, recalling a time Stella asked him to move out of one of his studios, Meier joked, “I learned that I was not necessary.”

Referencing the Harran II painting of Stella’s Protractor series, Meier further joked that Stella “really wants

to be an architect.” During his remarks, Kleinman said that the evening’s festivities were further evidence of the ascendancy of the arts at Cornell.

“Without a doubt, it is an exhilarating time to be a student of the arts,” said Kleinman. “The academic units are embracing the arts as important areas of knowledge as students seek to become adept at working with, and on, ideas that are increasingly native to vision and space rather than text and symbol.”

Kleinman also noted the substantial investment in arts-related buildings on campus, such as the addition to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and the recently opened Milstein Hall.

Eli Broad, whose name the lecture bears, is a noted art collector, friend, and client of Meier. Broad cofounded KB Home in 1957, and established the philanthropic Broad Foundations with his wife, Edythe.AAP

FALL 2011 LECTURES • Minakshi Amundsen • AVATAR • George Baird • Olivo Barbieri • Barry Bergdoll • Iain Borden • Alexander Brodsky • Anthony Carl and Paloma Pavel • Pippo Ciorra • Martina Decker • Peter Eisenman • Peter Fleischer • Boris Groys • Rachel Haidu • Jeffrey Hou • María Hurtado de Mendoza • Bjarke Ingels • Virginia Jewiss • Naiza H. Khan • Patrick Killoran • Rem Koolhaas • Giuseppe Lignano and Ada Tolla • Elena Manferdini • Thom Mayne • Richard Meier and Frank Stella • Wangechi Mutu • Steve O’Neil • Alfredo Pirri • Ludovico Pratesi • Kenneth Reardon • James Rojas • David Schafer • Ruth Schwartz • Elizabeth Seward • Elizabeth Sheehan • Abby Sigal • Henry Smith-Miller • Jenni Sorkin • Erik Stenberg • Lebbeus Woods

3 1 Michael Manville 2 Caroline O’Donnell 3 Jenny E. Sabin 4 AAP NYC students near the pool designed

by James Turrell on the estate of Richard and Lisa Baker in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Photo: Vivian Cheng (M.Arch. ’11).

Manville, O’Donnell, and Sabin Join AAP Faculty The departments

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of Architecture and City and Regional Planning added new faculty members to their ranks this fall. Assistant Professor Michael Manville joined CRP, bringing his expertise in transportation planning, land use, and local public finance to the department, while Assistant Professor Caroline O’Donnell, the first Richard Meier Professor of Architecture, and Jenny E. 2 Sabin, assistant professor of design and emerging technologies, were appointed positions in architecture.

Manville’s research explores the relationship between transportation and housing. In one current project, funded by the John and Dora Haynes Foundation, he is examining voter-approved growthcontrol policies in Southern California. The policies are designed to mitigate traffic congestion, but Manville is finding that they end up having other consequences—most notably rising housing prices. In another research effort, Manville is comparing the parking requirements in the zoning codes of New York City and Los Angeles, 3 and analyzing how differences in parking requirements lead to differences in housing supply, vehicle ownership, and population density in the two cities.

“We are delighted to have Michael Manville join us,” says Professor Kieran Donaghy, chair of CRP. “He is the first professor in transportation planning the department has had, and the courses he will teach and the research he will conduct will meet critical needs.”

Prior to his arrival at Cornell, Manville served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA, where his research primarily revolved around traffic congestion and to Cornell; and writing for numerous zoning laws in developed countries. architectural publications.”

“At Cornell, I’ve come to a renowned As an educator and principal of Jenny planning department that all other Sabin Studio, Sabin’s research, teaching, institutions pay attention to, and I’ve gained access to the incredible people and and design practice focuses on the resources in other disciplines and colleges intersections of architecture, computation, and biology. She is a collaborator on a across the university,” says Manville. “You National Science Foundation–funded can spend years here and not come close project employing design computation to exploiting all that’s available.” to develop materials for integration into In architecture, O’Donnell has been a environmentally responsive building visiting faculty member in the department skins. She was a corecipient of an Upjohn since 2008, and is editor-in-chief of the Research Grant administered by the Cornell Journal of Architecture. She is the principal of CODA, an experimental design American Institute of Architects, and and research studio operating at a range of was recently awarded a Pew Fellowship in Design and Architecture. Her work scales from the urban to the architectural. has been published in A+U, American From 2006 to 2008, O’Donnell was project Journal of Pathology, Science, the New leader at Eisenman Architects in New York York Times, and Wired Magazine. She City, where she directed the design teams has coauthored Meander, Variegating for several projects, including Hamburg Architecture with Ferda Kolatan, and was Library and Pompei Santuario Railway Station. Most recently O’Donnell published recently commissioned by the American Philosophical Society Museum to design, “Fugly” in Log, volume 22 (The Absurd), fabricate, and build a greenhouse pavilion and completed the preliminary design in the Jefferson Garden in Philadelphia. for Zoom House, a movable pavilion/ The pavilion opened in September. Sabin extension for a private client in Brisbane, holds a B.F.A. and B.A. from the University Australia. She received her bachelor of of Washington and an M.Arch. from the architecture from the Manchester School of Architecture, England, and her master of University of Pennsylvania.

“Jenny Sabin brings not only unique architecture from Princeton University.

Established in 2010, the Richard Meier expertise in emerging technologies to the faculty at Cornell, but embodies Professorship of Architecture endowment the essence of the collaborative spirit is named in honor of alumnus Richard Meier (B.Arch. ’56), whose commitment to that is so important for positioning design excellence is a hallmark of Cornell’s the department and the college as an engaged colleague within the university architecture program. as a whole,” says search committee chair “In Caroline O’Donnell the search Associate Professor Andrea Simitch. “Her committee found someone with work primarily lies at the intersections of accomplishment in architectural design architecture and art and of architecture and and excellence in studio instruction, science. Her visualization of cell structures who also shows promise of establishing provides innovative groundwork in herself as an eminent architect, educator, developing models for biomimetic design and scholar,” says Associate Professor strategies and ‘informed’ form. Similarly, Jonathan Oschshorn, who chaired her research into digital looms and textiles the committee. “O’Donnell has already provides insights and opportunities for taken important strides in these areas, courses integrating design tooling and achieving recognition in the 2010 Europan material technologies with advanced 10 Competition; teaching at both Cooper fabrication.”AAP Union and Princeton before coming

New Leadership in the Architecture and Art Departments Dean

Kent Kleinman announced new appointments for several key leadership positions in the departments of Architecture and Art recently.

The architecture appointments follow the newly unveiled leadership structure for the department that includes a director of the bachelor of architecture program (formerly the director of undergraduate studies); a revised graduate studies director role; a new position focused on the M.Arch.1 program; and a new department chair.

Associate Professor Mark Cruvellier was appointed to a three-year term as the department chair of architecture effective July 1, 2011. As noted in the dean’s announcement, “[Cruvellier] has a long administrative track record, but even more importantly, he has the skills and disposition to support a strong team.” Cruvellier takes over as chair from Dagmar Richter.

Associate Professor Lily Chi was appointed director of graduate studies (field of architecture), and Associate Professor Andrea Simitch was named director of the B.Arch. program. A search for the M.Arch.1 program director is underway (see Tafel story on this page).

In art, Visiting Assistant Professor Carl Ostendarp was named director of graduate studies, joining chair Iftikhar Dadi and undergraduate director Associate Professor Jean Locey as part of the department’s leadership team.AAP

The Program that Never Sleeps: AAP NYC’s Packed Semester AAP NYC had

an active and exciting fall semester as it played host to a top-flight lecture series, offered challenging studios and courses, acted as the starting point for unique field trips, and was the home base for students interning in preeminent practices.

Visiting faculty included Henry Smith-Miller of Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architecture, Peter Eisenman (B.Arch. ’55), Lebbeus Woods, Matthew Bannister (B.Arch. ’94), and Thom Mayne. Students were also treated to a visit from SOM’s David Childs, designer of One World Trade Center.

Chaperoned by Executive Director Bob Balder (B.S. URS ’89, M.R.P. ’93), students were the guests of Sherry and Joel Mallin at the renowned Buckhorn sculpture park and museum in Pound Ridge, New York. The museum’s 15 acres feature work by prominent contemporary artists including Richard Serra, Andy Goldsworthy, and Anish Kapoor, among others. Students also had the rare opportunity to visit the estate of Richard and Lisa Baker in Greenwich, Connecticut. The estate features a pool by James Turrell that the Bakers commissioned in 2005, and a celebrated collection of contemporary art.

In between field trips, lectures, and their coursework, nine undergraduate architecture students also found time to take internships during the semester. Host firms included ARO, Bernard Tschumi, KPF, LTL, and SOM.AAP

Dennis Crompton delivers his lecture, “Roots— Everything is Very Ordinary,” in the spring. Crompton was a visiting faculty member for the semester and was joined by Archigram colleagues Michael Webb and Peter Cook in coteaching a studio with Associate Professor John Zissovici.

Search Underway for First Tafel Professor

A $3.8 million gift from the estate of Edgar Tafel, noted architect, former visiting instructor, and member of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship, has established the Edgar A. Tafel Senior Professorship of Architecture, a new tenured or tenure-track position in the architecture department.

The position will direct the college’s newly accredited Professional Master of Architecture program (M.Arch.1), and will focus heavily on the instruction and practice of architectural design, including teaching a studio class.

Tafel’s gift comes at an ideal time for the college, as the architecture department expands its intellectual territory with the addition of new faculty. Funding for professorships and visiting critics is one of the highest philanthropic priorities of the college, and through new hires made possible by gifts like Tafel’s, the college will continue its leadership in architectural and design education.

“Edgar’s gift is a profound expression of trust in our commitment to offer the very best education for future generations of AAP students,” says Dean Kent Kleinman. “We are deeply grateful for his support and thoughtful planning.”

As a member of the Taliesin Fellowship, Tafel served as project architect for many of Wright’s most famous buildings, including Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, and Herbert F. Johnson’s residence, Wingspread. He also authored two books on Wright.

Tafel had his own architectural practice in New York City from 1945 to 1986, from which he designed 80 homes, 35 religious buildings, and three college campuses. He served on his local community planning board and was president of the Washington Square Association, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and an associate of the National Academy of Design.

Tafel’s connection to Cornell came through a personal relationship with Robert Silman ’56, a member of AAP’s Advisory Council. His gift will enhance the funding for the Edgar A. Tafel Lecture Series, which launched in 2006 with the goal of bringing a preeminent architect to campus each semester.AAP

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News11 Winter2011

4 CRP Graduate Program Gets High Marks from Planetizen The Planetizen

Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs 2012 has ranked Cornell University’s graduate program in planning as number two in the U.S. The guide, highly revered by prospective planning students, bases its rankings on a rigorous examination of faculty publications, grants secured, professional placement of M.R.P. and Ph.D. graduates, opinions of planning educators, and other performance measures.

Professor John Forester, director of graduate studies for CRP, said the ranking is an acknowledgment and affirmation that the department has excellent students, great facilities, and productive faculty, and boasts cross-disciplinary courses, research, and projects that are housed in an outstanding university.AAP

Dykers and Renfro Address Recent NYC Landmarks and “CultureWorks” During Goldsmith Lecture The second annual L. Michael Goldsmith Lecture,

Wiles Named Director of Johnson Museum Stephanie Wiles

was named the next Richard J. Schwartz Director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in September.

Wiles was the John G. W. Cowles Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. A specialist in Old Master drawings and prints and British and American art, she has organized numerous exhibitions, been responsible for acquisitions of works by artists ranging from Rembrandt to Sol LeWitt, and led many grant-funded projects.

“I deeply admire Cornell’s excellent liberal arts tradition, outstanding professional programs, and commitment to developing innovative cross-disciplinary partnerships,” Wiles says. “The excitement of being in a great university setting is really compelling, and it’s a setting in which the museum has played such a great role.”

Wiles succeeds Franklin W. Robinson, who retired in June after 19 years. She began work at the museum in mid-November.

As director, Wiles oversees museum operations and a staff of 22; a collection of more than 35,000 artworks including extensive holdings in Asian and contemporary art; and an educational and outreach mission with programming serving the Cornell campus, the local community, and the region. The museum building, by architect I. M. Pei, opened in 1973, and a 16,500-square-foot expansion, in a new wing based on Pei’s original design, opened on October 15.

Dean Kent Kleinman led the search for the director position. “The committee conducted an extensive, international search and reviewed an extraordinary pool of candidates,” he said. “Stephanie stood out from beginning to end as ideally qualified for this leadership position. The arts on campus will be in excellent hands under her directorship.”

Wiles previously served as curator of the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she developed several traveling exhibitions and taught specialized courses on prints, drawings, and photography. She began her museum career at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Her 16-year curatorial tenure in the Morgan’s Department of Drawings and Prints included organizing many major exhibitions that were shown nationally and abroad.

Wiles has a bachelor’s degree in modern languages from Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1981), an M.A. in art history from Hunter College (1987), and a Ph.D. in art history from the City University of New York Graduate Center (2001). A member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, she also serves on the editorial advisory board of the journal Master Drawings.AAP

From left, Imminent Ecologies participants John Haymaker, William Braham, Kevin Pratt, and Marco Polletto.

Symposium Explores Technology and Sustainable Design Imminent Ecologies, the inaugural Hans and Roger Strauch Symposium on Sustainable Design, was held on campus last spring and explored the intersection of novel, computationally advanced modeling, and analysis technologies and their impact on the design of sustainable built environments.

The symposium, made possible by a gift from Hans (B.Arch. ’80) and Roger ’78 Strauch, was divided into two sessions: Tools, the first session, examined the new representational and analytic technologies that allow for the investigation of the complex web of energy and information that defines the dynamic relationship between the natural and built environments; and Methods, the second session, examined how these new tools are being used to develop new design processes in the field of sustainable architecture. Each session was followed by a panel discussion.

“CultureWorks NYC: Two Landmark Projects,” featuring architects Craig Dykers, below at right, former visiting critic at AAP NYC and cofounder of Snøhetta, and Charles Renfro, below at left, partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DSR), attracted a standing-room-only crowd to AAP NYC in July. “[The ‘CultureWorks’] neologism is intended to sum up the multiple ways that architecture houses, displays, signifies, and increasingly works to produce cultural activity in the city,” said host and moderator Dean Kent Kleinman during his introduction. “The notion of architecture as a cultural producer, as a kind of impresario or an organizing force that transforms action into performance is of particular interest tonight.”

The National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site, designed by Snøhetta, was one of the projects discussed. Said Dykers of the site, “[it is a] manner of understanding the present,” while linking the past, represented by Michael Arad’s memorial, and the future, symbolized by the skyscrapers called for in Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for the site. Small in comparison to other structures on the site, the pavilion attempts to provide a rare intimate experience in New York City, Dykers explained.

Much like the collaborative nature of the World Trade Center site project, Renfro explained the layers of complexity involved in DSR’s recent work on the renovations of Lincoln Center, the second site discussed during the lecture, and described it as “one of the dynamic shifts in city making in the past 15 years, where it is about collaboration; it is less about authorship and name recognition.”AAP

Speakers included David Bosworth (M.Arch. ’99), Cornell University; William Braham, associate professor of architecture, University of Pennsylvania; Dana Cupkova, visiting assistant professor of architecture, Cornell University; John Haymaker, principal, Design Process Innovation; Brandon Hencey, assistant professor, mechanical and aerospace engineering, Cornell University; Omar Kahn, associate professor, University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning; P. Michael Pelken, assistant professor of architecture, Syracuse University; Marco Polletto, cofounder, ecoLogicStudio; and Kevin Pratt, assistant professor of architecture, Cornell University. Moderators were Don Greenberg, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics, Cornell University; and Christiane Sauer, founder of Formade.AAP

Pop Artist Ed Ruscha’s Rare Books Come to Cornell Library A collection of

books by Ed Ruscha, a leading exemplar of the West Coast Pop Art movement, was recently added to the Cornell University Library. The collection was donated

by Paul ’60 and Helen Anbinder ’62, and contains 20 books—including 16 of Ruscha’s photographic artist’s books signed by the artist.

Ruscha’s books were printed in small press runs of only a few hundred copies, and many early editions are difficult to find or survive only in poor condition. With this new addition of Ruscha’s early work, many of the artist’s seminal works are represented in the library’s holdings.

Professors of art and art history often teach Ruscha’s work. “Ed Ruscha is an essential model for art students precisely because his varied activities map the distinction between modern and contemporary art practice. He uses painting, photography, drawing, film, printmaking, bookmaking, and conceptual modes to address the uncanny experience of consciousness,” said Carl Ostendarp, assistant visiting professor and director of graduate studies, art.AAP

Work 5

Amy Cunat (M.F.A. ’12), Sisyphusean Spring (2011), gouache and flashe on paper, 30" x 22".

News11 Winter2011

6 Work

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1 Tyler Barker (B.Arch. ’14), untitled (2011), basswood and medium density fiberboard, 13' x 5'.

2 Natalie Kwee (B.Arch. ’13), Stockholm Library Extension (2011), 3D digital modeling program and digital fabrication. For Val Warke’s Design VI Studio.

3 Elizabeth Corkery (M.F.A. ’13), I is For Pulsating Flowers (2010), constructed installation of screenprint and aerosol on plywood panels, stove, framed works on paper, 16' x 20'.

4 Colin Budd (B.F.A. ’15), 2032: Enra (2010), digital image, 4096 x 3112 px.

5 Hyunseok Kang (M.Arch. ’12), Waves Cloud (2011), design for a main pavilion for America’s Cup 2013 in San Francisco. For vertical design studio taught by Chad Carpenter, Branden Hookway, and Lisa Iwamoto.

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8 AAP Profiles

Aaron Gensler at work in her studio in Milstein Hall.

Aaron Hudson Gensler (M.Arch. ’13): Architecture Student Returns to Her Roots At the Archer School for Girls in Brentwood, California, Aaron Hudson Gensler was captain of the robotics team and expected to prepare for a career in engineering when she entered Middlebury College in 2004. Instead, after arriving on campus, she developed a passion for theater design and won an award for her set for the play The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem.

After graduating with a degree in theater and art, Gensler spent a year in New York City, where she directed and designed sets for several shows, and interned for openhousenewyork, a nonprofit that broadens public awareness of architectural sites in the city. But Gensler, whose father directs the family-named global architecture, design, and planning firm, soon realized that she could not stray far from her heritage. She discovered that architecture was her true passion, so she moved back to California and began applying to architecture schools.

Appreciation for architecture has been engrained in Gensler since childhood. In middle school, she toured the architectural icons of Europe while her father was working in London for three years, and her mother, a therapist, would encourage her and her three younger sisters to sketch the castles, gardens, and palazzi of Britain, France, and Italy.

“My mother would take us on trips every weekend because of our adjacency to incredible art and architecture,” Gensler says. “We would always bring our sketchbooks with us so we were seeing these things and drawing them instead of taking pictures. It’s a beautiful understanding of our environment.”

Then, two summers ago, her grandfather, M. Arthur Gensler Jr. (B.Arch. ’57), who cofounded Gensler in 1965, drove her to La Jolla to see the Salk

Institute for Biological Studies, and she was overwhelmed by the building designed by the renowned architect Louis Kahn.

“It’s one of the most amazing pieces of architecture,” Gensler recalls. “I think just going there and walking around with my grandfather—it’s something that can change lives.”

During her first semester at Cornell, she was transformed by the experience of working with students and professors who share her passion. Her first project was designing a maze-like game for a hypothetical reading room in Olin Library, and last spring, she developed a concept for a proposed art museum in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

“Architecture is one of those things that tickles your brain in ways that no other field does,” she says. “It’s like when you work out and you start to feel muscles that you didn’t even know existed. The first semester was about stretching my mind in ways that I hadn’t really used. And like all art forms, you start to perceive the world in new ways.”

After her first year in the program, Gensler moved back to New York City for a summer internship at the architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, where she worked on business development and several design projects.

This fall, another project in New York City is occupying her attention: a competition to design a public bathhouse in Harlem. In October, she visited the site with her core studio class of 26 students and hopes to submit her own design for the project, encompassing pools, baths, and a café. At her studio in Milstein Hall, where she works on her designs up to 15 hours a day, are

sketches of three-dimensional figures and drawings of branch patterns resembling the backs of water-soaked fingers, which could find their way into her proposal.

“I definitely think my architecture has a personality,” she says. “But I don’t want to speak too soon or say that there’s a style that I would like to emulate. I have obsessions, but they span so many genres and time periods.”

When she completes her studies, Gensler would consider working in China or India, where she says young architects are welcomed into the profession.

While her future remains uncertain, she believes that for now, she is in the right place.

“I’ve never felt that I made more sense as a human being than I do now,” she says. “People thought it was strange when I was an undergrad that my interests included science and math, subjects that most clashed with the art realm. But here it’s seamless—everyone is interested in all of these worlds.”AAP —Sherrie Negrea

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Paul Farmer, in Hartell Gallery, speaks about his career during CRP’s 75th anniversary events in October 2010.

Paul Farmer (M.R.P. ’71): Making Planning Part of the American Conversation In 2006, Paul Farmer, chief executive officer of the American Planning Association (APA), thought of an idea that would make exemplary planning a topic of conversation in communities across the country. Each year, the APA would select ten “Great Places” in three categories— neighborhoods, streets, and public spaces—that would be celebrated by community leaders, residents, and the media.

The proposal grew out of a course Farmer had taught at the University of Oregon called Great Streets/Great Neighborhoods. Based on an online nomination process, the program quickly caught on and exemplified the principles Farmer has focused on in his career as a planner— education and discussion.

“I think the more you can get people to consciously think about the quality of a neighborhood or a street, and the more that we can have those conversations and share those visions with one another, the better off we are going to be,” Farmer says. In the past five years, he adds, the program has reached 22 million Americans with coverage through dozens of television channels, newspapers, and online blogs.

A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Farmer took the helm of the Chicago-based APA in 2001, leaving a dual career in academia and planning. After earning his master’s degree from Cornell in 1971, Farmer entered the Ph.D. program in city and regional planning, wrote his dissertation, and successfully defended it. But he told his professors that the thesis needed more work and never turned it in.

“Had I decided to make my life full-time in academics, [completing the dissertation] might have been something that was more front and center,” says Farmer, who wrote the unfinished dissertation on the upward mobility of African Americans in Cleveland.

Inspired by the intellectual curiosity developed at Cornell, Farmer began teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee while practicing planning “on the side.” Soon, though, he decided teaching would be his

sideline, and in 1980, he became Pittsburgh’s deputy planning director. Over the next decade, he helped the city’s economy by attracting high-tech, medical, and service sector jobs, following the collapse of the steel industry. In 1994, he was appointed director of planning in Minneapolis, where he helped create a light-rail system connecting the city’s downtown, the airport, and the Mall of America in Bloomington. Five years later, he became executive director of the Department of Planning and Development in Eugene, Oregon, and was responsible for overseeing a portfolio of city departments.

As head of the APA, Farmer has helped the membership face the challenges confronting the planning profession as the country continues its slow recovery out of the recession. In the last decade, he notes, APA’s membership grew from 31,000 to 45,000, but now stands at about 40,000, a reflection of the decline in planning jobs nationwide.

“The development industry is completely stalled,” Farmer says. “A lot of what planners do is related to development. One of the prime industries that we work with is stalled so we’re not working with the same players.”

One of the greatest challenges the profession faces now is its ability to deal with a vastly changing world. “It’s always hard to change,” Farmer says. “It’s usually easier to just do what you’ve been doing in a time of rapid change, and I believe we’re in a time of rapid change. You have to figure out how to get feedback so you can also change in a way that will allow you to be successful.”

In “Options in Uncertain Times,” a column that appeared last March in APA’s magazine, Planning, Farmer advised planners to diversify, and cited examples of private firms that have successfully opened offices in Europe and the Mideast, or branched out into the growing field of sustainability. Public planning agencies, he suggested, should respond to the downturn that is affecting many communities by creating proposals to address lost jobs, housing foreclosures, and regional problems

such as transportation.

As America becomes “browner and grayer,” Farmer says communities need to embark on new housing projects that are radically different from what has been the prevailing model. “The single-family detached home is probably the most overbuilt housing project that we’ve seen,” he says. “As we come out of the recession, I think planners need to be leading community discussions in terms of [local and regional] needs.”

In his view, what communities need is more highdensity, mixed-use housing developments “that are much more interesting to people.” In such developments, residents can move around much more easily and may not have to rely on private automobiles.

Another area that planners need to consider is how to react to the economic growth taking place in countries like China, India, and Brazil. “I don’t think we’ve yet figured out how that has affected the world and what is the response of developed nations, whether you’re in Germany, Australia, or the U.S.,” says Farmer, who visited China this fall to give some talks and meet with government ministers. “So we’re stumbling together through the recession.”

Though local and state governments are downsizing planning departments, Farmers says the role of planning is more important than ever as communities attempt to climb out of the economic downturn. Whatever issue planners are confronting, whether it’s transportation options or downtown development, they should focus on providing concrete solutions that communities can implement.

“What people are interested in in planning is not just process,” Farmer says. “People want outcomes. They want their houses to deliver value. They want safe neighborhoods. They want parks where their kids can play.

They want transportation options. I think planners sometimes get so involved in process they lose track of the fact that citizens want outcomes.”AAP —Sherrie Negrea

News11 Winter2011

Rajaa Khalid (M.F.A. ’13), How to Look (2011), C-type photograph, 20" x 30".

News11 Winter2011

12 Student News M.F.A. Catalog Published The first-

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ever catalog of M.F.A. work was published this fall. The catalog is drawn from the students’ group show Meditations in an Emergency, curated by Christopher Lew of PS 1, and on display at the DUMBO Arts Center in Brooklyn in the spring. In addition to an essay by Lew, the catalog has an introduction by former director of graduate studies Assistant Professor Michael Ashkin and an afterward by art department chair Iftikhar Dadi, along with essays profiling each artist.AAP

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News This past summer, Lindsay

Carter (M.R.P. ’12) interned with the U.N. World Food Programme, and conducted research on urban commercial agriculture in Cotonou, Benin, West Africa.

Danny Ferry (M.R.P. ’12) spent the summer working in New York City at America 2050, an initiative of the Regional Plan Association focused on meeting the infrastructure, economic, and environmental needs of a growing American population, and planning and studying the implementation of a national high-speed rail network.

Alyson Fletcher (M.R.P. ’12) worked in Chicago over the summer for the Active Transportation Alliance on their Neighborhood Bikeways Campaign, planning and advocating for 100 miles of protected bike lanes.

George Homsy, Ph.D. candidate in History of Architecture and Urban Development, was named a 2011 C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellow by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The award supports Homsy’s research project, Sustainability in

Sutton Translates Rome Experience into Fashion Internship

Architecture Students Win Udall, Eidlitz, and New York State Awards Architecture students received several awards and fellowships in the spring of 2011.

Karen Chi Lin (B.Arch. ’13) was the winner of a Morris K. Udall Scholarship in April. The scholarships are given to U.S. students with excellent academic records and an interest in careers in environmental public policy, health care, and tribal public policy.

Lin recently traveled to South Africa as project director of Cornell University Sustainable Design: Schoolhouse South Africa (see page 13). She is also a freelance photographer and web designer, and has done public relations for Cornell’s AquaClara and for Big Red Relief efforts.

The Udall scholars win awards of up to $5,000. Lin is one of 80 scholars selected from a pool of 510 applicants from 231 institutions.

In May, the selection committee for the annual Robert James Eidlitz Travel Fellowship announced the 2011–12 recipients. The following projects will receive travel funding: • Eric Bernstein (B.Arch. ’11), Jeremy Burke (B.Arch. ’11), Kirk Finkel (B.Arch. ’11), and Michael Lee (B.Arch. ’11): The Spherical Book: The Resonant Implications of an Undefined Object upon Berlin and Rome’s Urban Semiotics • Jacob Brown (M.L.A. ’09): From City to Mountain: The Social Landscape of Hiking in South Korea • Justine Cheng (B.Arch. ’08): New Khmer Architecture: Cambodia’s Vanishing Cultural Identity • Hugh Hayden (B.Arch. ’07): Searching for the Vernacular Architecture of the African Diaspora in the Mississippi Delta Region • Kyriaki Kasabalis (B.Arch. ’10), and Darius Woo (B.Arch. ’11): Vertical Realism: High Density Architecture in China and Westward • Tony-Saba Shiber (M.Arch. ’11): The Politics of Edge • Thena Jean-hee Tak (B.Arch. ’09): Hydroscapes: morphologies + synthesis • Simon Elder Russell Willet (B.Arch. ’06): The Third Force: Between Global and Local in Vietnam The Eidlitz competition is open to fifth-year seniors and graduate students in History of Architecture and Urban Design, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture, as well as alumni of these programs who graduated within the last five years. Proposals may be submitted by individuals or teams and are accepted each spring.

Also in May, one undergraduate and two graduate architecture students were selected as recipients of the Society of American Registered Architects/New York Council’s 16th Annual Design Awards Competition. Wajeha Qureshi (B.Arch. ’13), Minsu Kim (M.Arch. ’11), and Richard Jolta (M.Arch. ’11) were honored at the awards banquet for the competition on June 28 in Manhattan.

Qureshi was recognized for Interactive Living, a house featuring movable panels and partitions that can create an endless combination of spaces; Kim won for his project Berlin Cold War Media and Information Center, a building that recalls the Nordbahnhof S-bahn station, which was shut down after the Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961; and Jolta received the award for his design of two tables, Swirl Table and Gravity Table, which were constructed with different conceptual objectives.AAP

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The opportunity to study in Rome was one of the main reasons I was attracted to Cornell’s art program: I knew I would be inspired by experiencing the art and architecture of the city firsthand. Now, having spent last semester in Rome, I could not be happier with my choice.

The newly established internship program contributed greatly to my experience there. We were encouraged to submit our résumés before we left for Italy, and the Cornell in Rome faculty worked to find us connections with local Roman artists and art galleries where we could intern. My interests were slightly different than those of other students: I wanted an internship in the fashion industry. Shara Wasserman, visiting critic in Rome and the leader of the internship course, worked to find some contacts in fashion-related fields, and was able to connect me with several students.

Through these connections, I formed my own internship collaborating with five Italian fashion studies students to illustrate articles featured in the growing online Fashion E-zine (fashionezine.it). It was a great opportunity that connected me with a professional practice and helped me gain experience in interviewing and discussing my artwork.

At the same time, I became fixated on window displays and mannequins in

my Rome art studio, and was also exploring concepts of craftsmanship in a separate class. I was inspired by Italian fashion’s attempts to embrace the concepts of sophistication, high-quality craftsmanship, and “Made in Italy.” With these topics in mind, and to keep my momentum during a post-Rome summer internship, I applied with Fendi at their New York City location. During my interview with their visual merchandising director, I talked about my time in Rome and was thrilled to get an internship.

It was an amazing experience! I helped install window displays in the front windows of the Fendi New York Fifth Avenue store, and it was fascinating to be working so closely with mannequins and window displays after my exploration of them in Rome. I also had the opportunity to help design floor and elevation plans for other U.S. stores, maintain and redesign store displays, and organize the showroom merchandise for customers.

There is no doubt that my experience in my classes and internship in Rome helped me tremendously with my internship at Fendi, and will continue to help me as I apply for future jobs. I loved building connections and skills in Rome, and being able to use them to further my practical experience here in the U.S.AAP —Erica Sutton (B.F.A. ’12)

1 M.F.A. catalog published this fall.

2 Richard Jolta’s Swirl Table (2009), poplar and glass, 4' x 3' x 22".

3 Sutton’s On Display (2011), self-photographed images, paper collage on paper boxes, 15" x 15".

4 Piotr Chizinski (M.F.A. ’12), Dept of Food-WaterShelter, S.S. Water (2011), folded 140-pound paper, 18" x 30" x 12".

5 Gregory Page, Motif From My Back Yard: Ligularia, Caladium, and Lady’s Mantle (2008), lithograph, 3" x 38".

6 Laura Kennedy, former B.F.A. student, Invaders (2009), color lithograph from lithographic photopositive plate, 11" x 14".

7 HPP students work to restore barn windows at Medina Stone Farm during their annual work weekend. Photo: Greg Prichard (M.A. HPP ’11).

8 Roxanne Yamins (B.F.A. ’12), Disposal Unit (2011), corrugated cardboard, 70" x 80” x 71".

the Small City: Exploring Climate Change Innovation in Local Land Use Policy.

CRP Ph.D. student Courtney Knapp received a $2,500 award from the John Nolen Research Fund to do an archival project looking at Nolen’s ideology of physical and social improvement. The John Nolen Papers can be found in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in the Cornell Library.

Elizabeth McFarland, Ph.D. candidate in History of Architecture and Urban Development, was awarded a research support grant from the Paul Mellon Centre to conduct dissertation fieldwork and archival research in Dublin, Ireland, this past spring. She also received a onemonth residency research grant at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal for July 2011.

Zack Patton (M.R.P. ’12) spent the summer working at the Center for Housing Policy in Washington, DC, researching federal and local responses to the foreclosure crisis.

A paper written by Viktor Zhong (M.R.P. ’12) tied for second place in the American Planning Association Student Paper Competition. The paper, titled “Sustainability Analysis of Proposed HighSpeed Rail Stations in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area,” concluded that many of the 11 high-speed rail (HSR) stations are poorly sited and are likely to suffer from low ridership when the trains begin operation. Furthermore, by comparing the HSR plan of Los Angeles with those abroad, the paper also concludes that having 11 HSR stations in L.A. will lower the efficiency and attractiveness of the service. Zhong also worked with CRP professor Mildred Warner and visiting scholar Germà Bel from the University of Barcelona, comparing high-speed rail station location and passenger catchment areas for the Madrid-Barcelona and Los Angeles–San Francisco corridors during the summer.AAP

13 M.F.A. Student Wins Jacob K. Javits Fellowship A student who has created art out of trash cans and trailer trucks has been awarded a prestigious Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education.

Piotr Chizinski (M.F.A. ’12), a photographer and sculptor from Falls Village, Connecticut, is the only Cornell student to win the Javits fellowship for 2011. He is the second M.F.A. student from Cornell to have received the award.

Awarded annually to graduate students in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, the fellowship covers tuition and expenses and provides a $30,000 stipend.

The award can be renewed for up to four years or until the fellow completes his or her degree.

“It gives me a leg up in terms of just being able to focus on my work,” Chizinski says. “I hope it’s going to be able to offer me the ability to study abroad and allow my work to have a larger scope.”

A B.F.A. graduate of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Chizinski grounds his artwork on research of sociology and the history of science from the 20th century.

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Photo: Andrew Fu (B.Arch. ’14).

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Turfs: Invasive Species as Art After visiting several locations in the Ithaca area to study the effects and natural history of invasive species, students in the course Turfs: Invasive Species as Art created a series of lithographs that were displayed at the Cornell Plantations’ Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center last spring. The course was taught by Gregory Page, associate professor of art, and graduate assistant Ruth Oppenheim (M.F.A. ’11). Along with the student work, Page’s Motifs from

HPP Students Help Restore Medina Stone Farm A group of nearly 30 vol-

unteers, including students, faculty, and friends of the Historic Preservation and Planning program, spent their annual work weekend at Medina Stone Farm in Medina, New York, last April. The event provides an opportunity for current students and alumni to collaborate in an attempt to preserve a historic property through shared knowledge and hands-on efforts.

Medina Stone Farm, which was selected because of its history and agricultural heritage, is located on the outskirts of the village of Medina, which developed along the banks of the Erie Canal in the first half of the 19th century. The farm consists of an 1860s Italianate house and several historic barns that originally housed Belgian draft horses and Guernsey cattle. The farmhouse currently operates as a bed and breakfast, which provided accommodations for students and faculty during the weekend.

The group’s work focused on site documentation and restoring barn windows. A team prepared measured drawings of the

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My Backyard was on display in the Ten-Eyck Room of the Nevin Welcome Center during the same period. This exhibit emerged as a body of work investigating horticultural specimens from Page’s own perennial gardens. Page, working with Lindsey Glover (M.F.A. ’08), produced a DVD about the project, which he started in 1999 after being inspired by architectural ornamental motifs he saw in Italy while teaching for Cornell in Rome.AAP

interiors and exteriors of the farm’s buildings, including floor plans, elevations, and sections. Associate Professor Jeffrey Chusid operated a large-format camera to photograph the site according to the standards of the Historic American Building Survey. Another team restored sets of wood windows for the mare barn, and repaired and reinstalled a deteriorated transom window in the stallion barn.AAP

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CUSD Builds a Schoolhouse in South Africa Over the summer, a team of 31 Cornell students began construction on a 6,000-square-foot early childhood development center in Cosmo City, a new mixed-housing development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Cornell University Sustainable Design (CUSD) orchestrated the outreach project, from research to design to construction. The result is the first such facility in Cosmo City, a community of 12,500 dwellings.

Completed in October, the center includes classrooms; indoor and outdoor play areas; interactive spaces for group learning, creative play, and social development; and will serve 80 students a year and double as a teacher-training facility.

It has been designated by the executive mayor of Johannesburg as a Center of Excellence and is the forerunner for several schools to follow.

CUSD collaborated with the secondyear comprehensive architecture studio

to design the building for zero environmental impact. No electricity is needed for heating and cooling the passive solar building, and high-performance windows and glazing provide natural ventilation and insulation. An earthbag wall system uses sand taken directly from the excavation of the building’s foundation as insulation and thermal mass.

AAP students involved in the project include Mercedes Cuvi (B.Arch. ’13), Carly Dean (B.Arch. ’14), Mary Bray Erickson (B.Arch. ’14), Andrew Fu (B.Arch. ’14), Stephanie Gitto (B.Arch. ’14), Mikhail Grinwald (B.Arch. ’13), Peter Gudonis (B.Arch. ’14), Karen (Chi-Chi) Lin (B.Arch. ’13) (team leader), Shuping Liu (B.Arch. ’14), Jesse McElwain (B.Arch. ’13) (team leader), Lexi Quint (BS U.R.S. ’13), and Eric Rutgers (B.Arch. ’11). Assistant Professor Jeremy Foster, landscape architecture, was an adviser on the project.AAP

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“I usually make pieces that get people to engage in that information or take part in what happened in the early 20th century,” he says.

His work, Centre of Calculation, created from a 40-gallon garbage can, evokes the eugenics movement and allows viewers to take a “breeding exam” developed from a 1914 aptitude exam.

In collaboration with two Texas artists, Chizinski created the Nomadic Truck Gallery, a collection of boxes that unfolds inside a 28-foot truck to become a portable art gallery. The exhibit has traveled to art galleries and high schools in Texas and Arizona.AAP

B.F.A. Student Wins Cornell Undergraduate Artist Award Roxanne

Yamins (B.F.A ’12), a student sculptor and painter from Great Neck, New York, has won the Cornell Undergraduate Artist Award for 2011 from the Cornell Council for the Arts. With its proceeds, she proposes creating a series of sculptures reflecting a common architectural phenomenon in Ithaca—the front porch.

The annual award recognizes an outstanding undergraduate student who has demonstrated talent, dedication, and notable achievement in one or more artistic disciplines at Cornell. The winner receives a monetary award and presents his or her work on campus.

Yamins was nominated for the award by the art department in recognition of her work, which focuses on the role of liminal spaces in everyday life.

“By creating architectural and sculptural statements in a variety of materials, she displaces our sense of the normal boundaries between the inside and the outside, the public and the private, and the official and the casual,” wrote Iftikhar Dadi, chair of the art department, in his nomination letter.

After her nomination, Yamins proposed a project, Meanings of Our Space, consisting of three sculptures depicting the ubiquity of porches in Ithaca. The proposal called for fragments of porches, including floorboards, latticing, and railing, to be constructed into 4-by-3-foot sculptures and installed on the slope at Cornell, on the banks of the gorge, and in Collegetown, once Yamins obtains necessary permits.

“What I’m doing is using the language of these porches to create private spheres of contemplation in public spaces,” says Yamins, who hopes to install the sculptures by the spring of 2012.

Yamins, who transferred to Cornell from the Cooper Union in New York City, has received national recognition for her artwork. In 2008, she won a grant from the National Academy of Fine Arts to study art in Florence, Italy. Her painting, Man Sitting, was one of 40 works from the Scholastic Art Awards of 2005 selected for a special exhibition in Washington, DC, by the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.AAP

News11 Winter2011

14 2011 Awards, Honors, Fellowships UNIVERSITY AWARD The Merrill Presidential Scholar Anuja Diwakar Thatte (B.S. URS ’11) COLLEGE AWARDS Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Medal Silver: Darius Ching Fung Woo (B.Arch. ’11) Bronze: Raymond August Fort (B.Arch. ’11) Ann Lok Lui (B.Arch. ’11) Jerome Adrien Soustra (B.Arch. ’11) Jacqueline Elizabeth Zdrojeski (B.F.A. ’11) ARCHITECTURE AWARDS Michael Rapuano Memorial Award Jonathan Ruiz (M.Arch. ’11) Alpha Rho Chi Medal Michael S. Lee (B.Arch. ’11) Lawrence Leung Heng Siu (M.Arch. ’11) American Institute of Architects Henry Adams Medal Kelly Ann Holzkamp (B.Arch. ’11) Lawrence Leung Heng Siu (M.Arch. ’11) Henry Adams Certificate of Merit Mason Gerald Scisco (B.Arch. ’11) Xiang Zhang (M.Arch. ’11) William S. Downing Prize Kelly Ann Holzkamp (B.Arch. ’11) Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal Ann Lok Lui (B.Arch. ’11) Eschweiller Prize: Best M.Arch.1 Thesis Christina Fazio (M.Arch. ’11) Eschweiller Prize: Merit and Distinction in M.Arch.1 Design Studio Ashley Reed (M.Arch. ’11) Lawrence Leung Heng Siu (M.Arch. ’11) 2011 Chair’s Award: Outstanding M.Arch.2 Performance in Architecture John Michael Lura (M.Arch. ’11)

CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING AWARDS Thomas W. Mackesey Prize Thomas Roger Knipe (M.R.P. ’11) American Institute of Certified Planners Outstanding Student Award Anna Brenton Brawley (M.R.P. ’11) Peter B. Andrews Memorial Theses Prize Callie Piedade Watkins (M.R.P. ’10) John W. Reps Award William Neil Marzella (M.A. HPP ’11) Urban and Regional Studies Academic Achievement Award Sasha Anh-Thu Truong (B.S. URS ’11) Kermit C. Parsons and Janice I. Parsons Scholarship Nathaniel Burr Decker (M.R.P. ’11) Thu-Huong Thi Nguyen (B.S. URS ’11) Gabrielle Elise Voeller (M.R.P. ’11) Department of City and Regional Planning Graduate Community Service Award David Jeremiah West (M.R.P. ’11) Robert P. Liversidge III Memorial Book Award Courtney Ann Cho Shum (M.R.P. ’11) Christopher David Smith (M.R.P. ’11) Upstate New York Chapter of American Planning Association Student Projects Award Sung Hag Ahn (B.S. URS ’10) Nathaniel Burr Decker (M.R.P. ’11) Hyun Ji Do (B.S. URS ’10) Meghan Jacquet (M.R.P. ’10) Christopher Koenig (M.R.P. ’10) Esther Ka Yi Kwan (B.S. URS ’11) Urban and Regional Studies Community Service Award Kevin Chung (B.S. URS ’11) Meredith Brynne White (B.S. URS ’11) Portman Graduate Student Award Eric John VanderMaas (M.R.P. ’11)

2011 Director of Graduate Studies’ Award: Outstanding M.Arch.2 Performance in Architecture Marcial Ignacio Mora (M.Arch. ’11)

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AWARDS American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Honor Matthew Gonser (M.L.A./M.R.P. ’11) Adrienne Renee Smith-Reiman (M.L.A./M.R.P. ’11)

ART AWARDS John Hartell Graduate Award Ruth Oppenheim (M.F.A. ’11)

American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Merit Chuijing Kong (M.L.A. ’11) Clark Taylor (M.L.A. ’11)

Faculty Medal of Art Margaret Elizabeth Prendergast (B.F.A. ’11) Department of Art Distinguished Achievement Award Lauren Elizabeth Valchuis (B.F.A. ’11) Charles Baskerville Painting Award Rachel Mari Simkover (B.F.A. ’11) Gabriela Jimenez (M.F.A. ’11) Elsie Dinsmore Popkin Painting Award Caitlyn Jean Rosiek (B.F.A. ’11) Edith Stone and Walter King Memorial Prize Tianhui Michelle Chen (B.F.A. ’12) Frederick Greis (B.F.A. ’12) Diego Olvera (B.F.A. ’12) Chase Wilson (B.F.A. ’11) John Kip Brady Prize Taber Colletti (B.F.A. ’11) Larisa-Marie Tracy (B.F.A. ’11) Cynthia Baker (B.F.A. ’11) 2011 Post-Baccalaureate Award Taery Kim (B.F.A. ’11) Margaret Elizabeth Prendergast (B.F.A. ’11) Rachel Mari Simkover (B.F.A. ’11) Nehna Young (B.S. URS ’12), in Introduction to Physical Planning, taught by Ann Forsyth.

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News11 Winter2011

16 Faculty&Staff News Mata Named Associate Director of Diversity and Inclusiveness

priority has been establishing a rapport and relationship with the existing AAP multicultural students. “They need to know that there are people here who genuinely care about them and want them to do well,” he says.

“Having someone like Sly in this role has had a really positive impact on my experience at AAP,” says Brandon Taylor (B.S. URS ’13). “I consider him to be a great role model of leadership, excellence, and friendship. His work with the student organizations in the college in this short amount of time has been phenomenal.”

Mata comes to Cornell after receiving his master’s degree in public administration from Texas A&M University. He received his bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University, where his work focused on the retention of low-income students.AAP

Silvester (Sly) Mata has been named the associate director of diversity and inclusiveness for AAP. He joined the college in early August.

Mata’s responsibilities include providing counseling on academic and personal issues, and professional development; conducting outreach programs and workshops; advising the Minority Organization of Architecture, Art, and Planning (MOAAP) and Cornell’s chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS); and recruiting both undergraduate and graduate multicultural students.

Increasing the college’s diversity is a high priority for the administration, but Mata says there are a number of obstacles to getting multicultural students to Cornell, and to AAP in particular.

“Cornell costs a lot, and the financial aid process can be daunting—especially for students who are the first in their family to attend college,” says Mata. In addition, AAP has some unique and challenging admission requirements, such as a portfolio submission for B.Arch. students, which may prevent some students from applying. Mata says that one of the best ways to overcome these obstacles is to have a group of multicultural alumni act as ambassadors. “If potential students see someone they can relate to who is really enthusiastic about the college, it will help immensely with recruiting.”

Mata says another key to attracting multicultural applicants is making sure they know that once they are here, the college and university are committed to helping them succeed and have an exceptional experience. With that in mind, his first

November 8, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, CRP professor emeritus John Reps (M.R.P. ’47) gave a lecture titled “How Gotham Got its Grid: The Inside Story of Manhattan’s City Plan” in Kaufmann Auditorium. The reception after the lecture drew students and faculty from across AAP and Cornell.AAP

Warner’s Planning and Policy News Works by associate of art Roberto Bertoia were Research Reaches Wide Audience professor featured in two recent exhibits. Oracle CRP professor Mildred Warner’s work has garnered significant attention recently— including numerous media stories, an assortment of publications, and a substantial research grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). With a general focus on local governments’ ability to effectively deliver service to their constituents, Warner is engaging a myriad of issues related to social and physical infrastructure, including the fiscal crises’ effect on tax revenues; privatization of services; aging populations; and child care.

The $500,000 USDA grant will fund Warner’s project on demographic shifts and the Great Recession, and what this combination means for rural communities.

The project, titled Great Recession, Fiscal Stress, and Demographic Transformation: Implications for Rural Service Delivery and Multi-Generational Planning, addresses the complex issues local governments face as they attempt to meet the dual challenges of economic recession and demographic transformation, including rising elderly populations and shrinking numbers of children. David Brown, professor in development sociology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, George Homsy, Ph.D. student in History of Architecture and Urban Development, Rebecca Baran-Rees (M.R.P. ’12), and Matt Styer (M.R.P. ’12) are collaborators on the project.

Warner’s article, “Is Private Production of Public Services Cheaper than Public

Christopherson Provides Key Insights in Drilling Debate CRP professor Susan Christopherson continues to be a prominent voice on the issue of drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale.

Christopherson is leading a team of researchers in analyzing the economic consequences of natural gas extraction, and examining issues including projected versus actual job creation, the burdens on local infrastructure in drilling regions, and affected communities’ longterm economic prospects.

“Our aim has been to provide a more realistic picture of what to expect if natural gas drilling happens in New York, and to learn from what is happening in Pennsylvania,” she says.

A report for Cornell’s Community and Regional Development Institute (CaRDI) “contains eight policy briefs we’ve done, on everything from implications for public health providers to economic development,” she says.

“I think we’ve been influencing the debate, getting people to look at the cost-benefit aspects.”

Christopherson’s findings have been disseminated through a variety of forums, including a CaRDI Sustainable Communities webinar in May, policy and research presentations to local organizations and state legislators in Albany and at Cornell Law School, and to academic audiences at Oxford University and Newcastle University in the U.K. She was also featured in recent stories on the issue in both the Albany Times Union and the Wall Street Journal.AAP

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Production? A Meta-Regression Analysis of Solid Waste and Water Services,” received the Best Article Award for 2011 from the Academy of Management (Public and Nonprofit Division). The article was published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and shows that there are no cost savings with privatization in water and solid waste—the two urban services with the most privatization experience worldwide. Warner presented this research in Canada in September, in China in October, and at the SmartCity World Expo in Spain in November. She also discussed privatization in appearances on a BBC broadcast, and in articles in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, the New York Times, and the Toronto Star.

Issues surrounding child-care programs, business incentives, and their role in local government policy have also been explored by Warner. She spoke on these topics at the “National Business Leader Summit on Early Childhood Investment” in Boston in July 2011, the American Planning Association National Conference in Boston in April 2011, and the “Future of Local Government National Summit” in Melbourne, Australia, in June 2011; and has had articles appear in Social Policy and Administration, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Economic Development Quarterly, and the Journal of the American Planning Association.AAP

in a Garden, a tall outdoor piece, was included in the Art Encounters Preservation Exhibition at the Wentworth–Coolidge State Historic Site in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from July to October; and two pieces, Passage #1 and Passage #2, were included in the 63rd Rochester Finger Lakes Exhibition, which ran from July to September.

Preserving the Textile Block at Florida Southern College, a report written by Jeffrey Chusid, associate professor of historic preservation, is now available online. The text was written for the World Monuments Fund and details the history of development of concrete textile block construction in the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. The buildings of the campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida, are the focus of the publication, which can be found at wmf.org.

Renate Ferro’s video and sound piece, No Justice, No Peace, Solidarity with the Middle East, was featured in the spring exhibition Brief Histories, held at the United Arab Emirates at Sharjah University City, in Al Bayronuni, Sharjah.

The group exhibition, curated by Isak Berbic and Fawz Kabra, assembled works of contemporaneity with the unfolding events in the Middle East and the larger global politics of winter and spring 2011.

The background for Ferro’s video is a digital image of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; throughout the video, shoes are hailed at the digital image while the

viewer can hear audio clips of Wisconsin demonstrators and others deploring the actions of the governor’s recent labor bill and consequent vote.

In June, John Forester, professor in CRP, gave several invited lectures in Helsinki to the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and the urban planning program at the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (YTK) at Aalto University.

He also participated in sessions of the Nicis International Scientific Review Committee in Den Haag, The Netherlands.

In the spring of 2011, Ann Forsyth, professor of city and regional planning, conducted sabbatical research on suburbs.

She was a visiting scholar at the School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada; the Tianjin Institute for Urban Construction; and the University of Leeds. In addition, she recently published several coauthored articles in the areas of sustainable and healthy communities. These articles include: “Compactness and Connection in Environmental Design: Insights from Ecoburbs and Ecocities for Design with Nature” in Environment and Planning (B 38, 2:267–288); “Urban Design: Is There a Distinctive View from the Bicycle?” in Journal of Urban Design (16, 4:531–549); and “Accelerometer Test-Retest Reliability

by Data Processing Algorithms: Results from the Twin Cities Walking Study” in Journal of Physical Activity and Health (8:668–674). In addition, she published chapters on “Planned Communities and New Towns” in The Routledge Companion to Urban Design and “Connectivity: Street Patterns and Social Networks” in the Encyclopedia of Quality of Life Research.

George R. Frantz, visiting lecturer in CRP, spent June in Shanghai, China, where he worked with the faculty of the landscape architecture department at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) on a study of agricultural tourism development in the Shanghai metropolitan region. The study aims to assess the existing state of agricultural tourism in the region, and to develop recommendations for municipal and regional policy makers. Frantz also presented lectures on professional planning practice in the U.S., and on the protection of environmental and historic resources in New York. In August, Frantz assisted with teaching the second Cornell University/SJTU Landscape Architecture seminar. The program brought nine thirdand fourth-year landscape architecture students and two faculty members from SJTU to New York City and Ithaca. The SJTU students joined URS and landscape architecture students on tours of New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston led by Peter Trowbridge and Kathryn Gleason from landscape architecture. The students also worked on designs for redeveloping the Gansevoort Plaza area in Chelsea, Manhattan.

An essay written by Alex Maymind, visiting critic at AAP NYC, was published in the fall issue of the Princeton School of Architecture journal Pidgin. The piece, which was coauthored with Matthew Persinger, is titled “Manhattanisms: RAM(s) vs. REM,” and focuses on a comparison between Rem Koolhaas and Robert A. M. Stern and their attitudes toward globalization, self-fashioning, and postmodernism.

An article by Jonathan Ochshorn, professor of architecture, appeared in the August 2011 issue of the Construction Specifier, the monthly journal of the Construction Specifications Institute.

“Minimizing Heat Loss Through Tapered Insulation” is based on Ochshorn’s research previously published in ASHRAE Transactions 117, no. 1 (2011).

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CRP’s Nancy Brooks and Kieran Donaghy completed their book, The Oxford Handbook of Urban Economics and Planning, this summer. The book will be available in December, and was coedited by Gerrit-Jan Knaap of the University of Maryland. The essays in this volume aim to bridge the historical gap between urban planning and urban economics by exploring the common interest in some of today’s most pressing urban problems. The authors explore topics including the nature of cities, the prosperity of urban economies, the provision of urban services, efficient systems of transportation, and the proper allocation of land between urban and environmental uses.AAP

1 Faculty from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University work on a study of agricultural tourism as part of a project with George Frantz, CRP. Photo: George Frantz.

Ochshorn also posted a series of informal videos documenting and explaining the construction of Milstein Hall at impatientsearch.com/milstein/. The nine videos were shot with a hand-held, lowresolution Flip video camcorder, and will be part of an exhibit of work by OMA, Milstein Hall’s architects. The exhibit, titled OMA/ Progress, will be in place at the Barbican Art Gallery in London from October 2011 to February 2012.

The work of Visiting Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Carl Ostendarp, art, is the subject of a recently published book titled Carl Ostendarp: the. The book is the 14th in the series Grafisch Sammlung/Museum Ludwig, and is a catalog of works on paper created by Ostendarp and owned by the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany.

Ostendarp also held a solo exhibition, titled Carl Ostendarp, at Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne in November, and participated in the following group shows during the summer and fall: the itsy-bitsy spider exhibition at Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne, Germany, in July; Interstice and Emphasis: Artists from the Ajira Collection, in Newark, New Jersey, from July to September; The Indiscipline of Painting: International Abstraction from the 1960s to Now at the Tate St. Ives in Cornwall, England, from October to January 2012; If We Cannot Free Ourselves, We Can Free Our Vision, at Oqbo, Berlin, in October and November, curated by Rolf Ricke and including work by Richard Artschwager ’44; and the Benefit Exhibition for the Children’s Museum of the Arts at the Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York City, in November.

The Ithaca home designed for the Hsu family by Kevin Pratt, assistant professor of architecture, and Dana Cupkova, visiting assistant professor of architecture, was featured in the “Houses We Love” section in the October issue of Dwell magazine. Pratt also presented a paper titled “A Method for the Design and Analysis of Parametric Building Energy Models” at the Building Simulation 2011 conference, the biannual International Building Performance Simulation Association conference, in Sydney, Australia, in November.

Assistant Professor Stephan Schmidt won an Academic Venture Fund award from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future (ACSF) for his project Property Formalization and the Role of Technology in Tanzania. The project examines the possibilities and obstacles for using geographic information systems in formalizing and incorporating customary

tenure in Tanzania, and also examines the role of technology in the development process. The awards, which were designed to stimulate original, cross-disciplinary research in sustainability science, were given to 10 interdisciplinary projects, and totaled over $700,000.

Four members of the Cornell in Rome faculty presented during the 2011 Biennale dello Spazio Pubblico (Biennial of Public Space) organized by the Italian National Institute of Urban Planning. The Cornell in Rome program cosponsored the event, which took place in May. Gregory Smith, visiting critic for the Department of City and Regional Planning in Rome, codirected a session on the history of public space in Rome, and also led a session on teaching urban studies workshops. Other members of the Cornell in Rome faculty who made presentations at the biennial include Professor Porus Olpadwala, Visiting Critic Jan Gadeyne, and Visiting Critic Lila Yawn.

Professor Emeritus Kay WalkingStick received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, in May. She also received a Lee Krasner Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which includes a three-year monetary award.AAP

Ashkin Receives MacDowell Colony Fellowship Assistant

professor of art Michael Ashkin was awarded a 2011 MacDowell Colony Fellowship in April. The MacDowell Colony, founded in 1907, is the oldest artists’ colony in the U.S. Its mission is to nurture the arts “by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which to produce enduring works of the imagination.” More than 6,000 writers, poets, playwrights, artists, and composers have attended, including Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Jonathan Franzen, Amy Sillman, and Alice Walker. Ashkin was in residence at the New Hampshire–based colony in June.AAP

Owens to Lead Cornell Council for the Arts

Stephanie Owens, an artist, writer, curator, and a visiting assistant professor of art, has been named director of the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) for a three-year term, effective July 1, 2011.

“The search for a new CCA director stimulated a vibrant dialogue among the search committee and many stakeholders regarding the skills and vision needed to fulfill the CCA’s crucial role,” said Dean Kent Kleinman, who chaired the search committee. “Stephanie Owens fits the need and the time perfectly: she has the vision, energy, collegiality, creativity, and broad conception of the arts required to lead the CCA in exciting and new directions.”

Owens will oversee CCA initiatives, including a grant program to fund projects by artists from across the Cornell community, as well as a large-scale collaborative annual event or exhibition commencing in spring 2012.

The annual event model is a significant new addition to the CCA’s mission, intended to bring national and international attention to the arts at Cornell.

The organization has an annual budget of $225,000 for operations and funding initiatives.

Provost Kent Fuchs agreed to increase the CCA budget from $175,000 in October 2010, along with additional funds for the small grants program. Owens succeeds professor of music Judith Kellock, interim CCA director from 2008 to 2010.

Owens, who has been at Cornell since 2008, teaches in the areas of visual culture and digital media, and has a B.F.A. from Syracuse University and an M.F.A. in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago. At Cornell, she has created new studio/theory hybrid courses and outlined a “top-tier program in new media,” to be centered in AAP, in partnership with the departments of Computer Science, Information Science, History of Art, and the College of Engineering.AAP

After Taste: Expanded Practices in Interior Design, coedited by Dean Kent Kleinman, was released in the fall. The book includes texts, interviews, and portfolios based on the annual AfterTaste symposia hosted by Parsons The New School for Design. The materials document new theories and emerging critical practices that argue that the field of interior design is inadequately served by its historical reliance on taste-making and tastemakers, and attempt to promote new voices and perspectives in both the theory and practice of the discipline.AAP

Counter Nature, a recently published catalog by Maria Park, assistant professor of art, encompasses three of her recent exhibitions: Counter Nature at Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York; Counter Nature 2 at Toomey Tourell Fine Art, San Francisco; and Counter Nature 3 at Sabina Lee Gallery, Los Angeles. The catalog is copublished by these three galleries, and includes an essay by Patricia C. Phillips, former art department chair.

Park’s work in these exhibitions explores how the idea and experience of nature are presented and consumed as images.

Of the work, Phillips writes, “Park creates succinct, compelling images of constitutive dislocation—representations of a sublimity dynamically reconfigured in the increasingly contested spaces of nature, culture, and technology.”AAP

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Darius Woo (B.Arch. ’11) presents his thesis Dirty Architecture, “an investigation of architecture and its relevance to time,” during reviews last spring. Woo was a teaching associate for architecture this fall.

Alumni News 19

William Lim (B.Arch. ’80, M.Arch. ’81) designed and installed a giant (120' x 32' x 43') fish-shaped sculpture made from 2,360 traditional chinese lanterns for the August Moon festival at Victoria Park in Hong Kong in September. The Guinness Book of World Records named Lim’s creation the world’s largest lantern sculpture.AAP

Jill Lerner Appointed President of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter

Jill Lerner (B.Arch. ’76) has been appointed president of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIA NY) for the 2013 calendar year.

Lerner, a principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, was a longtime instructor of professional practice at AAP NYC, and a former chair of the AAP advisory council.

With over 30 years of design and management experience, Lerner’s focus has been on complex institutional buildings for both private and public agency clients, and she has led the design of numerous awardwinning academic, medical, and research projects throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Her work includes projects for Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, New York University School of Law, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. She is a member of the President’s Council of Cornell Women, and was previously a university trustee.

Founded in 1857, the AIA NY is the oldest and largest chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The chapter’s members include over 4,400 practicing architects, allied professionals, students, and public members interested in architecture and design.AAP

In Memoriam

Perkins Leads Master Plan for Hanoi Perkins Eastman, the firm

of Advisory Council member Bradford Perkins ’67, was selected as the lead planner of the Hanoi Capital Construction Master Plan. The plan acts as a framework to guide the city’s development for the next 20 years and establishes a vision for the city to become one of the most livable, sustainable, and attractive world capital cities by 2050.

To organize and plan for Hanoi’s expected urban growth to over nine million people by 2030, a comprehensive planning approach was needed to encompass social, economic, physical, and environmental issues. Among the most important features of the plan is the accepted recommendation that 70 percent of Hanoi— including its remaining natural areas and most productive agricultural land—be permanently protected from further development as part of a broad sustainability strategy. A second major part of the plan calls for strict preservation of the historic structures and precincts; tree-lined streets, riverbanks, and lakes; and other features that make Hanoi an inherently beautiful and livable city.AAP

Young Alumni Making Connections

AAP young alumni have gathered twice in the past six months in New York City. This August, a group of more than 50 came together for a barbecue conceived and organized by Pete Klassen-Landis (B.Arch. ’06) and Emmett Van Riper (B.Arch. ’06).

In early November, more than 100 alumni gathered for a happy hour in Manhattan organized by AAP’s alumni affairs office. Barbeque attendees pictured at left include (from left), Jason Ahuja (B.Arch. ’06), Van Riper, Luke Clark Tyler (B.Arch. ’06), Arthur Liu (B.Arch.’06), and Patrick Farely (B.Arch. ’06). Photo: Pete Klassen-Landis.AAP

Thomas N. Armstrong III (B.F.A. ’54), former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Andy Warhol Museum, died on June 22 in Manhattan.

He was 78.

Born in 1932 in Portsmouth, Virginia, Armstrong grew up in Summit, New Jersey. He painted in high school and earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Cornell in 1954.

After serving in the Army, he worked for Stone & Webster, an engineering and securities firm, in Manhattan. But determined to make a career in the arts, he began studying museum administration at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1967.

In 1971 he was named director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he put into motion the renovation of the main building, a project completed in 1976.

Armstrong then succeeded John I. H. Baur as the director of the Whitney in 1974. Under Armstrong’s directorship, the museum had a number of important shows, including a Jasper Johns retrospective in 1978, and large exhibitions of Mark di Suvero, Cy Twombly, Marsden Hartley, and Alexander Calder. A controversial plan to expand the museum eventually led to Armstrong’s departure from the Whitney in 1990.

Armstrong is survived by his wife, two daughters, two sons, a sister, and seven grandchildren.AAP

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20 Alums Speak on World Trade Center Redevelopment Panel Opened in May 2006, the

rebuilt 7 World Trade Center—a 52-story, 1.7-million-square-foot office tower— marks the gateway to a new landscape of lower Manhattan. In a July 20, 2011 panel discussion at the offices at 7 World Trade Center, key players involved with the project provided an inside look at the planning, design, and reconstruction of the iconic New York City landscape.

The event was organized by Cornell Wall Street and included: Dean Kent Kleinman, moderator; and panelists Jeffrey Holmes (B.Arch. ’88), visiting lecturer at AAP NYC; Robin Panovka ’83; Drew Warshaw ’03; and David Worsley ’83, M.Eng. ’84.AAP

1 A ranch home in Collier Heights, a mid-20thcentury suburb created for and by African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia. Through Cloues’s efforts, the Collier Heights Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in June 2009. Photo: Georgia Department of Natural Resources/Historic Preservation Division.

Dragon Day New York City 2011

Cloues Turns Preservation Focus to the Common Ranch Having spent much of his career saving Victorian mansions, antebellum plantations, and other rare building types, preservationist Richard Cloues (M.A. HPP ’76, Ph.D. HAUD ’87) has recently turned his efforts to a completely different architectural genre: the modest ranch house.

Cloues, who was profiled in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, is leading one of the first state efforts to preserve and maintain some of the original ranch homes built in the 1940s, in Georgia.

“It’s just kind of a plain house—well, that was the point,” says Cloues. The ranch, which was cheap and practical, originated as a way to house soldiers returning from World War II. Millions of the homes were built, but by the mid-1970s they fell out of favor as Americans 1

started looking for more space and a second floor.

Cloues doesn’t want the style to be forgotten. In fact, he cherishes a third-grade report he wrote about the ranch, which he thought of as the epitome of modern living. “It was my ideal of a house,” he says.

As many ranch homes approach 50 years old, they become eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Cloues’s office, Georgia’s Historic Preservation Division, has created a manual to help state agencies and homeowners assess the historic value of ranch homes.

The criterion have generated such interest that a National Academy of Sciences panel was formed—with Cloues as a member—to announce nationwide guidelines next year.AAP

CRP Grads Begin Fall Semester with Faculty Positions Three 2011

graduates from CRP’s Ph.D. program were offered faculty positions shortly after completing their studies in the spring. They have begun work this fall in various planning departments across the country.

Andrew Rumbach joined the University of Hawaii as an assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. He is teaching a graduate seminar in disaster management and humanitarian assistance, which includes research from his dissertation titled, “The City Vulnerable: New Town Planning and the Geography of Disaster Risk in Kolkata, India.”

Doug Appler began a oneyear visiting position as the Helen Edwards Abell Chair in Historic Preservation at the University of Kentucky. In addition to teaching, he hopes to start preservationoriented community outreach projects, including emulating CRP’s work weekend, where students get hands-on experience in building preservation by saving an important community asset. See page 13 for details on Cornell’s spring 2011 work weekend.

Kate Lowe joined the faculty at the University of New Orleans as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Planning and Urban Studies.AAP

Alum Publishes Book on Depression-Era Community Angelique

Bamberg (M.A. HPP ’98) recently published Chatham Village: Pittsburgh’s Garden City (University of Pittsburgh Press), an exploration of the planned cooperative community that was conceived and constructed during the Great Depression by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright.

Bamberg investigates the issues faced by Stein and Wright, including developing a viable alternative to suburban sprawl; providing high-quality yet affordable housing in the private market; and fostering community in a time when urban and suburban environments seemed increasingly alienating.

She then draws parallels to challenges facing contemporary planners.

“What I found in Chatham Village was a neighborhood that presented very few preservation problems because it had been lovingly, meticulously preserved all along by a succession of owners and residents,” says Bamberg. “I became fascinated with the fact that Chatham Village’s planners concerned themselves with a strikingly similar set of issues to those that concern planners today.”

The book grew out of Bamberg’s Cornell master’s thesis, and was inspired by her adviser, the late Kermit C. (K. C.) Parsons, former chair of CRP.AAP

Jason Austin (B.Arch. ’00) Jennifer Baskerville (M.A. HPP ’94) Bradley Borthwick (M.F.A. ’05) Margaret Carney (B.Arch. ’80) Joel Carreiro (B.F.A. ’71) Lili Cheng (B.Arch. ’87) Hansen Clarke (B.F.A. ’84) Bradley Flamm (M.R.P. ’92) Robert Gatje (B.Arch. ’51) Peter Gerakaris (B.F.A. ’03) Kim Gillan (M.R.P. ’75) Anthony Graves (M.F.A. ’09) Joey Green (B.F.A. ’81) Ijeoma Iheanacho (B.Arch. ’01) Edward Kim-Yujoong (B.S. HAUD ’08) Jyanzi Kong (B.Arch. ’82) Kumiko T. Korf (M.F.A. ’77) John Lahey (B.Arch. ’75) Kevin Lim (B.Arch. ’08) Amanda Martocchio (B.Arch. ’84) Aleksandr Mergold (B.Arch. ’00) Pam Mikus (M.R.P. ’94) Kyle Miller (B.S. URS ’06) Mark J. O’Bryan (M.Arch. ’88) Chad Oppenheim (B.Arch. ’93) Joanna Pinsky (B.F.A. ’64) Joseph Podlesnik (M.F.A. ’92) Michael Rantilla (B.Arch. ’96) Shoji Sadao (B.Arch. ’54) Michael Savonis (M.R.P. ’85) Claudia Sbrissa (M.F.A. ’02) Ratan Tata (B.Arch. ’57) Martin Wolf (B.Arch. ’74) Brad Will (B.Arch. ’84) Renee Dake Wilson (B.Arch. ’92) Elizabeth Wu (B.Arch. ’08) TO SEE RECENT NEWS AND NOTES FROM THESE AND OTHER ALUMNI, VISIT AAP.CORNELL.EDU/ALUMNI/NEWS.

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Students visit Melnikov House during a trip to Moscow for Aleksandr Mergold’s option studio, The Third Way. Photo: Ishita Sitwala (M.Arch. ’12).

News11 Winter2011

Cornell University 129 Sibley Dome Ithaca, NY 14853-6701 aap.cornell.edu