AAP News 21

News21

Spring 2017 Thirty Years of Cornell in Rome 2 Fall Field Trips 10 Mural by Maria Park 19 Remembering Susan Christopherson 24

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) 254-6292 aapcommunications@cornell.edu aap.cornell.edu

 Rebecca Bowes, Elise Gold Dan Aloi, Rebecca Bowes, Edith Fikes, Patti Witten design KUDOS Design Collaboratory copy editor Laura Glenn photography William Staffeld (unless otherwise noted) distribution coordinator Sheri D’Elia editors

contributing writers

Cornell in Rome students and faculty members Jeffrey Blanchard (not pictured), Davide Marchetti, and Henry Richardson visit the Castelvecchio Bridge in Verona during a field trip to Northern Italy. photo / Sean Steed (B.Arch. ’18)

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© April 2017 Cornell University Printed on Rolland Enviro 100 Satin, a Forestry Stewardship Council stock.

Printed by Brodock Press, Utica, New York. Brodock Press is a member of the Forest Stewardship Council and the EPA’s Green Suppliers Network.

Dean’s Message It all seems normal. As I look out at the Arts Quad, the students are crisscrossing the not-yet-green field, plugged in as usual. The Cornell Baker Program in Real Estate students just returned from South Korea while the M.F.A. students are preparing for their study trip to Berlin. Classes are in session and studios have kicked off with the always impressive array of conceptually challenging topics for sites and societies across the globe. Many are taught by distinguished international faculty who cycle in and out of the studios during the course of the semester.

But behind the scenes it is anything but normal. On January 27, the White House issued Executive Order 13769 that temporarily banned immigration from seven majorityMuslim countries, and expanded the authority of federal immigration officers within the United States. I immediately had to do what I have never done before—check the nationality of our students and faculty. Would any of our Cornell in Rome students be prevented from returning? Would those in traveling studios holding valid J-1 or F-1 student visas face difficulties at the airports? Would any visiting faculty member not be able—or willing—to come to Ithaca? Would any of our Ithaca faculty with permanent residency status or dual citizenship be unable to travel for scholarly events? Are our Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) students in danger of deportation? Would any lectures need to be canceled? Would 2017 admissions offers be affected?

To state the obvious: We are a globally connected institution.

Our faculty and students come from all corners of the world, and we travel to all corners to share and gain knowledge. Our diversity—geographic and otherwise—is not supplemental to our identity but central to our mission and critical to our excellence. Targeting entire countries and stereotyping individuals based on national origin is simply not the way we think or operate at AAP.

Psychoactive Animalia by Kris Kuksi, from Kuksi and Neil Spiller’s exhibition Extreme Dreams, which was on display in John Hartell Gallery in October and November.

Cornell has taken a strong stance in defense of international scholarly exchange and global connectedness. In February, we joined 16 other colleges and universities in filing a friendsof-the-court (amici curiae) brief to the class action case brought by the People of the State New York. This powerful document reaffirms not only the centrality of global exchange in the life and work of research universities but the reciprocal benefits that come with open doors and minds: “Amici’s ability to foster rich educational environments depends in large part on their ability to attract students, faculty, and scholars from around the globe. The international members of amici’s communities contribute to the vibrant campus life, world-class educational offerings, and research and discoveries for which amici are well known. The contributions of these individuals redound to the benefit not only of the other members of amici’s campus communities, but also to the United States, and the world, more generally.”

Higher education in the United States is a national treasure.

Nowhere are the values of fact-based knowledge, self-discovery, critical inquiry, and academic freedom more fully embraced and nourished than in our finest institutions of higher learning.

Keeping our classrooms, studios, and laboratories open to the world’s most talented and motivated faculty and students is part of what makes our system of education strong. Any person. Any study. Any country.

Yours,

Kent Kleinman Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning

News21

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Cornell in Rome Turns 30 Mellon Grant Extension, Architecture Rankings, CJOA, Future Architects Award Symposium on Indian Architecture, 2016 CCA Biennial HPP 40th Anniversary, Braga Opera, Portfolio Development Day Fall 2016 Lectures and Exhibitions

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Student Profile: Hung Vo (B.S. URS ’17) 10 Polish Estate Revival, Fall Field Trips 14 M.R.P. in Los Angeles, Student Notes 15 Teiger Mentor, Water Management in Greece

Faculty&Staff

16 Faculty Profile: Luben Dimcheff, Architecture 18 Books by Cruvellier and Dimcheff, Woods, and Goldsmith; Faculty and Staff Notes 19 Mural by Maria Park

Alumni

20 Alumni Profile: Louise Lawler (B.F.A. ’69) 22 Lifetime Achievement Award for Raúl de Armas, M.R.P. Young Alumni Panel, Alia Fierro at HUD 23 Rodriguez Award, Jill Magid in The New Yorker, Baskerville-Burrows Elected Bishop 24 A Tribute to Susan Christopherson

Insert Lake House Stories, Charisse Foo (B.Arch. ’18)

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Thirty Years of Cornell in Rome 2 Fall Field Trips 10 Mural by Maria Park 19

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Remembering Susan Christopherson 24

News&Events

Cornell in Rome 30th Anniversary The evolution of the Cornell in Rome program began in 1985 with an exhibition of student work from Colin Rowe’s urban design studio at Peruzzi’s lauded Palazzo Massimo alle Collonne.

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An innovative educator and groundbreaking scholar, Rowe’s unique contribution to the discipline reopened dialogue on the city, and the event as a whole helped to establish the venue as a first home for the program.

Rowe’s time on the faculty at Cornell coincided with that of Architecture, Art, and Planning Dean William McMinn who worked with faculty members John Shaw, architecture; and Jack Squier, art; as well as active supporter and alumnus Roberto Einaudi (B.Arch. ’61) to fully realize Cornell in Rome, now the longest-running international study program at the university.

“We were in unknown waters because there was no structure in place for international study at Cornell, but we knew that the mechanisms would follow, so we focused on the spirit of what the program should be,” said McMinn, reminiscing. “It would have been easy to plan for a program that disappears, but we wanted to establish a new academic center for learning that would last.”

After a summer of intense planning, the first group of students arrived at Palazzo Massimo in the fall of 1986. Einaudi was the program’s first director, and Squier and Shaw were among the first AAP faculty to teach art and architecture in the program. In the fall of 1988 the program became college-wide when Porus Olpadwala taught the first planning courses.

The strong and lasting connection between the Ithaca and Roman campuses makes the program unique among similar international programs and has allowed for pedagogical continuity as students immerse themselves in a new city.

Stan Taft, associate professor of art, has been teaching between Ithaca and Rome for 20 years and sees his students in Rome engage with their new environment in different, yet equally valuable ways. “For some students, the city provides an inexhaustible source of imagery and conceptual frameworks. For others, the distance from familiar spaces allows for a more objective view of familiar subjects.” According to Taft, the crucial takeaway for students who study abroad has consistently been the creative confidence they develop from their increased sense of independence.

Current administrative director Anna Rita Flati also notes personal growth: “I see students mature as they are challenged to integrate with the culture while maintaining their identity. It is incredible to watch them grow and adjust to everything they encounter

here.” Flati has been with the program since its inception and has welcomed more than 2,500 students to Rome.

The program also takes students outside of Rome.

Longtime faculty members Jeffrey Blanchard and Jan Gadeyne lead students on approximately 20 days’ worth of travel through several different regions of Italy each semester, and students often come together to coordinate short, self-led trips. The relationships they build both within and across their respective disciplines as they travel, live, study, and collaborate extend beyond their time abroad.

“Now back on campus, I see an implicit bond between all who went to Rome,” says Victoria Phillips (B.S. URS ’17). “Studying abroad deepened our friendships as peers in a small college. We lived, shopped, cooked, traveled, explored, sketched, danced, cried, and laughed our way through some of the most lifechanging times in our lives.”

Phillips was part of the first group of students to study at the current Cornell in Rome location, Palazzo Santacroce, where AAP continues to invite and support students from across the Cornell campus and beyond.

The program moved to Santacroce in spring 2016 after a transition from its second location at Palazzo Lazzaroni, where it was housed beginning in 1997.

Santacroce adds more than 2,500 square feet of physical space, which allows for further expansion of both academic programming and functional capacity.

With the move to Palazzo Santacroce, Cornell in Rome has approximately doubled in size both in student enrollment and square footage since its 1987 opening at Palazzo Massimo. The program looks toward continued growth as it adds architecture courses for students from outside of AAP, as well as internships and other career-oriented options. After three decades, the original vision for a durable program remains not only intact but also vibrant and very much a cornerstone of the AAP experience.

“The college is as deeply dedicated to the life and growth of the Rome program as it was 30 years ago,” says Kent Kleinman, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP. “The creation of a site for teaching and learning in one of the world’s most interesting urban centers has become an extension of the college’s commitment to expanding curricular offerings that have from the beginning been remarkably significant to the lives of our Ithaca-based students and faculty.”AAP Edith Fikes

1 Cornell in Rome’s academic director Jeffrey Blanchard, second from right, with students in his fall 2016 class Special Topics in the History of Architecture and Urbanism: Urban Design, Architecture, and Art in Renaissance Rome. photo / Jeannette Pang (B.Arch. ’19) 2 Cornell in Rome Administrative Director Anna Rita Flati making pasta with students. photo / Jeannette Pang (B.Arch. ’19) 3 Students with professors Beniniamo Placido (bottom row, second from left) and Charles Pearman (bottom row at right) in the art studio of Palazzo Massimo, sometime in the 1980s. photo / Anna Rita Flati 4 Assistant Professor Jeremy Foster (left) and Kelly Shannon (right), an expert on contemporary Vietnamese cityscapes, on a tour of Cà Mau in Vietnam.

The city was a site of focus in Flux Navigation, the second Mellon Collaborative Studies seminar. photo / Han Zhang (M.Arch. ’15)

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5 Devin Heard, one of three high school students to receive the Cornell inaugural Future Architect Award.

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Inaugural Future Architects Award Recipients Attend Summer Architecture Program

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Mellon Grant Extends Collaborative Seminar Series The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has approved $1.1 million to extend the Mellon Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities (AUH) interdisciplinary seminar series at Cornell for four years.

“The grant supports innovative, cross-disciplinary coursework on one of the most pressing problems of this generation: the rapid growth of global cities,” said Kent Kleinman, the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP), which shares planning, oversight, and administration of the seminars with Cornell’s Society for the Humanities.

Since the foundation’s initial grant of $1.46 million in 2013, Cornell has offered six AUH seminars, studying the global city from the perspectives of humanist scholars and architectural and urban designers.

Seminars have explored such topics as urban representations (e.g., through art and film) of Harlem and the South Bronx, bio-politics and urban aesthetics in Southeast Asia, mapping urbanization in the Amazon, and urban and political changes in Cuba. Students from fields as diverse as Hispanic literature, Latin American and Africana studies, creative writing, city planning, anthropology, and architecture have participated since 2014.

Seminars supported by the new grant will commence in the fall. The series has two novel pedagogical formats: Urban Representation Labs, studying cities and their many representations; and Expanded Practice Seminars, in which a particular urban condition is studied both in the classroom and in situ.

“Cornell’s innovative pedagogy in architecture, urbanism, and the humanities is organized around a comparative,

global perspective, which is indicative of Cornell’s commitment to internationalization,” said Timothy Murray, the Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities and professor of comparative literature and English. “The Mellon Foundation’s grant will permit us to continue pairing graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the humanities and architecture for innovative study of the urban, built, and artistic environment across the globe, from the Americas to Asia.”

In addition, the grant offers Cornell faculty “the exciting opportunity to remain in consortial dialogue with colleagues in other American universities” also participating in the Mellon AUH initiative, he said.

“The Mellon Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities seminars offer some of Cornell’s most exciting intellectual engagements with urbanism in its layered complexity,” Kleinman said. “Viewed from multiple perspectives, tackled with novel sets of tools, and analyzed with methods derived from both design and humanities disciplines—rarely has the global city been interrogated with more intensity and creativity.”

The grant names Kleinman and Murray as principal investigators. The series oversight committee also includes University Librarian Anne Kenney and Stephanie Wiles, the Schwartz Director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. “With interdisciplinary scholarship at the heart of the College of Arts and Sciences, we are excited to join with AAP in this ongoing collaboration between the colleges,” said Gretchen Ritter ’83, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences. “We are grateful to the Mellon Foundation for making this possible.”AAP

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The first three recipients of the Cornell Future Architects Award (CFAA) attended the college’s Introduction to Architecture Summer Program on campus in June and July.

Mesha Johnson, Lee Gregory, and Devin Heard received the award, which aims to give students from historically underrepresented backgrounds a chance to experience the rigors of a professional bachelor of architecture degree program.

Founded with a gift from Bill ’69 and Catherine Perez, the CFAA is a merit-based award that provides funding for high school students who may want to pursue a degree or career in architecture but are not able to attend a summer program because of cost. Students who have shown an interest and talent for design are invited to apply for the award, which covers all expenses related to the program. Once in Ithaca, students are exposed to the ideas, principles, and methods of exploring architectural problems in a studio setting while preparing elements of a competitive portfolio for application to design-based programs.

“This gift was the result of a conversation Kent Kleinman and I had about diversity and the barriers to attracting underrepresented students to AAP and, in particular, architecture,” said Perez, who is a university trustee. “Kent’s hypothesis was that young people needed exposure to the field of architecture, and that we could make a difference by offering talented high school students an opportunity to attend a free summer program.”

Heard agrees. “In six weeks, I learned to be more creative and open to thinking through problems related to both life and architecture,” he said.

Perez adds, “The feedback from Mesha, Lee, and Devin, the program’s first students, made it all worthwhile.”AAP

The Cornell Journal of Architecture Releases Volume 10, “Spirits” Focusing on the worlds beyond the physical manifestation of architecture, “Spirits,” volume 10 of The Cornell Journal of Architecture, was released on Halloween.

“This issue threads together many during the spring 2015 semester. During readings of spirits—from the virtual to the class, the students focused on the atmospheric, from ghost cities interviewing and editing as well as to haunted houses, and from represenillustrating and producing “Spirits.” tation to alcohol,” said Editor-in-Chief The students who comprised the Caroline O’Donnell, Edgar A. Tafel editorial board of “Spirits” include Assistant Professor of Architecture and Snigdha Agarwal (M.Arch. ’15), the director of the M.Arch. program.

Stephanie Cheung (B.Arch. ’18), Maur “The journal’s themes aim to be of Dessauvage (B.Arch. ’16), Katie Donahue Cornell but also span from the tradi(M.Arch. ’15), Jennifer Kathleen Dumler tional to the avant-garde. ‘Spirits’ talks ’15, Peta Feng (B.Arch. ’16), Andreea about the intangible and invisible parts Gulerez (M.Arch. ’16), Jose Ibarra of architecture, from the traditional (B.Arch. ’16), Tamara Z. Jamil (B.Arch. notions like Genius Loci—spirit of place— ’16), Siobhan Lee (M.Arch. ’16), John to the virtual.”

Lai (B.Arch. ’17), Whitney Liang (M.Arch.

The Cornell Journal of Architecture was ’16), Nikki Liao (B.Arch. ’15), Apexa conceptualized, designed, and reviewed Patel (M.Arch. ’16), Gosia Pawlowska by students in ARCH 4300 Architectural (B.Arch. ’16), and Whitney Van Houten Publications: Sojourns, led by O’Donnell (M.Arch. ’16).AAP

Cornell Architecture Holds Leading Positions in 2017 Rankings

Happening on Instagram @cornellaap

Cornell retained its leading positions in the annual rankings of top architecture schools—number one for undergraduate programs and number two for graduate programs (tied with MIT). The survey, published in Architectural Record and titled “America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools,” is conducted annually

by DesignIntelligence on behalf of the Design Futures Council.AAP News21 | Spring 2017

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News&Events

Symposium Showcases Architectural Practice and Design in India

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Architects, scholars, and students gathered at Cornell over the course of three days in late October for the 2016 Preston Thomas Memorial Lecture Series symposium, “Currents in Indian Architecture: Contemporary Practice + Discourse.” The symposium was hosted by the Department of Architecture and organized by Luben Dimcheff, the Richard Meier Assistant Professor in Architecture; and Mary N. Woods, professor of architecture; with assistance from Apexa Patel (M.Arch. ’16).

The event featured keynote speakers Brinda Somaya, of Somaya and Kalappa Consultants in Mumbai; and Kaiwan Mehta, editor of DOMUS India, who each presented crucial narratives of contemporary Indian architecture.

In addition to the keynote addresses, lectures were presented by Sanjeev Shankar, architect, Bengaluru; Abin Chaudhuri, Abin Design Studio, Kolkata; Shimul Javeri Kadri, SJK Architects, Mumbai; Sarosh Anklesaria, Anthill Design, Ahmedabad/New York City; Madhav Raman, Anagram Architects, New Delhi; Revathi Kamath and Ayodh Kamath, Kamath Design Studio, New Delhi; and Sameep Padora, sP+a, Mumbai.

Enhancing the symposium was an exhibition, curated and designed by Dimcheff and Patel, of books and publications drawn from the collection of the Cornell Fine Arts Library, all related to India’s vernacular architecture and diverse cultural landscape.

The Preston H. Thomas Memorial Lecture Series was established in 1975 by the parents of Thomas, who was an architecture student at Cornell when he was killed in an automobile accident.AAP

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Cornell Council for the Arts 2016 Biennial Focuses on Empathy The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) 2016 Biennial, Abject/Object Empathies, featured 12 new projects by invited artists, Cornell faculty members, and students.

Works were presented on campus between September 15 and December 22—with the artist-in-residence portion extending into the spring semester—all on the theme of the cultural production of empathy.

According to CCA Director Stephanie Owens, empathy acknowledges the presence and the struggles of others—and contemporary art, in addressing questions of human empathy, can intersect with multiple fields such as philosophy, neuroscience, and biology.

The biennial opened with a talk by artist-in-residence Pepón Osorio, whose work is experiential, site-specific, and often reflects social and political realities. With a background as a social worker, he accepted an invitation to work with Cornell faculty to understand the university as a representational system and a site of overlapping social realities. Osorio develops multimedia installations over time after getting to know a place from the people who know it best. He will develop a site-specific installation for the Arts Quad, to open in April 2017.

Other invited artists included Teresa Diehl (Revolution, organized by Sara Garzon ’19), playwright Rama Haydar, and sculptor Janet Echleman.

Building Community—a group of Cornell students, recent alumni, and volunteers led by Rand Hall Shop manager Daniel Salomon, Cameron Neuhoff (B.Arch. ’16), and Isabella Crowley (B.Arch. ’17)— created Traveling Tool Library, a flexible, mobile space that features a tool-share program that can host public events such as performances, readings, workshops, and exhibitions. Other student projects included Hear Me, an installation at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art by Min Keun Park (B.Arch. ’17).

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Faculty artists contributing to the biennial included architecture’s Edgar A. Tafel Assistant Professor Caroline O’Donnell, visiting artist Caroline Woolard, assistant professor of music Ariana Kim, architecture professor Aleksandr Mergold (B.Arch. ’00), associate professor of human development Corinna Loeckenhoff, and performing and media arts faculty Jumay Chu. Abject/Object Empathies was the second CCA biennial, following Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology, which was held on campus in the fall of 2014. The CCA is a university-wide organization that provides a platform for the creation of and public discourse on the contemporary arts on campus. Owens, who is also a visiting professor in art, directs the organization, and Kent Kleinman, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP, is the lead dean.AAP 1 Kaiwan Mehta giving his keynote address at the “Currents in Indian Architecture” symposium.

2 Shimul Javeri Kadri, at left, and keynote speaker Brinda Somaya, right, during the closing panel discussion.

3 Sarosh Anklesaria speaking during the closing panel.

4 An exhibition in Milstein Hall dome of books and publications from the Cornell Fine Arts Library, related to Indian architecture.

5 Biennial artist-in-residence Pepón Osorio. Jason Koski / Cornell Marketing Group 6 Building Community’s Traveling Tool Library outside the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art during the biennial. photo / David Burbank

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Historic Preservation Planning Celebrates 40 Years

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On October 14 and 15, the graduate program in Historic Preservation Planning (HPP) celebrated four decades as a leading generator of preservation professionals and educators.

Alumni traveled from around the country to present their research, current work, and overall perspectives on different aspects of preservation and planning at on-campus lectures and exhibitions, and a full-day symposium held at Ithaca’s State Theatre.

The events opened with a lecture by Trudi Sandmeier (M.A. HPP ’00), director of graduate programs in heritage conservation and associate professor of practice in architecture at the University of Southern California.

Sandmeier’s lecture, “Conservation Planning on the Edge: A ‘Left’ist Perspective,” focused on California— the edge of the continent, the cutting edge, and sometimes the edge of reason—which, according to Sandmeier, provides a unique laboratory to explore all aspects of conservation, as well as opportunities to protect the best of the past while embracing the landmarks of the future.

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Panel sessions held at the State Theatre included a retrospective overview of the HPP program, a discussion of approaches to architectural and cultural preservation, and, more broadly, the politics of practice in the field.

The celebration concluded with a keynote lecture on the preservation of sprawl by Bob Bruegmann, professor emeritus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, with responses from Sandmeier and CRP assistant professors Suzanne Lanyi Charles and Jennifer Minner.

Included among the faculty, alumni, and guest speakers were W. Ted Alexander (M.A. HPP ’85); Jennifer Buddenborg (M.A. HPP ’05); Nathaniel C. Guest ’98 (M.A. HPP ’12); Mahyar Hadighi (M.A. HPP ’14); Julee Johnson (M.A. HPP ’85); Ashima Krishna (M.A. HPP ’08, Ph.D. CRP ’14); Ph.D. candidate in CRP Katelin Olson (M.A. HPP ’09); Ross Pristera (M.A. HPP ’09); and Professor Michael A. Tomlan, director of the graduate program in HPP. The event was organized by Jeff Chusid, associate professor in CRP.AAP

Richard Meier & Partners Architects Hosts Second Portfolio Development Day 2 1 Bob Bruegmann’s keynote presentation at the State Theatre in Ithaca, during the HPP 40th Anniversary Celebration.

2 Panelists including (seated from left) assistant professors Jennifer Minner and Suzanne Lanyi Charles, and Trudi Sandmeier (M.A. HPP ’00) during the HPP 40th Anniversary Celebration.

3 Eyes That Do Not See included a 12-piece chamber orchestra, two dancers, a five-voice women’s choir, and tenor soloist Jonathan Fisher ’17.

Patrick Braga (B.A./B.S. URS ’17) (foreground at left) conducted the performance. photo / provided

4 Vivian Lee (right), an associate partner at Richard Meier & Partners Architects, with students during Portfolio Development Day. photo / Zachary Tyler Newton (M.Arch. ’11)

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Architecture Meets Mythology in Opera by Patrick Braga Patrick Braga (B.A./B.S. URS ’17) brought his academic interests in urban planning, architecture, and music together in his latest opera, Eyes That Do Not See (opus 42).

Based on the work and ideas of the architect Le Corbusier, and using the myth of Prometheus as a narrative framework, the opera premiered with a free performance in November in the Milstein Hall dome. The production featured multimedia, a 12-piece chamber orchestra, two dancers, a five-voice women’s choir, and tenor soloist Jonathan Fisher ’17.

The figures of Le Corbusier and Prometheus intersect to explore several themes, including “the unintended consequences of technology,” according to Braga. “Because urban planning can be very dramatic—you go to any city hall meetings, any of these moments can be part of a dramatic narrative,” Braga said. “City planning is something that touches peoples’ lives in a really deep way.”

Braga is majoring in urban and regional studies in AAP, and music and economics in the College of Arts and Sciences. A Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell

Presidential Research Scholar and Mellon fellow, he traveled to Cuba as part of the fall 2016 Mellon Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities expanded practice seminar. In addition to Havana, his urban studies research focused on ideas of modern architecture, their implementation, and architectural practice in Boston, Washington, DC, and his home city, Rio de Janeiro. While in Boston conducting his presidential research scholarship, Braga came across the city’s comprehensive plan from 1965. “I use a couple of lines from that in the opera,” he said, to show Le Corbusier outlining the use of arterial streets or highways through a city.

Braga’s first opera, La Tricotea (opus 25), was performed in December 2015 in Barnes Hall. He chose the Milstein Hall dome for Eyes That Do Not See after seeing a performance of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale there in 2015, during the Department of Music’s Mayfest.

“The acoustics actually worked,” he said. “And what better place to do a work about modern architecture?”AAP

B.Arch. students studying at AAP NYC Handel Architects. “For many of them, during the fall semester had the opporthis was the first time they had ever tunity to receive personalized critiques done a portfolio review and their work on their portfolios from experienced and ideas were very compelling. Handel practitioners. Fourth- and fifth-year archi- Architects is always looking for talented tecture students met with architects graduates and the fresh and energetic from several firms during the second perspectives they bring—and there was AAP Connect Portfolio Development no shortage of that at this event.”

Day, held this year at Richard Meier & “At Cornell, your design work feels Partners Architects in New York City. as much a part of your life as eating, The daylong event combined presenbreathing, and sleeping,” adds Joseph tations, networking, and individual DeSense (B.Arch. ’09), senior designer portfolio reviews to help the students at Richard Meier & Partners Architects. prepare for their upcoming job search.

“It can be very difficult to present it to The day began with a presentation by a person without that intimate knowlVivian Lee, a partner with Richard Meier edge and understanding of it. The ability & Partners Architects, titled “Portfolios: to do so is not only a part of a successful Best Practices and Do’s and Don’ts.” design presentation, but part of a “[Vivian] Lee’s presentation gave us successful portfolio as well. I hope that specific examples of what a good portfothe individual reviews we had with the lio is versus one that isn’t as effective,” students gave them an opportunity to says Xi Yu (B.Arch. ’18). “We learned step back from their work for a moment how important the portfolio’s layout and approach it as an outsider, much can be in conveying a project clearly.” like an interviewer would.”

The presentation was followed by The practicing architects who partia Q&A session, lunch and networking cipated in the event included Gustavo time, and then individual one-on-one Rodriguez from FXFOWLE; Erica Cho critiques with a group of AAP alumni (B.Arch. ’15) from Kohn Pederson Fox who are currently practicing architects Associates; John Lura (M.Arch. ’11) from in New York City.

MdeAS Architects; Natalie Pierro (B.Arch.

“Being around Cornell alumni made ’09) and Jeffrey Lu (B.Arch. ’14) from conversation easy and enjoyable,” says RAMSA; Donahue; Stephen Moser Anna Orlando (B.Arch. ’17). “Not having (B.Arch. ’81) from Moser Architect; to worry about formal interview standards Dario Brito, Keith Binnie, and Stephanie and expectations made the focus on Zhao (M.Arch. ’14) from Perkins Eastour work extremely constructive in a man; and DeSense, Lee, and Will Smith more relaxed setting.”

(M.Arch. ’12) from Richard Meier & “I was impressed with how eager and Partners Architects.AAP ambitious the students were,” says Katie Donahue (M.Arch. ’15), an associate at News21 | Spring 2017

News&Events

Fall 2016 Lectures and Exhibitions aap.cornell.edu/events LECTURES

Frank Barkow Phillip Berke Ronit Bezalel, Deirdre Brewster, Raymond McDonald, and Mark Pratt Claudia Cortínez and Martyna Szczesna Jean Pierre Crousse Edgar A. Tafel Lecture Series Matthew Drennan Craig Dykers 10 Edgar A. Tafel Lecture Series Lance Freeman Javier Galindo (M.Arch. ’11) Wynne Greenwood 7 Tenaglia Family Lecture Gisue Hariri (B.Arch. ’80) 3 Troels Steenholdt Heiredal Anna Heringer FXFOWLE Lecture for Sustainability, Urbanism, and Design Mitchell Joachim Nathalie Jolivert, Rejin Leys, Jerry Philogene, and Andy Robert Craig Kalpakjian Teiger Mentor in the Arts Patty Keller Michelle Komie Justine Kurland Hiroko Kusunoki and Nicolas Moreau Edgar A. Tafel Lecture Series Amy Lewis (B.Arch. ’08) Zhi Liu Claire McClinton 2 Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample Jamila Michener Nicole Miller Elizabeth Mueller Pepón Osorio Pedro A. H. Paixão Richard Peiser Thomas Phifer 8 Giuseppe Piccioni William Powhida Maggie Prendergast (B.F.A. ’11)

Andrew Rumbach (M.R.P. ’08, Ph.D. CRP ’11) Trudi Sandmeier (M.Arch. ’00) 4 Gerardo Francisco Sandoval Felicity Scott Michael Smart Michael Sriprasert and Arthur P. Ziegler Siv Helene Stangeland FXFOWLE Lecture for Sustainability, Urbanism, and Design Todd Swanstrom Laura Tach Wolfgang Tschapeller (M.Arch. ’87) 5 Caroline Woolard Matthew Weinstein

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EXHIBITIONS

2016 CCA Biennial: Abject/Object Empathies Extreme Dreams Kris Kuksi and Neil Spiller Goldwater: Autopsy of a Hospital Homo Ludens: The Architecture of Play 9 It Takes More than Nostalgia: Celebrating 50 Years of Historic Ithaca and Community Preservation Polyphony 1 Yue Gu (M.Arch. ’16), Liu Jingyang (M.Arch. ’15), and Shining (Christina) Sun (B.Arch. ’17) Structural Systems Class Models, Fall 2016 Urban Fabric Lukasz Kos and Andrei Zerebecky Work in Progress: The Restoration of Lynn Hall 6

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Thumbnail X On October 31, the annual Thumbnail event featured a group of speakers presenting how they interpret X, and how it has manifested in their lives in both the ordinary and extraordinary.

Thumbnail is an open forum for the exchange of ideas based on the model of PechaKucha, an explicit format of 20 slides at 20 seconds each. The aim is to incite, enliven, and cross-fertilize ideas from many disciplines at Cornell through a visually based platform designed around a single topic.AAP At right: A slide from Edgar A. Tafel Assistant Professor Caroline O’Donnell’s presentation for X.

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70 Acres Screening A panel discussion was held at AAP NYC after the screening of 70 Acres in Chicago, a critically acclaimed documentary film made by Ronit Bezalel. 70 Acres chronicles the redevelopment of Cabrini-Green, a public housing development on the Near North Side of Chicago, into a market-rate, mixed-income housing development through the federal HOPE VI grant program. Panelists included (from left) CabriniGreen resident and the film’s producer Mark Pratt; Bezalel; Deidre Brewster, one of the few residents to return to the mixed-income homes; and Raymond McDonald, who grew up in the housing development. The panel was moderated by Assistant Professor Suzanne Lanyi Charles, CRP (not pictured).AAP

News21 | Spring 2017

Students

Profile

of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he majored in political science. His goal at the time was to run for state senate, but, he says, “I realized that planning was more grounded in my interest than politics and would give me more actionable and practical skills.” Vo declared a minor in planning, but when two of his planning courses were canceled, he looked for an undergraduate program that he could transfer to.

AAP’s Department of City and Regional Planning was his first choice. He says, “Given its history of progressive and activist planning, I was very excited by what the CRP professors were doing at Cornell, especially professors Mildred Warner and John Forester.” Vo was one of three transfer students admitted for the fall of 2015.

CRP’s classes and level of scholarship were immediately inspiring. Vo was drawn to Forester’s emphasis on participatory planning in the areas of ethics and political deliberation, especially as Forester expressed it in an editorial written for Planning Theory & Practice.

Forester’s premise in the piece was that the context of a project becomes an imagined obstacle for many planners. For his thesis project, titled The Social Construction of Impossibility, Vo follows this premise through interviews with planning professionals who answer questions about how they overcome naysayers and their own attitudes about challenges in their work. It was a natural fit that Forester became Vo’s thesis advisor.

“My goal is to have the thesis add to what Professor Forester understands about the politics of planning and to offer lessons to planners on being entrepreneurial with their opportunities,” Vo explains. “I want to demonstrate real practice stories of people overcoming challenges, getting into details of their own social construction of what was possible with the context they had.”

A semester in Rome gave him even more insights.

Professor Emeritus Roger Trancik’s Rome Workshop provided Vo with a theoretical foundation and a notion of how to make sense of the built environment, as he proposed interventions and experimented with design and traffic flow for his class project.

Also inspiring was the seminar class Demographic Change and the Built Environment, taught by Assistant Professor Suzanne Lanyi Charles, which focused on discussions of policy and design proposals to adapt to immigration/migration and residential mobility— topics of great interest to Vo. Vo credits his Cornell studies for his effectiveness in the U.N. work, and attributes his advancement and involvement within the organization to the U.N.’s commitment to promoting youth involvement.

“The training at Cornell has given me a habit of critical thinking—to analyze situations, be confident in my beliefs, and take these skills to engage in the U.N. work. I’ve become a better writer, and the focus of Professor Forester’s class, Planning History and Practice, on deliberative pragmatism and negotiation Youth Report for 2015–16. In his work for the Global informs my work in youth-led development where you Environment Outlook, Vo believes that he offers a are lobbying for complex relations.” unique take on planning language, which makes the “My B.S. URS degree offers a trifecta,” Vo adds. report resonate for everyday readers. “It can’t be for everyone if scientists write in a way that is understood “Policy study from Professor Charles, a strong theoretical background with Professor Forester, and the only by other scientists,” he says. design component from the Rome program. I think In October 2016, he attended the U.N. Habitat III these are the three core elements of what it takes to Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development, become a good planner.” held in Quito, Ecuador. His extensive list of conference In addition to his studies this spring, Vo traveled activities included moderating the launch of the State of the Urban Youth Summary Report at the conference, to Berlin in February, where he met with the city’s mayor to follow up on planning a Youth Development sitting on a roundtable held at the Canadian Embassy conference, followed by a trip to Rome for an author’s to promote youth development, speaking with the meeting for UNEP Global Environment Outlook. mayor of Berlin about hosting a conference there in Focused on the future, as much as on his busy 2017, and forming a team that aims to build a youth present, Vo hopes to obtain his master’s degree in center in Istanbul for refugee-training skills.

But he was most excited about a “tactical urbanism” planning from Cornell and afterward enter public service. He is contemplating the Presidential event at the conference—an impromptu meeting Management Fellows program administered by the of Ecuadorian youth leaders and conference attendees U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which is that was not on the official agenda. As one of the considered a pathway to senior policy advisor positions unscheduled moderators, he helped give voice to the in government agencies. He is interested in working Latin American youth, who, he says, were there as at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developobservers but had no power, defined role, or position ment, because of its public housing programs and its prior to the session. precise approach to urban development.

Vo’s work at the U.N. and his studies at Cornell “My dream is that I could become an instrumental are informed by his personal history and experiences advisor for the U.N.’s next set of goals 20 years from growing up in an immigrant family. Recalling a time now at Habitat IV,” says Vo. “I want to continue when his father was denied housing in Lincoln until my research, because planning professionals have a white friend intervened, Vo admits that “this kind tremendous impact on the U.N. system.” of early experience framed my personal attitudes “But another year will give me some time because about life and the issues I am interested in, namely I’m already so busy,” he says, speculating that the new helping marginalized communities—whether they Secretary General, António Guterres, may illuminate are identified by ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, or fresh opportunities. gender—within the urban space.”

“My problem is that I have so many interests and I The passion for helping marginalized communities want to do everything.”AAP Patti Witten translated to a desire to pursue planning when Vo took his first college course in the subject. In the fall 2013 he began undergraduate studies at the University

URS Student Reaches for the Furthest Left Behind

It is an understatement to say that Hung Vo’s (B.S. URS ’17) energy and wide-ranging interests are impressive for someone his age.

“I get asked a lot about how I became an activist at such a young age,” says Vo, who is the 2015–17 North America Representative on the U.N.-Habitat Youth Advisory Board. “If you show up and demonstrate that you are dependable, the opportunities multiply.”

Vo is referring to the three nominations he recently received for a fellowship for Global Environment Outlook—a series of reports on the environment by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), work he has undertaken in addition to his role in U.N.Habitat.

The interest in this work stems from Vo’s experience growing up in an immigrant family. When he was seven years old, Vo emigrated with his mother from Vietnam to Lincoln, Nebraska. They joined Vo’s father, who had been forced to leave them behind when he emigrated to the U.S. just two weeks before Vo was born. Vo attended public schools in Lincoln, and, while still in high school, became interested in a career in public service and grassroots organizing.

It began with a chance meeting at a protest rally he attended at the Nebraska State Capitol. The rally opposed LB 48, the Illegal Immigration Enforcement Act—a proposed bill allowing police officers to solicit citizen documentation from traffic stops, effectively targeting persons of color first. At the rally, Vo was mistaken for a college student and offered an internship at Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law during the summer of 2011. During the internship, Vo worked on foster care, welfare reform, community organizing, and joined the Major Group for Children and Youth, one of nine Major Groups appointed by the U.N. Secretary General. His participation with Children and Youth was the start of a passion for youth development programs within the U.N. Vo manages to fit in his U.N. work, as well as blogging about youth development for Huffington Post, with the requirements of CRP’s honors program. “In my U.N. work I affiliate with the concept of reaching the furthest left behind, starting with them and seeing how urban planning can impact them,” he says.

On the Youth Advisory Board, Vo helped with production of the U.N.-Habitat Global State of the Urban

Real Bags—Chanel Nicole Yan (B.F.A. ’20), Real Bags—Chanel (2016), plastic deer fence, wire, and spray paint, 10" x 8".

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Fall Field Trips Provide Immersive Learning Experiences for Architecture and Planning Students

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Boston

New Film Highlights Student Proposals for Abandoned Polish Estate Proposals from a fall 2015 architecture design studio feature prominently in Reversing Oblivion, a recently released documentary film about a largely abandoned rural agricultural estate in Upper Silesia, Poland. The film was made by Ithaca-based filmmaker Ann E. Michel ’77 and her husband and filmmaking partner Philip Wilde ’73.

Reimagining a future for the mid-19th-century farming estate known as Bzionkow was the aim of assistant professor of architecture Aleksandr Mergold’s studio, Design + Histories / Design + Desires + Fears / Design + Living / Design + Identity. The Nazis seized the property during the Second World War. It then housed Russian Red Army officers, became a socialist collective farm, and eventually fell into ruin through the end of the 20th century.

Michel, who only recently discovered that her grandmother’s family had been Polish Jews who fled the Nazis, traveled to Bzionkow in 2013 to visit the property, which was for sale. Her dismay over the state of the many buildings there inspired Michel to see if it could be salvaged. Noah Demarest ’02, a local architect and lecturer in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, introduced her to Mergold, who decided to focus on Bzionkow for his fall 2015 studio.

Mergold’s class was part of a series of design plan studios that work with stakeholders across the globe to investigate and define problems that can be solved with the input of designers and architects. The students spent 10 days at Bzionkow in September 2015; that trip and the projects produced in the studio are featured in Reversing Oblivion, which premiered at the Cottbus Film Festival of Eastern European Cinema in November.

In the film, the students are shown surveying and drawing the buildings on the estate and participating in workshops with design faculty in Wroclaw.

A public meeting with residents of the neighboring town of Dobrodzien brings the past and future together, as the students present their plans for the preservation and transformation of the estate.

Among others, final projects from the class included Bzionkow: A Place of Care, a project by Maur Dessauvage (B.Arch. ’16), Cameron Neuhoff (B.Arch. ’16), and Michael Raspuzzi (B.Arch. ’16) that proposed a combination senior living facility and children’s day care; and Craft Culture, by Jeisson Apolo (B.Arch./B.S. ’16), Arista Jusuf (B.Arch. ’16), and Joy Ortiz (B.Arch. ’16), which relied on ethnographic studies that revealed the residents’ personal attachments to the site and concerns involving youth education and a steadily declining population. The other students who traveled to Upper Silesia were Paola Cuevas Baez (B.Arch. ’17), Yue Gu (M.Arch. ’16), Jose Ibarra (B.Arch. ’16), Junlin Jiang (M.Arch. ’16), Sagar Karnavat (B.Arch. ’17), Stefan Krawitz (B.Arch. ’17), and Andres Romero Pompa (B.Arch. ’17).

The film was screened in Milstein Hall in March.AAP

Boston was the destination for CRP’s annual student field trip led by Associate Professor Jeffrey Chusid.

The three-day trip combined visits to significant historical and cultural sites, a CRP alumni reception, and several meetings, tours, and presenter panels with Boston-area experts in the fields of planning and preservation. The group toured the Rose Kennedy Greenway and the North End; the Dudley Square Neighborhood Initiative; Quincy Market; Copley Square; the Back Bay and Public Gardens; and Boston Common, among other sites. Additionally, the group met with the staff of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and visited the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and Fenway Park.

China Students in the option studio Fabric Urbanism: Strategies for Urban Mat-Housing and Fabrication, taught by Visiting Critic Leslie Lok, traveled to China, where they studied the topography, historical and archaeological layers, pressures from tourism, and various forms of existing small-scale residential fabric in the city of Hangzhou. The class examined how fabric presents opportunities for interconnected organizations of circulation, program, massing, and infrastructure, in contrast to the modernist residential towers in contemporary Chinese cityscapes. The students visited the China Academy of Art, building industry facilities, and local housing typologies in both Shanghai and Hangzhou, as well attending lectures on Hangzhou’s urban development.

Colombia Architecture’s Associate Professor Jeremy Foster and Visiting Critic Julian Palacio led third-year graduate students on a weeklong trip to Colombia. The trip was part of the fall 2016 expanded practice studio titled Bogotá’s Los Cerros Orientales: Constructing a Sustainable Relationship between City and Nature.

The group studied the urban edge at the mountains east of the city—an area known as Cerros Orientales— which is a natural boundary to Bogotá’s development and one of the most threatened regions in the city.

Cuba Students participating in the sixth Mellon Collaborative Studies seminar in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities spent eight days in Cuba. The trip was one component of the interdisciplinary expanded practice seminar titled Cuba as Project: Urban, Political, and Environmental Transformations of the Island, taught by Visiting Assistant Professor Tao DuFour, architecture, and Assistant Professor Tom McEnaney, comparative literature. The Mellon seminar students

were joined by DuFour’s architecture option studio, Havana after Nature.AAP

Ithaca Students in Principals of Site Planning and Urban Design, taught by Thomas J. Campanella, associate professor in CRP, visited the site of a proposed urbanstyle “live, work, play” mixed-use district on the site of the former Emerson Power Transmission plant on Ithaca’s South Hill. During the tour of the former factory complex, now known as Chain Works District, students saw how key theories of urban spatial design and pedestrian-oriented placemaking, approaches to the mapping and analysis of urban space, and regulatory mechanisms—such as form-based codes—are used to create good city form. The group was joined

by David Lubin, managing partner of L Enterprises, LLC, whose firm is involved with several mixed-use development projects in Ithaca.

South Korea In December, second-year planning students in the Cornell Baker Program in Real Estate traveled to Seoul, to “see how Korea seamlessly sews the future in with the past,” as described in a blog post about the trip. It was the first intercontinental field trip for the Baker Program, and the second annual international real estate trek. The students were treated to a guided tour of the Songdo International Business District with real estate developer Gale International, visited Seoul’s City Hall and the D-Tower in Gwanghwamun Area, and met with real estate development company AIG. They were led by Dustin Jones, director of the Baker Program in Real Estate; CRP Professor Michael Tomlan; and Senior Lecturer Emeritus Brad Olson.

Spain Students in Visiting Professor Rubén Alcolea’s fall 2016 option studio, titled Slow Building, traveled to Spain. The aim of the studio was to “discuss some of the main issues of architecture within the context of the evolution of human culture through time.”

The discussion was strongly related to the culture of gastronomy and the way in which the “Slow Food” culture has emerged in response to consumerism and trivial food consumption. The students explored the evolution of photography with modern Spanish architecture as well as the concept of “aging in architecture as capital,” where architects take the opportunity to reuse existing spaces. Stops on the trip included the city of Pamplona, as well as the coastal town of Getaria, located in the autonomous community of Basque Country, where the group studied historic buildings.AAP

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1 Rendering from a final project titled Bzionkow: A Place of Care, by Maur Dessauvage (B.Arch. ’16), Cameron Neuhoff (B.Arch. ’16), and Michael Raspuzzi (B.Arch. ’16). rendering / Cameron Neuhoff 2 Third-year graduate students climb a path above the city during a trip to Bogotá. photo / Karen Wang (M.Arch. ’19) 3 Assistant Professor Tom McEnaney (left) from the College of Arts and Sciences and Alexandra Donovan (B.Arch. ’18) in Central Havana, Cuba. photo / Hannah Bahnmiller (M.R.P. ’17) 4 Cornell Baker Program in Real Estate students visit Seoul Topis during a trip to South Korea. photo / provided

5 Students in Associate Professor Thomas J. Campanella’s class, Principals of Site Planning and Urban Design, toured the Chain Works District site in Ithaca, New York.

6 Students in the option studio Fabric Urbanism: Strategies for Urban Mat-Housing and Fabrication on a visit to Shanghai. photo / provided 7 CRP students gather on a street in Boston during their annual fall field trip. photo / provided 8 Students inside their site of inquiry in Getaria, Spain, during the field trip for the option studio Slow Building. photo / Hyojin (Jinny) Lee (M.Arch. ’17).

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News21 | Spring 2017

Sagan’s Cosmos through Extraterrestrial Eyes For her thesis project, Warisara (Nice) Sudswong (M.Arch. ’17) took an experimental approach to developing a drawing methodology that investigates the “comingling between the fiction, fantasy, absurd, and the real.”

According to Sudswong, her work imagines Carl Sagan’s cosmos and fantastical worlds “as seen through the eyes of extraterrestrial perception.”

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photo / Sean Steed

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M.R.P. Student Gets Real-World Experience in L.A. M.R.P. candidate Paige Barnum (M.R.P. ’17) was an intern at the City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Office of Historic Resources for 12 weeks during the summer of 2016. It was an experience that taught her about the origins of the city of Los Angeles, and gave her an appreciation for “the historic fabric of a city that is so often made the butt of planning jokes,” according to Barnum.

Barnum’s work included preparing staff reports for proposed designation of buildings and sites as individual local landmarks, and assisting with the presentation of report findings at meetings of the Cultural Heritage Commission. She also participated in the final phase of SurveyLA, the city’s first-ever comprehensive program to identify its significant historic resources.

“I learned about the origins of the character of L.A., how its distinct built environment came to be, and the role preservationists and planners have played in the development of that landscape,” Barnum said. “The internship improved my professional abilities, and gave me experience that I will carry forward in my career after graduation.”AAP

Jurèma by Sean Steed Sean Steed (B.Arch. ’18), a fifth-year architecture student minoring in fine arts with a focus in printmaking, has created Jurèma, a T-shirt and visual art brand. According to Steed, Jurèma has a long list of inspirational references and admires the work ethos of Andy Warhol’s The Factory. “Jurèma is passionate about producing aesthetically pleasing handmade products that celebrate the visual arts,” says Steed. Steed splits his time between Milstein and Tjaden halls, combining his architectural work with his artistic project. He founded Jurèma during the summer of 2016, when a series of acrylic paintings inspired him to produce editions of handmade and packaged silkscreen prints and graphic tees. According to Steed, the graphic component behind the offerings is informed by color theory and “bold optical forms.”AAP thisisjurema.com

1 Paige Barnum (M.R.P. ’17) doing field work in the Silver Lake area of L.A. during her summer internship. photo / provided

MONK Wins The Bench

2 Barnum with staff members of the Department of City Planning, Office of Historic Resources during a parade in front of City Hall in Los Angeles. photo / provided

MONK, an interdisciplinary, student-run, design research initiative based in Ithaca and Paris, was the winner of THE BENCH design competition

by Studio for Transformative Urban Forms and Fields.

Their design for a public-use seating area on a city street in Winnipeg, Canada, was titled Over + Under; the project was constructed in August and remained available for public use through the fall. MONK was also recently named a finalist in the Vertical Cemetery competition in Tokyo.AAP

3 Laura Kenny (M.R.P. ’17) working underground in the historic rainwater harvesting cisterns of Santorini, Greece. photo / provided

Student Notes Five AAP students were among 22 rising juniors at Cornell who were named Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholars (RCPRS) for the 2016–17 academic year.

Jeremy Bilotti (B.Arch. ’18), Zhisheng (Ivy) Deng (B.A./B.F.A. ’19), Ehab Ebeid (B.S. URS ’18), Skye Hart (B.S. URS ’18), and Laura-Bethia Campbell (B.F.A. ’17) received funding from the RCPRS program and faculty mentor support from both within and beyond AAP to pursue their research for the remainder of their undergraduate tenure at Cornell.

An article written by Patrick Braga (B.A./B.S. URS ’17) in preparation for a presentation

at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Dallas two years ago was accepted for publication in Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability (Taylor & Francis). After attending the conference, the article “Rethinking the Providence Hill Cable Car: Transit, Equity, and Urban Design in Rio de Janeiro” was expanded by two rounds of peer review and additional information from a trip to Rio de Janeiro. As a fifth-year dual-degree candidate majoring in urban and regional studies in AAP and music and economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, Braga is a Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholar and Mellon

fellow. He has concentrated his research on transportation and land use planning as well as histories of urbanism in thought and practice, focusing on Rio de Janeiro, Havana, Boston, and Washington, DC. In music, Braga specializes in composition, and has written two operas.

La Tricotea (opus 25) premiered in December 2015, and Eyes That Do Not See (opus 42) premiered in November (see page 5).

In the fall, CRP graduate students in the Cornell chapter of the Association for Preservation Technology (APT) helped restore exterior finishes and original windows at the Samuel Laurie House in Auburn, New York, a

historic property also known as Auburn Castle. The AAP students who traveled to Auburn were Melanie Colter (M.A. HPP ’18), Brian Cooley (M.A. HPP ’18), Sena Kayasu (M.A. HPP ’20), Abigail Lawton (M.A. HPP ’18), Maryam Rabi (M.A. HPP ’20), Andrew Roblee (M.A. HPP ’17), Michelle Van Meter (M.A. HPP ’20), and Olivia White (M.A. HPP ’18). APT is a cross-disciplinary organization dedicated to promoting the best technology for conserving historic structures and their settings.

David Edmondson (M.R.P. ’17) and Jaynel Santos (M.R.P. ’17) were among 32 graduate students across Cornell to receive Fall 2016 Research Travel

Grants from Cornell University’s Graduate School. Travel grants of up to $2,000 are awarded each fall and spring to assist graduate students in researchfocused travels that directly relate to their dissertations.

Designs by Zhiping Feng (B.Arch. ’17), Kevin Jin He (B.Arch. ’17), Jingyang Liu (M.Arch. ’15), Gosia Pawlowska (B.Arch. ’16), and Won Ryu (B.Arch. ’17) were selected for an international exhibition of interpretive solutions and prototypes for emergency shelter. Survival Architecture and the Art of Resilience, a project of Art Works for Change, opened in September at the Appleton Museum of Art, in Ocala, Florida.

Zeynep Goksel (M.R.P. ’17/ M.L.A. ’18), a teaching assistant for professor Maria Goula in landscape architecture, was part of a group of students who worked with Goula to prepare interviews with architects and landscape architects who were finalists for the Rosa Barba Prize at the International Biennial of Landscape Architecture in Barcelona this past September.

The Cornell Institute of European Studies underwrote travel costs for the students.

This past summer, Anamika Goyal (M.Arch. ’17) was honored with a Selected Professions Fellowship award from the American Association of University Women. Goyal, who

received her B.S. in biology from Duke University in 2011, is focused on interdisciplinary methods in her research. Her thesis tests the possibilities for construction technologies and investigates how simple industrial construction methods used widely in other industries can democratize architectural design.

The award supports women pursuing careers in nontraditional fields.

In November, Brian Havener (M.Arch. ’19) won a $500 cash prize for second place in a “flash competition” from arch out loud. The competition brief asked participants to illustrate through graphic image, drawing, and a statement the meaning

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Sustainable Water Management in Santorini

Teiger Mentor Visits B.F.A. Studios Craig Kalpakjian (at right), the Teiger Mentor in the Arts for the fall 2016 semester, engaged with B.F.A. students and conducted senior thesis studio critiques during the fall semester. In addition to working with students, in September he delivered a public lecture in Milstein Hall on his recent work. Kalpakjian is a New York City–based transmedia artist who consistently addresses issues of technology, surveillance, architecture, and social control in his work. Kalpakjian is the seventh Teiger Mentor, following Sam Durant, Sharon Hayes, Leslie Hewitt, Alejandro Cesarco, Shannon Ebner, and Josiah McElheny.AAP

Happening on Instagram @cornellaap

of memory in relation to a more meaningful architecture. Taking inspiration from a 2004 quote from Rem Koolhaas (“We are living in an incredibly exciting and slightly absurd moment, namely that preservation is overtaking us”), Havener titled his project Ephemeral Preservation Is Overtaking Us, and in his statement wrote, “With the proliferation of the digital, comes an opportunity to reimagine preservation as an immaterial practice; an ephemeral preservation.”

In addition to a 2016–17 Luigi Einaudi Fellowship for Dissertation Research from the Cornell Institute for European Studies to support an academic year of research in Italy, Anna

Mascorella (Ph.D. HAUD ’19) was also awarded a Citation of Special Recognition from the Graham Foundation’s 2016 Carter Manny Award Program for her dissertation, “Restoration, Displacement, Appropriation: Negotiating the Baroque Legacy in Fascist Rome.”

Amanda (AC) Micklow and Jared Enriquez, Ph.D. candidates in CRP, participated in a panel discussion with city and regional planning faculty Suzanne Lanyi Charles, Jennifer Minner, and moderator Pierre Clavel, professor emeritus. “Race and Space: Shifting Suburban Identities” brought issues of suburbia’s physical form together with

questions about the rights and opportunities of people of color and immigrants in changing suburban environments. More than 30 people from within and outside the planning department attended the November 10 event. The panel was organized

by CRP graduate student organizations, including the Women’s Planning Forum and Planning Students for Equity and Inclusion, as well as the nonprofit ArchiteXX. An opinion piece written by Thomas Musca (B.Arch. ’19) for ArchDaily was republished by Metropolis Magazine. Musca’s editorial criticized the construction and investment in the beachside high-rise tower as a

failure to acknowledge the possibility of rising sea levels caused by global climate change.

CRP student Tishya Ravichander Rao (B.S. URS ’18) joined an October 31 panel of the Senior Leaders Climate Action Group members for the Campus Community Forum, “Options for Achieving a Carbon Neutral Campus by 2035.” The group discussed the recently released report, Options for Achieving a Carbon Neutral Campus by 2035. The event took place in the Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall, and was live streamed via CornellCast.

Michael Raspuzzi (B.Arch. ’16) is cofounder and managing

director of Life Changing Summer, which held a three-week “summer boot camp” in the new eHub space in Kennedy Hall.

Eleven local, U.S., and international high school students learned the basics of entrepreneurship, computer science, and design, and developed new businesses with entrepreneurial Cornell student mentors. Begun in 2015, the program is hosted

by Life Changing Labs and Entrepreneurship@Cornell.

Helena Rong (B.Arch. ’17) and Jessica Jiang (B.Arch. ’17) received an honorable mention for their entry in the “Young Architects Competition: University Island.” Their project, Terra Mosaico, distilled a sequence

Laura Kenny (M.R.P. ’17) spent her summer working in historic rainwater harvesting cisterns for an interdisciplinary project on sustainable water management in Santorini, Greece.

With the help of grants from the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and Cornell Institute for European Studies, Kenny traveled to Santorini to work on the project with Professor Gail Holst-Warhaft of the Institute for European Studies and Professor Tammo Steenhuis of the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, as well as a group of five students from other departments across Cornell.

The project’s aim was to study the rainwater harvesting cisterns and undertake an assessment on reusing cisterns for future water storage and/or rainwater collection, as well as to increase awareness of rainwater harvesting potential at the community level.

Historically, buildings on the arid island were constructed with water collection systems and holding cisterns for rainwater that was used for drinking, bathing, cooking, and recreation. This method was sufficient in providing enough water for the island’s needs, but as tourism increased, desalination plants largely replaced the historic rainwater harvesting cisterns, causing many to fall into disrepair.

The research group worked with the Santorini Water Board to examine several cisterns on the island for potential reuse. “The work required us to climb down into the cisterns to inspect for structural issues, learn about the history and community surrounding each cistern, and research historical water use practices,” said Kenny.

Using her research, Kenny’s final project creates a “Water Walk” to provide the local residents and tourists with an understanding of water use on the island of Santorini, and to encourage more sustainable practices. Her final project includes a list of recommendations for additional water-walk sites, an interactive map, and signage for posting at the proposed sites.AAP

of ecosystems and terrains informed by the Venice lagoon and adjacent Italian landscape, transforming the nearby island of Poveglia into a university campus.

In October, the Cornell University Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) attended the National NOMA Conference in Los Angeles. With the help of a crowdfunding campaign, the students raised more than $16,000. During the conference the students met and networked with professional architects of color, attended workshops, and learned more about the impact of current issues in architecture on people of color.

The students who traveled to Los Angeles were Zachary Calbo-Jackson (B.Arch. ’19), Eduardo Carmelo (B.S. URS ’19), Luciana Ruiz (B.Arch. ’19), Edna Samron (B.S. URS ’18), Tara Chen Sue (B.Arch. ’19), and Bethlehem Tesfaye (B.Arch. ’19).

News21 | Spring 2017

Faculty&Staff

Profile

Drawing From and For Architecture Having begun his career in architecture as a Cornell student 22 years ago, Luben Dimcheff’s recent appointment as the Richard Meier Assistant Professor of Architecture is a kind of homecoming.

“Of course, it is a great honor, and for me, it is also quite personal,” he commented. “Both as an academic institution and a community, Cornell embraced me—a young immigrant from Bulgaria.

At AAP, I received an exceptional education, made many lifelong friends and mentors, and perhaps most important of all, found a purpose and the craft to pursue it.”

Prior to his arrival in Ithaca in 1994, Dimcheff attended the prestigious Romain Rolland High School in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, where he grew up. He left the country in 1991 as part of the first wave of people that were welcomed to the West after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc countries. He landed in Seattle, Washington.

“It was quite sudden and unexpected—at the time, I was preparing for entrance exams to the School of Architecture in Sofia. And in a fit of teenage optimism, I entered an international competition in fashion design and submitted some old drawings torn from the back of my math notebooks,” recalled Dimcheff. “I sent the original drawings of costumes in colored pencil on ruled paper, because color copies were too expensive.”

He won first prize—a full scholarship to the Art Institute of Seattle—and briefly studied fashion design and textile science. “Those drawings were essentially my ticket to the United States,” Dimcheff added.

“Thinking back, I can say I was very excited for the opportunity, even though by then I had no longer planned to pursue fashion professionally.” He quickly transferred to the Department of Interior Design and learned some fundamental skills—such as how to draw a plan and section—and remained open to where it would lead as he completed the program.

“Despite the fact that I had fallen in love with architecture before leaving Bulgaria, I was pondering the likelihood that I might actually enjoy designing yacht interiors in the Pacific Northwest,” says Dimcheff. “It was then that a fellow Bulgarian immigrant, who was studying math at Cornell—also my best friend to this day—suggested that I look into their architecture program. I visited the campus, and was immediately

enamored with the Rand studios and Fine Arts Library meaningful and impactful collaborations to build on in Sibley Hall.” in the near future. I have drawn immense knowledge Dimcheff again credits his drawings for his offer from master builders, carpenters, and masons, near of admission with full funding to Cornell’s Bachelor of and far. In those conversations, and the infinite layers Architecture program. And even now, he remains pasof translation, I have resorted again to drawing—a sionate about drawing. He draws virtually every day language and a code that is innately universal yet regardless of whether there is a deadline, a project, or idiosyncratic, immediate and slow, precise and flawed— a client. In addition to courses in architectural design, and always potent with opportunities for invention.”

Dimcheff has also taught several courses in drawing at Dimcheff says he intends to maintain his practice at both Parsons and AAP NYC. its current location despite plans to spend the majority “Drawing for me is the innate ability all architects of his time in Ithaca, and hopes to take on projects should master at the outset of their education and that are more focused, selective, and critical. And refine in perpetuity so that they can create freely, regarding the balance he'll maintain going forward, meaningfully, and with intent,” says Dimcheff. “It is Dimcheff sees an organic and essential relationship: the language of the architect—it changes as we do and “I came into teaching directly from practice, and while with the times we live in. Drawing is the instrument in practice, I never really left the perpetual motions that harnesses our imagination and brings it into view of teaching and learning . . . I cannot see myself sepaand onto paper—it is specific and precise, also daring rating the two.” and open to interpretation. How we draw, what we Dimcheff currently teaches the first-year architecture draw and what we don’t, and of course from what we studios with Associate Professor Val Warke, and is draw, are to me how architecture emerges.” working on a house in San Francisco, which happens After graduating from AAP in 1999 with a bachelor to be for the same close friend who had suggested of architecture degree, Dimcheff immediately went Cornell as an option in the 1990s. He is also building a to work in New York City, where he was a designer, set of interpretive models of the Parisian Arcades for project architect, and eventually a senior associate at the Jewish Museum in New York City, a short-term the office of Henry Smith-Miller and Laurie Hawkinson project that he sees as a natural extension of his recent for 10 years. “Both Henry and Laurie are established joint publication titled Model Perspectives: Structure, practitioners and dedicated teachers,” Dimcheff says.

Architecture and Culture (Routledge, 2016). The book, “They lead graduate design studios and run their office which took years to complete and was released as one—continuously weaving practices in teaching, in fall 2016, is a collaboration with lead authors learning, research, and architectural practice into a Mark Cruvellier, architecture department chair and singular mode of operation.” Dimcheff kept their the Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of model in mind as he set up his own design practice, Architecture; and Bjørn Sandaker, professor of archiand at the same time joined the faculty at Parsons tectural technology at the Oslo School of Architecture to teach in the departments of architecture, interior and Design. design, and lighting in 2009.

At the present moment, Dimcheff is as excited Further expanding his role as an educator, Dimcheff about teaching as he is to continue to learn. “At was thrilled to accept an offer from Cornell to teach Cornell and AAP, I have been very fortunate to work for the Introduction to Architecture Summer Program with a number of inspired colleagues and enlightened in 2012, and since has become instrumental to its students across many disciplines and departments,” operations. The curriculum consists of an intense he says. “From the visceral turning of the press and eight-week program, often attended by students who smell of ink at Olive Tjaden Hall to the enigma are exploring the discipline for the first time. “It’s and promise of virtual reality and advanced computer a rigorous course of study for all involved, both the graphics at Rhodes Hall, and of course in the context students and the faculty. To witness the critical leap of a constant state of invention in the Milstein studios, in the work of those young students over a relatively I hope to continue my study of the generative language brief period is quite rewarding,” he commented. of design and drawing, and help each and every Concurrent with his teaching roles, Dimcheff has student find their own hand, and own their craft, so continued to develop projects at the New York City they can speak their mind.”AAP Edith Fikes office he established in 2009. The firm, Luben Dimcheff Studio, has completed projects in numerous locations including New York City, San Francisco, Mumbai, Sofia, and Rio de Janeiro. “In a very literal sense, my work is global—not so much far-reaching, but rather foreign to what I know. I draw from cultural and building practices from around the world,” says Dimcheff. “In the places where I have made a mark—even if it is minute in scale, I see my recent work as a basis for

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European Field Trip Lauryn Smith (B.F.A. ’18), left, and associate professor of art Stan Taft, on a field trip to Berlin during the fall semester at Cornell in Rome. photo / Jeannette Pang (B.Arch. ’19)

Faculty&Staff

Cruvellier and Woods Publishes Goldsmith Dimcheff Publish New Book on Women Publishes Saving Model Perspectives Architects in India Our Cities Model Perspectives: Structure, Architecture and Culture (Routledge, 2016) is a new book coauthored by Mark Cruvellier, department chair and Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture; Luben Dimcheff, the Richard Meier Assistant Professor of Architecture; and Bjorn N. Sandaker, professor of architectural technology at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

The book contains a unique collection of various perspectives on the relationship between structures and the forms and spaces of architecture. Photographs of models (all by Cornell architecture students and alumni) of the overall structural systems of several notable contemporary buildings are accompanied by a set of nearly 50 essays written by such people as Colin Rowe, Robert Silman ’56, and Cecil Balmond.

These two collections—one largely textual and the other image-based—provide the reader with unique and multifaceted insights into how structural forms and systems can be related to various architectural design intentions and cultural contexts.AAP

Professor Mary N. Woods, architecture, recently released Women Architects in India: Histories of Practice in Mumbai and Delhi (Routledge, 2016). The book is the first study of women architects in modern India. Educated in the 1930s and 1940s, the very first women architects began practicing when modern architecture and female emancipation were central to building the new nation after independence in 1947.

Set in Mumbai and Delhi, historic centers of architectural education and practice in India, the book recounts the work and lives of Indian women as not only architects, but also as builders and clients, delving into complexities of feminism, modernism, and design practices in India, and exploring gender and modern architecture in a more global and less Eurocentric context. It examines the diverse practices of women who have contributed to the building of a modern India and who also conserve, sustain, and resurrect traditional crafts and materials, empower marginalized communities, and create sustainable architecture.AAP

CRP Professor Emeritus William W. Goldsmith’s new book, Saving Our Cities: A Progressive Plan to Transform Urban America (Cornell University Press, 2016), suggests how planners could help cities defend themselves against governments that seem bent on destroying what is best about them. The book shows how U.S. cities and poor suburbs have been abused, and then blamed for society’s ills. Goldsmith takes issue with federal and state budgets and regulations that line up with the interests of giant corporations and privileged citizens to impose austerity, shortchange public schools, make it hard to get nutritious food, and inflict the drug war on unlucky neighborhoods.

Saving Our Cities suggests how cities can forcefully demand enlightened federal and state action on these fronts, which will offer space for traditional urban planning as well, in order to meet residents’ needs for improved housing, better transportation, and enhanced public spaces.

Saving Our Cities received an honorable mention in Planetizen’s Top Planning Books for 2017.AAP

is part of Clavel’s archive, Guide to the Progressive Cities and Neighborhood Planning Collection, 1969–2005, housed in the Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture since 1993, he chaired the Department of Architecture from 1993 to 1998 after holding a similar position at the University of Michigan. Transitioning to teaching after three terms as dean of students, Hubbell will teach one semester each year in AAP, and he plans to write a handbook on acoustics for architects.

Faculty & Staff Notes The advocacy group Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve gave its highest honor, the Paul Schaefer Wilderness Award, to CRP Professor Richard Booth in October. Booth, a former New York State Adirondack Park Agency member and state land chair, received the award at Adirondack Wild’s annual meeting in Indian Lake, New York.

Thomas J. Campanella, director of undergraduate studies and associate professor in CRP, was involved in a number of exhibitions, articles, books, and presentations over the summer and fall. Campanella’s article “After 75 Years, the Cheese Stands Alone” appeared in the New York Times in July, and in October he was mentioned in a Wired magazine article about Nonstop Metropolis, the culminating volume in a trilogy of atlases by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. Campanella contributed two essays to the atlas, which features 26

maps of New York City. Other contributors include Bronx hip-hop pioneers Grandmaster Caz and Melle Mel, and graffiti artist Lady Pink, among others.

In August, Campanella was one of the featured interviewees in the new film Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, which documents the historic conflict in the 1960s between the writer and activist Jane Jacobs and the legendary power broker/urban-renewal tsar Robert Moses over plans to tear down much of New York City and replace it with highways and housing projects. The film is directed by Matt Tyrnaue and coproduced by High Line cofounder Robert Hammond. In October, Campanella was the Ekdahl Lecture presenter for the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design’s 2016 Distinguished Lecture Series at Kansas State University. His presentation was titled “American Curves: Nature, Race and the Origins of the Modern Highway.” Additionally, Campanella contributed to

Future City Lab, a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. It is part of New York at Its Core, an ambitious, permanent exhibition about the city’s past, present, and future intended to display responses capturing different perspectives on the issue. For his contribution, Campanella was asked to respond to the question, “What if Brooklyn seceded from New York City and became an independent city again?”

A story on CRP Professor Emeritus Pierre Clavel, titled “How Progressive Cities Got That Way,” appeared in the Cornell Chronicle last summer. The story details new materials in an online archive on progressive cities that plan development in consideration of social issues such as income disparity, and how they shed light on the history of the progressive movement and the early career of presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. The collection

In October, professor of art Renate Ferro lectured at Peking University School of Arts as part of the Science, Art, Creativity series. Her talk was titled “Twisted Time/Time Twisted: Memory, the Archive, and Culture in Contemporary Artistic Practice.”

The firm of George R. Frantz, visiting critic in CRP, has won recognition from the New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association (NY APA) for The Town of Geneva Comprehensive Plan.

The plan is a project by George R. Frantz & Associates and Sustainable Transportation Solutions of Columbia, Maryland. It received an award in

the category of outstanding comprehensive planning for a municipality. The NY APA cited the plan for a number of innovative features, including the proposed Town Center urban village; the eventual conversion of state routes 5 and 20 into an urban boulevard and replacement of the traffic signals at its intersection with County Road 6 with a roundabout; extensive investments in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure; new approaches to storm water management; and redirecting growth away from agricultural and ecologically sensitive lands.

The plan also placed emphasis on climate change by including recommendations for reducing energy use and developing renewable sources of energy.

After serving for 15 years as the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students, Kent Hubbell (B.Arch. ’69) stepped down on June 30 to return to the architecture faculty. The

Neema Kudva, associate professor in CRP, was interviewed for a “Cornell Close-Ups” piece in the Cornell Daily Sun, discussing how a “nomadic lifestyle influences perspective work.” In the article, Kudva, who directs the International Studies in Planning program and is a leader for the Nilgiris Field Learning Center in southern India, elaborated on the way power and privilege influence planning, as well as how constructed social context difference plays a role in the way people build communities in India.

In September, work by associate professor of art Carl A. Ostendarp was included in the first exhibition at Elizabeth Dee Gallery’s new space in New York City. First Exhibition featured a selection of new pieces by the artists represented by the gallery, including Ostendarp.

The exhibition celebrated the gallery’s expansion to 2033/2037 Fifth Avenue, at the corner of East 126th Street. Ostendarp participated in a number of other group exhibitions over the summer and fall, including Big Art/Small Scale at Philip Slein Gallery, in St. Louis; No Boys Allowed at Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston; For Sale By Owner, curated by Baris Gokturk at Hilltop Antiques, Skowhegan, Maine; and Fierce Generosity: The Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Memorial Exhibition, Porch Gallery, Ojai, California. Additionally, Ostendarp was interviewed

by Craig Drennen in a fall issue of ArtPulse magazine (volume 7, no. 27).

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Warner and Homsy Present in Shanghai Happening on Twitter @cornellaap In June, Mildred E. Warner (bottom center), professor in CRP; and George C. Homsy (bottom, second from right) (M.R.P. ’04, Ph.D. CRP ’14) presented “Sustainability in U.S. Cities: Environment, Economic, Social,” to colleagues from the Shanghai Municipal Planning Institute, in Shanghai. Included on the panel were Zhilin Liu (Ph.D. CRP, ’07) (bottom right), associate professor at Tsinghua University; and Lu Liao (top left) (Ph.D. CRP ’20). George R. Frantz (bottom left), visiting critic in CRP; and Liqing Zhu (top row, second from left), of the School of Agriculture and Biology in Shanghai, were also in attendance. Zhu is a landscape architect and visiting scholar at Cornell who is working with Frantz. photo / provided

Park’s 150-Foot Mural in San Francisco Slows Time

Maria Park’s mural, Sight Plan, was created from high-resolution scans of paintings printed on vinyl, and reverse painted on Plexiglas.

The first installment of Sural Atlas of Central New York, a project by Assistant Professor Aleksandr Mergold, architecture, was shown at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in the fall. Sural Atlas aims to redocument the area originally designated as the Central New York Military Tract (now two million acres in Central New York state), first surveyed in 1792 by Simeon DeWitt. The project is supported by a New York State Council on the Arts Independent Project grant awarded to Mergold in 2015.

Additionally, Mergold delivered a paper on Design Plan advanced studio sequence at the Scholarship of Social Engagement Symposium at the University of Kansas School of Architecture, Design, and Planning in Lawrence, Kansas.

CRP’s Assistant Professor Jennifer Minner and Associate Professor Jeffrey Chusid received the 2016 Oliver Fuller Award from the Association for

Preservation Technology (APT) for their article titled “Time, Architecture and Geography: Modeling the Past and Future of Cultural Landscapes,” which appeared in the APT Bulletin 47, no. 2–3 (2016). The award recognizes the article that best demonstrates technical excellence and innovation published in the APT Bulletin during the year.

Professor Jonathan Ochshorn, architecture, spent the fall semester as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar teaching in the School of Architecture at Tianjin University, China. While in China, he lectured on various topics at several universities and colleges, and gave a presentation titled “Limitations of Green Building Rating Systems” at the 2nd Asia-Pacific Energy Sustainable Development Forum’s 1st Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Workshop on Cost-Effective Renewable Energy-Supply Solutions Based on Innovative Solar Technologies

to Promote Green Buildings.

Additionally, Ochshorn had a paper accepted for presentation at the 2017 Architectural Engineering Institute Conference in Oklahoma City in April.

Prints by Gregory Page, associate professor of art, were included in three exhibitions in September: Beyond the Norm at Illinois State University; 40 Years NEW: Four Decades of Prints from Normal Editions Workshop at the McLean County Arts Center in Bloomington, Illinois; and the Upstate New York Printmaking Invitational at Main Street Arts in Clifton Springs, New York. Page also contributed images to a blog post about the exhibition on Main Street Arts’ website, illustrating the process he uses to make prints.

The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know (Rockport Publishers), by architecture professors Andrea Simitch and Val Warke, was first

published in 2014. With the most recent language releases, it is now available in English, Spanish, French, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and Czech.

Stephanie Owens, visiting assistant professor in art and Cornell Council for the Arts director, led a studio workshop in July at the Università Iuav di Venezia (IUAV). The workshop, titled Object Empathies: Networked Digital Sculpture Studio, was the first step in developing her project, Mare Nostrum (Our Seas), and part of IUAV’s 2016 Workshop Architettura Venizia, which engages large-scale interdisciplinary projects. During the workshop, Owens and graduate students of IUAV’s program in visual arts used “reality computing” as a sculptural process to model a Venetian boat as a means to explore the tangible aspects of recent forced migration in large Italian cities. As a continuation of the Venice workshop, students in

In August, a mural by Maria Park, associate professor in the Department of Art, was installed on a 150-foot temporary barricade adjacent to the construction of the Central Subway Chinatown Station on Stockton Street in San Francisco. Sight Plan (2016) was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission in partnership with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. For the mural, Park used images of sky and clouds inspired by and painted from 150 photographs she took over the last 10 years. The images were painted on clear Plexiglas and then scanned, creating an effect that questions whether the image is a photograph, painting, or graphic print. According to Park, this effect helps to “slow down the speed in which an artwork is viewed or consumed.” The mural will be on view through the summer of 2017.AAP

Owens’s fall advanced digital art studio, Object Empathies: Digital Sculpture, explored a similar relationship with found or personal objects. The class’s final sculpture was made in parallel to the fall 2016 CCA Biennial (see page 4).

THE BEACON, an installation

by Jenny Sabin, Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Assistant Professor of Architecture and director of graduate studies, and her longtime collaborator Peter Lloyd Jones was featured at the DesignPhiladelphia 2016 festival in October. THE BEACON functioned as both a public meeting place for the event and as an experimental design that demonstrated drone technology, responsive textiles, and advanced digital fabrication’s contribution to architecture, design, and the medical field.

In June, Roger Trancik, professor emeritus of city and regional planning, gave the graduation

day address at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Oslo, Norway. In his talk he urged graduates to take the long perspective and embrace the future with patience and persistence, illustrating this through his work in the U.S., Sweden, Rome, Panama, and China.

In August, CRP Professor Mildred Warner’s paper, “Imagining the ‘Good Place’: Public Services and Family Strategies in Rural Ecuador” (coauthored with Eleanor E. Pratt), won the Ralph Brown Faculty Paper Competition from the Family, Community, and Health Research Group of the Rural Sociological Society.

Warner was also interviewed for “How to Make Land-Use Policies Better for Women, Families, Caregivers and Older Adults,” an article on the integration of these groups into economic development planning that appeared in AARP The Magazine. In addition, Warner was quoted in the digital news outlet Quartz, in an Octo-

ber article that examined public water issues, titled “America can’t trust public water, so it’s turning to private companies.” In November, Warner delivered the keynote address—in Spanish— titled “From Competition to Cooperation: Public Administration Reforms for Sustainable Cities,” at the Centro Latinoamericano de Administracion para el Desarrollo Congreso.

The event was a 23-nation conference with 1,500 participants, held in Santiago, Chile.

Professor Mary N. Woods, architecture, was interviewed for “The Secret to Success for India’s Woman Architects: Unconventional Ideas and Mothers-in-Law,” an article published in November in Quartz India on the importance of women architects winning the biggest architectural prizes in India.

News21 | Spring 2017

Alumni Profile

Louise Lawler (B.F.A. ’69)

“I have avoided interviews, sometimes unsuccessfully, in an attempt to foreground the work, rather than the celebrity of the artist. I have said before, ‘art is part and parcel of a cumulative and collective enterprise, viewed as seen fit by the prevailing public.’

Ultimately, I hope the work can work on its own.”

—Louise Lawler

“In considering how artwork is known, including my own, I have reengaged my work in multiple ways, creating a chain of manipulations that address context, location, and dispersal. This way of working has produced images that are reshaped to acknowledge their mode of presentation—an example is on the following page.”

Pollyanna (adjusted to fit) 2007/2008/2012, distorted for the times, dimensions variable. photo / courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures © 2017 Louise Lawler

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Alumni

Architecture Alumnus Receives Lifetime Achievement Fellowship In November, Raúl de Armas (B.Arch. ’63) was named a Lifetime Achievement Fellow by the CINTAS Foundation, housed at Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Museum of Art and Design, in recognition of his internationally acclaimed contributions to the field of architecture.

Cuban-born de Armas, a founding principal of Moed de Armas Architects (MdeAS), established the firm in 1991 in New York City. Recognized internationally as one of the world’s preeminent design architects, he has designed and completed many major buildings in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. In a career spanning more than 50 years, de Armas has won numerous design awards, including the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture and was named Interiors Magazine’s Designer of the Year in 1984.

De Armas began his career at Holt and Downing Architects in 1963 before moving to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, where he became a partner of the firm in 1979. He was involved in the design of many high-profile projects around the world, including Park Avenue Plaza, Citicorp at Court Square, and 780 Third Avenue in New York City; Brookfield Place in Canada; San Benigno Torre Nord (“Il Matitone”) in Italy; and the master plan of the Hajj Terminal at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Saudi Arabia, which was honored by the AIA with the Twenty-five Year Award in 2010.

At MdeAS, de Armas is currently working on a complete repositioning of 2000 K Street and 900 19th Street in Washington, DC, and on Phase II of the multi-use project Gotham Center in Long Island City, New York.

The CINTAS Foundation was established with funds from the estate of Oscar B. Cintas (1887– 1957), former Cuban ambassador to the U.S., a prominent industrialist, and patron of the arts. Since 1963, the foundation has supported 1 Cuban arts and the humanities through fellowships to architects, visual artists, composers, and creative writers of Cuban descent. Previous Lifetime Achievement Fellows include architect Max Borges, writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, abstract painter Carmen Herrera, and pianist Bebo (Ramón Emilio) Valdés, among others. The MDC’s Museum of Art and Design of the CINTAS Fellows Collection is comprised of nearly 300 pieces by artist fellows, on extended loan from the CINTAS Foundation.AAP

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M.R.P. Alumna Is Housing Policy Fellow in DC

Happening on Instagram @cornellaap

1 Raúl de Armas (B.Arch. ’63). photo / Don Hamerman 2 Alia Fierro (M.R.P. ’16) with HUD Secretary Julián Castro. photo / provided 3 From left: Akshali Gandhi (M.R.P. ’15) (on screen), Taru (M.R.P. ’15), and Lindsay Johnson (M.R.P. ’15) during the M.R.P. Young Alumni Career Panel hosted by AAP Connect.

4 Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Design and Media Center, designed by Susan T. Rodriguez (B.Arch. ’81). photo / Ennead Architects 5 A diamond ring made of the compressed ashes of Luis Barragán. photo / Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen/ Stefan Jaeggi

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During the fall semester, Alia Fierro (M.R.P. ’16) worked as a Graduate Housing Policy Fellow with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) in Washington, DC. The prestigious and highly competitive fellowship received 500 applicants nationwide; Fierro was one of nine finalists selected for the nine-month fellowship.

The CHCI is part of the Office of Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While there, Fierro worked as project manager for the 2015–16 Biennial Report, and managed both the department’s Biennial and Annual Performance reports. In addition

to these projects, Fierro drafted memos for Secretary of HUD Julián Castro, and cataloged three years’ worth of data collected to assess public housing technical-assistance programs. A highlight of the fellowship was attending the CHCI’s annual Public Policy Conference and Gala, where she met Secretary Castro and President Obama.

By the end of her fellowship in May, Fierro will have completed the fall placement with HUD and a spring placement with the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. Her fellowship deliverable will be a white paper on Latino homeownership and shared equity housing models.AAP

6 Jennifer BaskervilleBurrows (M.A. HPP ’94). photo / provided

M.R.P. Young Alumni Career Panel AAP Connect hosted a dinner and informal conversation with four young M.R.P. alumni in November—Taru (M.R.P. ’15), planner and urban designer at CivicMoxie; Akshali Gandhi (M.R.P. ’15), transportation planner for the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of City Planning who joined the panel via Skype; Lindsay Johnson (M.R.P. ’15) of the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness (CREC); and Jen Rowe (M.R.P. ’15) of the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Part of AAP Connect’s Professional Development Series, the event gave attendees an opportunity to learn about life after college and jobs and careers in the field of city and regional planning. The presenters each spoke about their work since graduating from CRP, and answered

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questions as well as engaged in discussion with the other participants and attendees.

Taru, who holds an undergraduate degree in architecture from Jamia Millia Islamia, India, has worked on multiscalar projects as an architect, urban designer, urban planner, researcher, and project manager. As part of her job, Gandhi conducts day-to-day development and zoning reviews, but also researches long-range policy to help make Pittsburgh’s streets safer. In her role at CREC, Johnson has managed and supported economic and workforce development projects across the U.S. Rowe is committed to helping people in the Boston region have a hand in shaping their shared transportation system— she manages public participation for the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization.AAP

All Alumni Party Nearly 300 AAP alumni, family, and friends convened for the annual AAP All Alumni Party in October. The reception was held at the AAP NYC studios, and included remarks from Gale and Ira Drukier Dean Kent Kleinman.

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Rodriguez and Sabin Honored by Women in Architecture Forum and Awards Susan T. Rodriguez (B.Arch. ’81), member of the AAP Advisory Council and the university’s Board of Trustees, and Jenny Sabin, the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, were two of the five winners of Architectural Record’s 2016 Women in Architecture Awards.

Rodriguez, who is a founding partner and design principal of New York City–based Ennead Architects, was honored with the Design Leader award, which is given for significant built work and influence.

Rodriguez’s design work explores a wide variety of scales and typologies, from large-scale institutional and cultural buildings to interiors. Through her work, she seeks to create an architecture fused with its surroundings. Rodriguez also serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York and Art Works Projects: For Human Rights.

“It’s truly an honor to be recognized among this accomplished group at a time when the collective leadership of women is so critical to opening up new

possibilities for future generations of architects,” Rodriguez said.

The Innovator award, which is for an architect who has made a mark in innovative design, materials, or building type, was given to Sabin. Her practice, Jenny Sabin Studio, is an experimental architectural design studio based in Philadelphia. In conjunction with her teaching, she directs the Sabin Design Lab at Cornell AAP, a hybrid research and design unit with specialization in computational design, data visualization, and digital fabrication.

Since 2014, the magazine’s Women in Architecture Forum and Awards program has recognized and promoted women’s design leadership with annual awards aimed at balancing gender disparity among top professional architects.

In addition to Sabin’s and Rodriguez’s awards this year, Meejin Yoon (B.Arch. ’95) received the 2015 Leadership in Architectural Practice award. Yoon is head of the Department of Architecture at MIT and cofounder of Höweler + Yoon Architecture.AAP

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Owen Publishes Lenses for Design Josh Owen (B.A./B.F.A. ’94) published a new book in September about his design process. According to the press release, Lenses for Design (RIT Press, 2016) describes and explains “the unique, creative process of [an] American industrial designer and educator.” Over the course of the book’s 252 pages and 395 illustrations, Owen demonstrates and decodes his philosophy and approach to design invention and problem solving in many of his projects.

Owen is president of his design studio, Josh Owen LLC, and professor of industrial design at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. His work has been featured at the Venice Biennale and is in the permanent design collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Chicago Athenaeum, Musée des beaux-arts de Montreal, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Taiwan Design Museum, among other places.

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Jill Magid’s Performance Art Is a Gem Brooklyn-based artist Jill Magid (B.F.A. ’93) was the subject of “The Architect Who Became a Diamond,” a feature story written by Alice Gregory in The New Yorker magazine in August. The 6,000-word piece chronicled Magid’s unusual homage to Luis Barragán (1902–88), one of Mexico’s greatest architects.

In 2015, Magid traveled to Jalisco, Mexico, and collected Barragán’s ashes with the family’s permission.

As performance art and homage to the Pritzker Prize– winning architect, Magid then had the ashes made into a diamond by a New York company that specializes in compressing cremated human remains so that they can be worn as jewelry. According to Gregory, the gem—2.02 carats, rough-cut, with one polished facet— was the result of an elaborate plan, “an extended performance-art work in which all elements of the story—the architecture, the archive, those fighting over it, and Barragán himself—could be crystallized into a single gesture.”

Barragán’s archive, located at the Vitra Design Museum, in Weil am Rhein, Germany, is famously inaccessible. Magid, whose art addresses issues of institutional power and the law, first heard about the archive four years ago and became interested in the controversial history of its acquisition by the current custodian, Federica Zanco, director of the Barragan Foundation. Magid formulated the plan to present the diamond, set as an engagement ring, to the archive custodian as part of an extended, multimedia project examining the architect’s legacy, The Barragán Archives.

The project was commissioned by San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), and was on view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland, through August, and then at SFAI through December 2016.

The story was picked up by the New York Times, Dezeen, and other publications.AAP

HPP Graduate Is First African-American Woman Elected Diocesan Bishop

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Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows (M.A. HPP ’94) is the first African-American woman to be elected as a diocesan bishop in the Episcopal Church. In October, she was elected 11th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis at Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis.

Baskerville-Burrows previously served as director of networking for the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago.

She is a graduate of Smith College, Cornell University, and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, and was ordained as a priest by the Diocese of Central New York in 1998. She was a religious property preservation consultant from 1994 to 2004, and in this capacity, wrote and coordinated a $500,000 matching grant proposal to the New Jersey Historic Trust as part of the 2002 Capital Campaign of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. Additionally, she developed a master plan for the restoration of the Church of the Holy Spirit at Choconut Lake, Pennsylvania; and

she developed a handicap accessibility plan for a historic church building of the Zion Episcopal Church in Windsor, New York.

In addition to her expertise in historic preservation, Baskerville-Burrows is passionate about issues including gun violence, social justice, and racial and class reconciliation. She credits her CRP education with teaching her how to “read” buildings and the historical and physical context of their communities. “This has served me well as both priest and preservationist,” she says.

“While at Cornell I learned to take risks, to be curious, and to look beyond the face value of a facade.

As I go forth to serve as the first African-American woman to lead a diocese, I’m grateful for the continual gifts my Cornell education has given me.”

Baskerville-Burrows and her family moved to Indianapolis in late January.AAP News21 | Spring 2017

Tribute

Susan Christopherson, 1947–2016 “A whirlwind of creative ideas” … “a strong influence on the scholarly conversations in the field” … “one of the smartest and most sincere women I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing” … “always ahead of the curve” … “a trailblazer” … “the best of what Ivy League can be.” These are some of the sentiments voiced upon hearing the news of Susan Christopherson’s death in December.

Christopherson, a professor of city and regional planning known for her scholarly work and expertise on regional economic development, died December 14 of cancer. She was 69.

Christopherson came to Cornell in 1987. She was appointed chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning in 2014 and was a faculty fellow in the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. The first woman to be promoted to full professor in city and regional planning at Cornell, Christopherson was also the first woman to chair the department in its nearly 80-year history. She was on leave from Cornell this fall.

“Her loss will be felt keenly by the many colleagues, students, staff, and friends who knew Susan as a remarkable intellect, a master of so many fields, and a force for good,” said Kent Kleinman, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP. “Her academic accomplishments were many, but they hardly sum up this remarkable person who was a whirlwind of creative ideas, hard work, fairness, and grace.”

A pioneer in her field, Christopherson’s work as an economic geographer reflected her commitment to integrating scholarship with public engagement.

Her research and teaching focused on economic development, urban labor markets, and location patterns in media and other service industries. She conducted policy-oriented projects and international research in Canada, Mexico, China, Germany, and Jordan, and consulted with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the United Nations.

In December 2015, the Association of American Geographers announced that Christopherson had won its Lifetime Achievement Honors award. In 2016 she also received the Sir Peter Hall Contribution to the Field Award from the Regional Studies Association in Great Britain.

“Susan was an important scholar, a highly regarded instructor, and a dependable colleague who contributed much to the life of the department,” said Kieran Donaghy, professor and acting chair of CRP during the fall semester. “She conducted and supervised pathbreaking research in the area of regional economic development and exerted a strong influence on the scholarly conversations in the field. Her presence will be greatly missed.”

In her tenure as chair, Christopherson expanded and diversified the curriculum, and raised significant funding to support students.

“I was consistently inspired by her determination and passion, as well as her deep love and concern for the people who surrounded and supported her in spurring the department to be an exemplary model of planning’s highest aspirations,” said Wylie Goodman (M.R.P. ’17), who worked with Christopherson last year.

“She was a trailblazer as an academic, urban planning practitioner, and administrator. Female students, in particular, have lost a steadfast mentor and guide.”

Jason Kaye (M.R.P. ’07) developed an immediate and lasting bond with Christopherson. “I started at Cornell

“We always kept in touch through the years, and I attribute her mentoring to where I am today.”

—Jason Kaye (M.R.P. ’07) 1 Susan Christopherson meets with students sometime in the 1990s.

2 Christopherson speaks at a 2007 conference on the issue of Brain Drain/Brain Gain in Upstate New York.

3 Christopherson giving a presentation on hydrofracking to the Cornell Board of Trustees in 2013.

three months after suddenly losing my father, and Professor Christopherson was the first person I met.

Originally, I was only supposed to do research for her as part of my stipend, but we immediately hit it off and she made me her T.A. in my first semester.

We always kept in touch through the years, and I attribute her mentoring to where I am today.”

In his regular column in Tompkins Weekly, Gary Stewart, associate vice president in Cornell University’s Office of Community Relations, wrote, “Susan Christopherson lived here, and lived well, and her research and writing that often embraced and intersected with Tompkins County’s economic challenges and opportunities will live on. It seems like she was always ahead of the curve.”

“Susan was one of the smartest and most sincere women I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing in both my educational and professional career,” adds Pam Mikus (M.R.P. ’94). “She was a tour de force in her own right.”

“No professor ever talked straighter and worked harder than this wonderful scholar,” echoed John Carberry, senior director of media relations at Cornell, on Twitter. “[She was] the best of what Ivy League and Land Grant can be.”

A panel celebrating Christopherson’s life and career is planned during the Association of American Geographer’s annual meeting in early April in Boston, and a public memorial will be held at AAP on April 29.AAP

“I was consistently inspired by her determination and passion, as well as her deep love and concern for the people who surrounded and supported her.”

—Wylie Goodman (M.R.P. ’17)

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“Susan Christopherson lived here, and lived well, and her research and writing that often embraced and intersected with Tompkins County’s economic challenges and opportunities will live on.”

— Gary Stewart, Cornell University Office of Community Relations

The Endless Picnic Tables, Then and Now A large-scale work configured of 160 small picnic tables created by Chris Oliver, Rand Hall shop technician, was displayed in September in the Experimental Gallery in Tjaden Hall. The Endless Picnic Tables, Then and Now explores the interface between the work of 20th-century Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and what Oliver calls “Upstate New York summer recreation.” He formed the idea for Picnic Tables on a trip to the decommissioned air force base that is part of Sampson State Park in Romulus, New York, where he found a “circuitous veneer of paved roads and runways dotted with hundreds of picnic tables in different arrangements.”

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