AAP News 22

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News22

Fall 2017 Milstein Hall Retrospective 2 Jenny Sabin’s Lumen at MoMA PS1 4 Celebration for Don Greenberg 18 Carnegie Hall Renovation 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 Patti Witten contributing writers Dan Aloi, Rebecca Bowes, Timur Dogan, Edith Fikes, Sherrie Negrea, Diane Lebo Wallace, Patti Witten, Jay Wrolstad copy editor Laura Glenn design KUDOS Design Collaboratory photography William Staffeld (unless otherwise noted) distribution coordinator Sheri D’Elia editors

editorial coordinator

Milstein Hall’s Duane and Dalia Stiller Arcade is a favorite spot for skateboarders.

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© September 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 The last crit was held in July. In August, the library vacated the third floor. Clearing out the entire first floor—of table saws and drill presses and 3D printers and laser cutters and CNC mills and welding tanks and more than a few abandoned projects—stretched over the entire summer. Twelve discrete construction projects were needed to relocate approximately 30,000 square feet of heavily programmed space. Rand Hall is now eerily empty. Its refurbishment starts this fall. As any AAP alum knows, Rand Hall was packed with much more than material objects. Generations of AAP students have spent untold hours there. Creativity and innovation have spilled out of its leaky windows and uninsulated walls. In the early 1950s, Bucky Fuller used Rand Hall to stage his Geoscope; more than four decades ago computer graphics was born in the first-floor labs; dragons have rolled out of the hall’s bowels for generations. The memories and the marks are deep; indexical signs of years of intense use are etched into every surface. The building has earned our affection and now deserves our attention, and the project to build a new fine arts library in the upper floors, a new Materials Practice Facilities space on the first floor, and renew the building envelope on all five sides, is long overdue. The building of Milstein Hall, celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, was premised on Rand Hall as the eastern terminus of the college. In this regard, the Rand Hall project is the fulfillment of a promise made when we broke ground on Milstein Hall eight years ago. The steady improvements made to our physical plant over the past years have been very visible and vigorously debated. But equally consequential, if less photographical, is the evolution of the faculty. As of this writing, seven of the college’s most beloved and influential faculty have entered phased retirement. Three faculty—Caroline O’Donnell, Jenny Sabin, and Jeffrey Chusid—were awarded tenure in May. Seven faculty are currently on the tenure track, and I anticipate two searches in the Department of Architecture this coming academic year. Comparing the faculty roster from 2010 to that of 2017, more than a third of the college’s tenured and tenure-track

faculty are new. The transition among the faculty has been as methodical as such profoundly individual decisions can be, always with the goal of ensuring the continuity of values and standards while refreshing the means and content of our teaching, scholarship, and creative work. New faculty bring new impulses to the curriculum, new scholarly foci, novel courses, and experimental pedagogies. This fall we are launching a graduate architecture program titled Matter Design Computation, a multidisciplinary, twoyear research track attracting students and faculty from the departments of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Fiber Science and Apparel Design, Materials Science and Engineering, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. We are inaugurating Foundations in Architecture, a new studio-based program in Rome for non-B.Arch. majors. And the faculty in the Department of Art are proposing an exciting new four-year B.F.A. curriculum, designed to take better advantage of the diverse academic centers on the Ithaca campus as resources for art making while incorporating both Cornell in Rome and the AAP NYC semesters into the four-year degree track. Change in the college’s infrastructure, transitions among our people, and programmatic innovations are not anomalies. The college as it currently is constituted is but an iteration, a work in progress that has no end condition. I believe that this state of barely stable equilibrium is one of the reasons why many of our students and faculty come to AAP, for we are something of a magnet for creative visionaries and respectful rebels. We cannot be accused of being a tidy affair. And this is just as it should be.

Yours,

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

As the Rand Hall/Mui Ho Fine Arts Library construction project gets underway this fall, the Rand Hall shops—including the first-floor annex pictured here at the end of the spring semester—are moving into temporary locations around the college.


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Milstein Hall Retrospective Matter Design Computation Program, New Faculty Jenny Sabin’s Lumen at MoMA PS1 Pepón Osorio’s “Side by Side,” Weiss/ Manfredi Lecture Spring 2017 Lectures and Exhibitions

Students 8

Student Profile: Na Chainkua Reindorf (M.F.A. ’17) 10 Foo Wins KPF Fellowship, Student Notes 11 B.F.A. Semester at AAP NYC, HPP Work Weekend 14 Spring Semester Field Trips, CRP Scholarships, Student Academic Awards and Prizes

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Faculty&Staff

16 Faculty Profile: Suzanne Charles, CRP 18 Celebration for Don Greenberg, Maria Park Named Director of Exhibitions and Events for AAP; Chair Appointments 19 Daylight Evaluation Research, Faculty and Staff Notes 20 Warner Receives USDA Grant; Critically Now Event Series; Notable Staff Anniversaries

Alumni

21 Alumni Profile: ShihFu Peng (B.Arch. ’89) 22 Flexible Furniture at AAP NYC 23 CRP Fashion Designer, Richard Meier Endowed Scholarship, Marianne Van Lent Exhibition 24 Carnegie Hall Renovation

Fall 2017 Milstein Hall Retrospective 2 Jenny Sabin’s Lumen at MoMA PS1 4 Celebration for Don Greenberg 18

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Carnegie Hall Renovation 24


News&Events

Milstein Hall Retrospective Formally dedicated in 2012, Milstein Hall has transformed AAP by providing a pedagogical tool that represents a spirit of innovation and creativity. 1

The 47,000-square-foot building with its signature floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed steel trusses was completed at a critical moment—a few years earlier, the college had learned its accreditation was in jeopardy because the National Architecture Accreditation Board (NAAB) had determined its facilities needed upgrading. Cornell Board of Trustees member Howard Milstein’s ’73 parents, Paul and Irma Milstein, had given the gift that initiated the construction of a new facility that would satisfy NAAB. When former AAP Dean Mohsen Mostafavi showed Milstein the work of Rem Koolhaas/OMA, he knew immediately who should design the building. “I think [Koolhaas] solved a very difficult design problem with a very welcoming example of architecture at its best. It was a work of genius,” says Milstein, reflecting back. Compared to earlier iterations by other architects, OMA’s unique design did not replace any of the existing buildings but simply linked Sibley and Rand halls, providing a seamless transition between them. “The design changed the flow and connectivity of the buildings and allowed the college to be integrated in a way that the other designs had not,” says Kent Kleinman, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning. “That interconnectedness introduced a kind of cohesion and a sense of collectivity and a way of learning that’s very powerful.”

“Beyond its beautiful and elegant design, Milstein Hall’s studio space harmoniously brings both social and educational aspects together in a casual yet inspiring environment where many lifelong friendships are born.” —Liong Phing Kwee (B.Arch. ’79) Previously located in separate studio spaces in Rand and Sibley halls, architecture students were now together, creating new interactions between first-year, upper-class, and master’s students, all working in the cantilevered L. P. Kwee Studios that seemingly floated above University Avenue. “You never knew who you were going to sit next to and what would spur a conversation, but it could only happen in Milstein Hall because that’s where everyone was,” says Pam Chueh (B.Arch. ’17). In addition to studios for the Department of Architecture, the program included new spaces for use by the entire college, such as the Milstein Hall dome, the 250-seat Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium and Boardroom, and the Bibliowicz Family Gallery and Garden. The presence of Milstein Hall also led to the reconfiguration of space in Rand Hall, enabling a state-of-the-art workshop with 3D printers, laser cutters, kilns, and CNC routers to be expanded on the first floor. “Milstein Hall was more than a single building project; it was the catalyst for a series of cascading changes that have made the college a more stimulating and effective educational environment,” says Kleinman. “Milstein Hall introduced a bold spirit of adventure and change, and I suspect the domino effect of this brilliant intervention will continue for many years to come.”AAP

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RAW Expo, an annual exposition of the creative process across campus, is held in the Milstein Hall dome. photo / Christopher Andras (B.Arch. ’18)

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Students and faculty engage in dialogue in the Stepped Auditorium in L. P. Kwee Studios.

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Franny’s Food Truck, located in West Plaza below Milstein Hall, sits at the crossroads for all three AAP departments, making it the ideal venue for impromptu conversations and spontaneous meetings between faculty, students, and colleagues.

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A student in the Introduction to Architecture Summer Program working in the L. P. Kwee Studios.

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“Milstein Hall dome is not a dome at all, chopped on the road side to view the urban scene of the bus stop business, intersected by the circulation in the vertical direction, and supported by a column at one point. It is boundless and complex, heavy and flying. This is the space in the building where all the parts come together. As a space to discuss what the future of architecture should be, both bold and careful, this is the place to do it.” — Caroline O’Donnell, Edgar A. Tafel Associate Professor and director of the M.Arch. program

Matter Design Computation Program Set to Launch Heralded by an announcement in March, a two-year program for a Cornell master’s degree in architectural science will welcome students with backgrounds in science and engineering, as well as architecture, this fall. The new Matter Design Computation program offers a master of science, and is housed in the graduate field of architecture. This multidisciplinary and collaborative research degree draws on faculty from the departments of Architecture, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Fiber Science and Apparel Design, Materials Science and Engineering, Computer Science, and and Biological Biological and andEnvironmental EnvironmentalEngineering. Engineering.Courses Courses of study of create study positive create exchange positive exchange across disciplines across disciplines to include to include architectural architectural researchresearch in the areas in the of areas material of material computation, compuadaptive tation, adaptive architecture, architecture, and digital and fabrication. digital fabrication. SpecificSpecific subtopics subtopics within within these broad these categories broad categories includeinclude design,I biomimicry, assume there wasn’t sustainability, more ofecological this photoarchitecture, to show on the computational left? design,design, biomimexperimental icry, sustainability, structures, ecological and applications architecture,ofcomputational material science. design, The program experimental was spearheaded structures, and by Jenny applications Sabin, of thematerial Arthur L. and science. Isabel B. Wiesenberger Assistant Professor in the area of design The and program emerging was spearheaded technologiesby in Jenny the Department Sabin, the of Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Assistant Professor in the area of

5 5 George Frantz. 6 Nicholas Klein. photo / Lara Robby 7 Joanna Malinowska. photo / C. T. Jasper 8 Linda Shi. photo / provided 4

“Inspiring in its innovative development of the space, Milstein Hall enhances teaching and research in the college and gives a new visibility to art and design across our entire campus.” — David Skorton, former president of Cornell University

Bibliowicz Family Gallery and Garden The Bibliowicz Family Gallery and Garden has hosted 32 curated exhibitions of work by students, alumni, and selected artists and architects since its opening. The gallery was a gift of Natan Bibliowicz (B.Arch. ’81) and his wife Jessica ’81, who said they wanted to create a space “that exposes students to the work of different architects and artists in a gallery setting.”AAP

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Architecture, design and emerging and director technologies of graduate in the studies Department in architecture. of Architecture, Sabin’s lab, which and director includesofstudent graduate research studiesassociates in architecture. from Sabin’s architecture, lab, which computer includes science, student materials research science, associates and from mechanical architecture,engineering, computer science, was a model materials for the science, new program’s and cross-disciplinary mechanical engineering, inquiry.was a model for the new program’s cross-disciplinary “The program isinquiry. purposely flexible,” and will start small, said “The Sabin, program enrolling is purposely from four flexible,” to six students and willinstart its first small, two or said three Sabin, years, enrolling to make from sure four they to are six fully students funded in its through first two or research three years, and/ortoteaching make sure assistantships, they are fully tuition funded scholarships, through research and awards. and/or Sabin teaching has secured assistantships, funding from tuition Autodesk scholarships, to help and support awards. the program’s Sabin has first secured enrolled funding student, fromJingyang Autodesk(Leo) to help Liu (M.Arch.II support the’15, program’s M.S. ’20). first enrolled student, Jingyang (Leo) Liu (M.Arch.II In March, ’15,the M.S. 2017 ’20). Preston Thomas Memorial Symposium coincided In March, with the the 2017 announcement Preston Thomas of the Memorial program. Symposium The sympocoincided sium featured withpioneers the announcement who are leading of thethis program. new field, The asympodistinguished sium featured list pioneers that included who arekeynote leading this speakers new field, Matthias a distinguished Kohler, an architect list that with included multidisciplinary keynote speakers interests Matthias ranging Kohler, from computational an architect with design multidisciplinary and robotic fabrication intereststoranging material from innovation; computational and Mario design Carpo, and therobotic Reynerfabrication Banham Professor to material of Architectural innovation; and History Marioand Carpo, Theory the Reyner at the Bartlett Banham School Professor of of Architectural University Architecture, History andCollege TheoryLondon. at the Bartlett Titled “Matter School of Design Architecture, Computation:University The Art ofCollege Building London. from Nano Titled to“Matter Macro,”Design the Computation: two-day symposium The Art brought of Building together from participants Nano to Macro,” from diverse the disciplinary two-day symposium backgrounds brought who together are investigating participants the from intersecdiverse disciplinary tions of architecture backgrounds and science, who areand investigating applying insights the intersecand tions of architecture theories from biology, and engineering, science, and and applying mathematics insights toand the AAP design, theoriesfabrication, from biology, andengineering, production of and material mathematics structures. to the design, fabrication, and production of material structures.AAP

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New Faculty in Art and CRP George R. Frantz has been appointed associate professor of the practice in the Department of City and Regional Planning, effective July 1. Frantz has been a visiting critic in the department since August 2016, and a visiting lecturer since 2002. He has taught planning field workshop classes in communities ranging from the Ninth Ward of New Orleans to Catskill Mountain resort towns. With expertise in urban design and comprehensive land-use planning and zoning, his professional firm puts a particular emphasis on addressing the needs of agriculture and the protection of environmentally sensitive lands. In 2016, Frantz’s firm received an award from the New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association in the category of outstanding comprehensive planning for a municipality for The Town of Geneva Comprehensive Plan. In his research, Frantz has studied the potential of Chinese and American cities to evolve into environmentally and socially sustainable communities, and the impacts of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling on agricultural land resources in northern Pennsylvania. Frantz received his B.S. in landscape architecture and his M.R.P. from Cornell in 1980 and 1991, respectively. Nicholas J. Klein was hired as an assistant professor on a tenure track in CRP, effective July 1. Klein has previously taught at Columbia University, Temple University, and Pratt Institute. Klein’s research contributes to two central areas of transportation planning: understanding the factors that influence how people travel on a daily basis and how these changes play out over the course of their lives. His work focuses on marginalized populations and neighborhoods that use transit, walk, and bike at high rates. By studying factors that influence how people in these communities travel on a daily basis and how their travel evolves over many years, Klein’s work offers perspectives for planners, policy makers, and researchers on issues of equity and sustainability in transportation. In addition to a bachelor’s degree in operations research and industrial engineering from Cornell, Klein received a master’s degree in urban spatial analytics from the University of Pennsylvania, and his Ph.D. from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers. The art department has hired Joanna Malinowska as an associate professor of the practice in sculpture and drawing, for a two-year appointment. Malinowska works mainly in sculpture, video, and performance. Her projects—often inspired by an interest in cultural clashes, anthropology, prehistory, and music—have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the SculptureCenter and CANADA gallery in New York City; Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris; Saatchi Gallery and Nottingham Contemporary in Great Britain; Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan; and Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. She was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and the 2015 Venice Biennale of Art. A graduate of the sculpture departments at Rutgers University and Yale School of Art, Malinowska has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, among other places. She is represented by CANADA gallery in New York City. Malinowska frequently collaborates with her partner C. T. Jasper, most recently creating The Emperor’s Canary, a project commissioned by the High Line park in New York City. The Department of City and Regional Planning has hired Linda Shi as an assistant professor on a tenure track, effective July 1. Shi’s research focuses on metropolitan and environmental governance, climate change adaptation, and the equity and justice impacts of climate policies. Her professional experience includes international development, regional strategic planning, and environmental sustainability at the architecture and engineering firm AECOM, the Institute for International Urban Development, and the Rocky Mountain Institute. Additionally, she has consulted for the World Bank, the American Institute of Architects, and the RAND Corporation on projects and research worldwide. Shi earned a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Her dissertation examined how emerging efforts to adapt to climate change in U.S. metropolitan regions are changing institutions for regional governance, and the implications for theory and policy. Shi also holds a master’s in urban planning from Harvard GSD, and a bachelor’s and master’s in environmental management from Yale University. Shi’s spouse, Mitch Glass, has been hired as a visiting critic in CRP and the Department of Landscape Architecture.AAP News22 | Fall 2017 | 3


News&Events

Glowing and Misting, Jenny Sabin’s Lumen is Installed at MoMA PS1 Associate professor of architecture Jenny Sabin’s latest work was a temporary outdoor installation that functioned as a work of art and provided shade, seating, and cooling for visitors to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. Lumen, Sabin’s interactive knitted-fiber installation in the museum’s entrance courtyard, was featured at a press reception on June 27. Open to the public from June 29 through September 4, the project won MoMA’s 2017 Young Architects Program (YAP) competition. “From its conception, it was really important for this to operate as an environment, not just an object,” Sabin said. “In the context of YAP, I was able to take it to a scale that I had never achieved yet, so it’s really exciting.” Tethered to the courtyard walls and raised by steeland-rope towers, two canopies float over the main courtyard and an adjacent smaller courtyard space. Lumen incorporates fibers that react to and absorb energy from the sun, and provides different experiences by night and day, Sabin said. Solar-reactive fibers produce subtle colors in sunlight, and photoluminescent fibers glow brightly at night. “It’s meant to be touched and interactive,” Sabin said. During the heat of the day, people walking through the installation trigger sensors connected to a misting system. As knitted shapes hanging down from the canopy sway in the breeze, “the misting encourages people to dance with it.” Lumen was a highlight of PS1’s Saturday Warm Up series of musical events, from July 1 to September 2, which attracts up to 40,000 attendees over the summer. “This lighting program was an incredible way to highlight the music, and to make it exciting for those visitors at night, amplifying the experience,” said Molly Kurzius, MoMA PS1’s director of communications. “It’s something really dynamic and not just a static installation in the courtyard.”

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Sabin has worked with biologically inspired structures and investigated nonstandard and fibrous networks for a number of years. “This is the first time I’ve used the sun to get the materials to respond,” Sabin said. “Before it’s always been in an enclosed space, controlled by the lighting. With so much more ambient light, it’s more subtle, but I really like it.” Lumen is the result of about six and a half years of research and development in a generative design process involving biology, engineering, mathematics, and materials science. The project was partially funded by AAP alumni William Lim (B.Arch. ’81, M.Arch. ’82) of CL3 and Dan Kaplan (B.Arch. ’84) of FXFOWLE. It took almost three months to fabricate all of the components and six weeks to install the more than 1 million yards of fiber in more than 1,300 digitally knitted components. Sabin is the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Associate Professor and the director of graduate studies at AAP. Lumen was created by Jenny Sabin Studio, with input from the Sabin Design Lab at Cornell and working closely with structural engineer Clayton Binkley and others at the design and engineering firm Arup. Attendees at the opening reception included MoMA representatives, architecture faculty members, and Cornell students and alumni who worked on the project. YAP gives architects an opportunity to design and present innovative projects within guidelines that address environmental issues, such as sustainability and recycling, in the context of creative designs for a temporary outdoor installation providing shade, seating, and water.AAP

Happening on Instagram @cornellaap

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Critique and Compassion Are “Side by Side” in Osorio’s Work for CCA Biennial Race. Class. Determination. The tension and conflict within social systems. A point of contact between them is empathy. This was the context of Side by Side, an installation by multimedia artist and educator Pepón Osorio, unveiled in April in Rand Hall. Osorio was the artist-in-residence for the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) 2016 Biennial Abject/Object Empathies. According to CCA Director Stephanie Owens, “Side by Side is at once an intimate portrait, social critique, and compassionate expression of inclusion and persistence.” The site-specific, sculptural, and multimedia installation told the story of an Ithaca family—a matriarch, her nine grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and their personal experience of the domestic/social systems surrounding them. The centerpiece of the installation was a house—flipped and wedged between floor and ceiling— with LCD panels for windows, and exterior walls blanketed with lottery tickets. Osorio, who often involves the community in his projects, was a natural fit for the biennial’s theme, said Owens. But for this biennial, the artist-in-residence’s main work was unusual. Before submitting a specific proposal for the work, Osorio made frequent trips from Philadelphia to Cornell and local neighborhoods in downtown Ithaca. Neither Owens nor Osorio himself knew what the work would be until he had gotten to know some of the people he met. Where it would be installed was also uncertain. In past years, the biennial’s main work was constructed on the university’s Arts Quad. But inspiration for Side by Side came together when Osorio saw the rawness of Rand Hall’s second floor. Continuing Osorio’s method of community participation as integral to the work, the installation was largely constructed by students of the Hammerstone School: Carpentry for Women, in Ithaca, as well as students from a graduate class taught by Ella Maria Diaz, Latina/o studies and English. Diaz, her students and advisees, as well as others from the Cornell and downtown communities, met with Osorio during the construction phase, giving them an opportunity to intervene in a process that often doesn’t account for the history of artists of color who build community in traditional and nontraditional spaces for art. While on display, the installation continued to serve as the focus for community interaction through a series of open dialogues between students, faculty, community members, and local leaders. “In the context of the biennial’s theme of empathy, making art can mediate between cultural differences and notions in a way that is intentional,” says Owens. “Side by Side is an expression of how social systems are influenced by where we live and how we live.” Timothy Murray, professor of comparative literature and English in the College of Arts and Sciences, succeeded Owens as director of the CCA, effective July 1. The CCA is a university-wide cultural organization that provides a platform for the creation of and public discourse on the contemporary arts on campus.AAP

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In daylight, Lumen’s solarreactive fibers glow with subtle colors. photo / Jesse Winter

2 Photoluminescent fibers brighten after dark. photo / Jesse Winter 3 Side by Side by Pepón Osorio, in Rand Hall.

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During the construction phase, students and others from the Cornell and downtown Ithaca communities met with Osorio, seated second from left.

5 Michael A. Manfredi (M.Arch. ’80), top row left, and Marion Weiss gave the L. Michael Goldsmith Lecture at AAP NYC.

Weiss/Manfredi Lecture “Bridges” Academy and Industry on Cornell Tech Campus

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On April 19, Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi (M.Arch. ’80), cofounders of the architecture and landscape firm of Weiss/Manfredi, gave attendees of the annual L. Michael Goldsmith Lecture an inside look at their design process and their new building, The Bridge at Cornell Tech, during a talk titled “Converging Territories” at the AAP NYC facility in Manhattan. The architects’ interest in an expanded territory for architecture that is free of disciplinary boundaries is exemplified in The Bridge, a focal point of the groundbreaking Cornell Tech campus, which opened in September as part of Cornell’s expanding presence in New York City. Developed in partnership with Forest City Ratner Companies, The Bridge is a corporate colocation building that will bring new technologies to market faster by housing established tech companies and start-ups side-by-side with academic researchers. “We loved Cornell’s proposition to take the 100 square miles of Silicon Valley and compress them on an island,” said Manfredi. “It’s a rare opportunity to invent an academy, and Cornell has been extraordinarily bold.” Pointing to renderings and photos of interiors under construction, the architects detailed the building’s central “bowtie” configuration that draws

together all its occupants. Researchers, start-ups, and industry all have access to light, to see and be seen within a flexible, loftlike layout. “The fantasy of this building for Cornell is that everything that happened in Silicon Valley—inefficiently and distributed geographically—could happen right here,” said Weiss. “What would require long drives in California could turn into short walks up a staircase.” During the Q&A following the talk, Weiss and Manfredi responded to questions posed by Goldsmith family members, as well as master in architecture students. As Cornell continues to create, develop, and implement solutions with a meaningful impact in the world, The Bridge is an example of convergence and innovation. “The setting is magical,” said Manfredi. “The chance to rethink the pedagogy of the academy and the agendas of entrepreneurship will start to play out over the next five to 10 years on this very spot.” The annual Goldsmith lecture was established in memory of L. Michael Goldsmith by his family and friends in recognition of his passion for his education at Cornell, his career, and his love of the profession of architecture.AAP

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News&Events

Spring 2017 Lectures and Exhibitions aap.cornell.edu/events LECTURES

Lena P. Afridi (M.R.P. ’12), Antoine Bryant (B.S. URS ’95), Alia Fierro (M.R.P. ’16), and Ulysses J. Smith (B.A./B.S. URS ’14) 6 Martha Armstrong (M.R.P. ’96), Susan Boyle (M.R.P. ’82), Allison Rachleff (M.A. HPP ’94), and Katelyn Wright (M.R.P. ’10) Nayland Blake A. K. Burns 2 Maria Calandra (M.F.A. ’06) Vishaan Chakrabarti 10 Clarence S. Stein Lecture Series Sonya Clark Sheila Crane Erik den Breejen (M.F.A. ’06) Echo Eggebrecht Roberto Einaudi (B.Arch. ’61) 5 John Foote Peter Gluck William Goldsmith (Ph.D. CRP ’68) Nguyen Hai Long and Tran Thi Ngu Ngon FXFOWLE Lecture for Sustainability, Urbanism, and Design Anna Huff 3 Hans Kollhoff Sean Landers Teiger Mentor in the Arts Kristin Larsen (Ph.D. CRP ’01) Tukumbi LumumbaKasongo Rose Marcus Matter Design Computation: The Art of Building from Nano to Macro Preston Thomas Memorial Lecture Gregor Neuerer Odili Donald Odita Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen 8 James Pratt Patrik Schumacher 9 Edgar A. Tafel Lecture Series Maria Alessandra Segantini Yucel C. Severcan

Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu 4 Edgar A. Tafel Lecture Series Michael Smith 13 Annalisa Trentin Jessica Vaughn 12 Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi (B.Arch. ’80) L. Michael Goldsmith Lecture Stanley WolukauWanambwa

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EXHIBITIONS

2016 CCA Biennial Abject/ Object Empathies Pepón Osorio: Side by Side; Encuentros Heads of the Hydra: Trophies of Dragon Day Lost Utopias Jade Doskow Electric Fuzz Stevie Klaark (M.F.A. ’17) Tyler Scheidt (M.F.A. ’13) Light Topographies 7 Yael Erel Inhabiting the Patterns 11 Christine Heindl Islands of the Dead Luke Erickson (M.Arch. ’16) Apexa Patel (M.Arch. ’16) Up Close: The Models of Zaha Hadid 1

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Teiger Mentor in the Arts Sean Landers, at right, the spring 2017 Teiger Mentor in the Arts, engages with Laura-Bethia Campbell (B.F.A. ’17) in her studio. During the semester, Landers met with undergraduate art students, attended M.F.A. seminars, and delivered a public lecture in March. Landers is best known for using his personal experience as public subject matter, and for utilizing diverse styles and media in a performative manner. He is the eighth Teiger Mentor.AAP

News22 | Fall 2017 | 7


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Traditional African Masks Inspire M.F.A.’s Work In her related projects Reveal || Conceal: Policing Women’s Bodies and Screen, Na Chainkua Reindorf (M.F.A. ’17) set out to explore a question: Why were women’s bodies being policed? Her interest in the subject matter began in 2016, when ancestors, but, especially in Ghana, also as entertainReindorf read a fake news article claiming that the ment. Ghanaian “fantasy dress-ups and festivals” date Tanzanian president had banned miniskirts. In fact, to colonial times when Ghanaians were banned from miniskirts were not allowed in neighboring Uganda— European pubs and bars, and dressed as caricatures of not Tanzania—ostensibly to prevent women from the male European soldiers and military officers being attacked. But for Reindorf, the law said more during Christmas and the New Year. This social about the sexualization of women’s bodies rather than commentary undertone exists in the spiritual versions their safety. of masquerade as well. Reindorf was born and grew up in Ghana. Her But in both historical and contemporary African family’s frequent international travel influenced her contexts, masks are worn and made almost exclusively undergraduate college search in the U.S., leading her by and for men. Reindorf looked for the rare instances to Grinnell College in rural Iowa. After graduating in of women’s masquerades. “I did a lot of research,” she 2014, she spent a gap year pursuing her interest in says. “It is very, very rare. I was interested in masquertextile design before beginning the two-year master of ade as a medium for how gallery visitors could experifine arts program at Cornell University. ence watching versus being watched.” During her first year, Reindorf exhibited work in The most well known instance of women’s masthe Cornell M.F.A. group exhibition, Something Came querade is within Sandé, a women’s secret society in Over Me, as well as several other group shows. Using Liberia and Sierra Leone that initiates girls into textiles and representations of the female body, she womanhood. While masquerade as a cultural phenom“explored how a human body can become a vessel for enon is overwhelmingly male, Sandé stands out for its the projection of identities, experiences, and messages— longevity and as a symbol of female empowerment. and how fluid the transition can be between these Borrowing from Sandé’s unique iconography, Reindorf projections.” used the domed shape of the women’s masks in Reindorf’s two solo exhibitions, Reveal || Conceal— several of her large constructions—which measure six funded in part by the Cornell Council for the Arts— feet long, six feet wide, and seven feet tall—for Reveal and her M.F.A. thesis project Screen (pictured above) || Conceal and Screen. were sculptural works responding to the idea of “For Reveal || Conceal, I made the pieces big enough women’s bodies being policed, connecting it to ideas of to be a presence in the gallery and so that they could watching and being watched, and how one could be occupied by more than one person at a time,” “counteract the gaze.” Reindorf explains. “On the outside,” she says, “there “In heteronormative patriarchal societies around might be 10 people in the gallery but you would just the world,” says Reindorf, “women and women’s see these monumental pieces in the space, and perbodies are seen as necessary for men’s consumption, haps discover that there was an opening to pass and policed in the sense that what a woman wears is through, and then that there were other people inside construed as something to attract or repel men. This is who may or may not have been watching you.” something I vehemently disagree with. I believe in a For Reindorf, exploring how that affected people’s woman’s right to make decisions about who does and behavior, how it relates to surveillance, policing, does not have access to her body.” and watching someone without them knowing they Reindorf began by researching the traditional are being watched—even how returning a gaze masquerades common in West and Central Africa in may be empowering—changes the dynamic of what pursuit of the idea that facial masks and costumes power means. simultaneously conceal the body and allow the person Held in Tjaden Hall’s darkened Olive Tjaden inside to watch others. She knew that in some commu- Gallery, visitors were drawn to the work’s spotlighted nities, masquerade served as a spiritual connection to tactile exterior. Reindorf found that the interiors of

Reveal || Conceal were somewhat misinterpreted as places of solace rather than observation. This is how the second work, Screen, came about—not coincidentally, Reindorf says, during the week of the general election in November 2016. For Screen, Reindorf used traditional materials like raffia, wood, bamboo, and sequins dyed in deep blue to convey the fantastical and mysterious. She juxtaposed these with contemporary materials (ruffles, beads, frills, and mirrors) to convey how the centuries-old tradition of costume making is being modernized by global trade and Westernization. “The inside of Screen referenced the contemporary Ghanaian masquerade’s bright colors and reflective surface,” says Reindorf. “I dedicated the exterior to the more traditional and serious aspects of the references. I wanted the sculpture to be static, yet move in response to people.” For Screen’s exterior, Reindorf chose the color blue to symbolize water and to reference the sowei, the masked woman who performs the initiation of girls into womanhood in traditional communities. Blue filters on the gallery’s overhead lights had the effect of making the room bluer as daylight dimmed. “For Screen’s interior, I used mirror because it is considered in many parts of the world to be not as reflective of self but a window into another world,” Reindorf explains, “and I used reflective Mylar for the window screens, similar to the ideas in Reveal || Conceal, of watching without being seen.” The interior mirrored textile was custom designed to reference the wax-print style of African prints— which, she notes, have their origins in Indonesia and Java, via Dutch traders and colonials. Despite its mixed roots, this style of print is taken to be uniquely African, and it was interesting to Reindorf to put these contrasting references together and ask, “What is authenticity, what is African?” Although there is no right answer to the question of authenticity, Reindorf believes it is problematic to expect contemporary African art to look a certain way, or that certain materials must be used if something is to be authentically African. She was influenced by Okwui Enwezor’s and Chika Okeke-Agulu’s writing about globalization and the surge of interest in African artists in their book, Contemporary African Art since 1980. According to Reindorf, the authors contend that ideologies that existed in the 1980s and 90s have since been shattered, and the highly varied cultural traditions and archives available result in complex models of identity and identifications of artists who reside both inside and outside Africa. Reindorf’s varied interests—textile design, sculpture, representing women’s bodies, and the projections of identity onto bodies in general—came together during the course of her studies at Cornell largely because of the support she received from the M.F.A. faculty, especially associate professors Jolene Rickard and Bill Gaskins, and Professor Gregory Page. For her, the program stands out because of the faculty’s willingness to allow its creative students to respond to assignments in a way that enriches their unique practices. Her studies at Grinnell College had given her an introduction to a liberal arts education. At Cornell, Reindorf expanded that experience with the interdisciplinary resources and interactions the university offers. Classes taken outside of AAP introduced her to avenues of inquiry not directly connected to art but instrumental in her development as an artist. “At Cornell, I had freedom to think about my work, the practice of art, and being creative,” Reindorf says. “I was able to make work but also respond to prompts in class with ideas I had been thinking about.” In addition to her classes, Reindorf was a gallery assistant for Olive Tjaden and Experimental galleries in Tjaden Hall; in the future, she hopes to work in the gallery/museum field in addition to practicing as an artist and pursuing her creative interests, and she is looking into residencies for the opportunity to continue her practice. When asked what she will do next, Reindorf jokes, “I will have to go small now, because I can’t carry large sculptures like Screen everywhere.” “I’m still interested in the surface design aspect of textiles, how they can be used for both two- and three-dimensional capabilities. But I have a lot of interests and passions!” she laughs. “I’m going to take it a little bit slow for the next few months. Then maybe move to New York for a year, and then back to Ghana.” “Maybe,” she smiles.AAP Patti Witten


Starting a Protest For her thesis, titled “Surgical Acupunctures: A São Paulo Case Study,” Helena Rong (B.Arch. ’17) designed a series of seeded events and grassroots developments that form “a constellation of surgical deployments rooted in bottom-up urbanism.” Under the guidance of advisors Andrea Simitch, professor in architecture, and Julian Palacio, visiting critic in architecture, Rong composed nine narratives sited within vacant buildings in São Paulo’s downtown. “Potentials for Surgical Urbanism: A Case Study for Downtown São Paulo,” the text section of Rong’s thesis, was selected for inclusion in the 2017 Docomomo International Conference São Paulo Chapter.


Students

Foo Wins 2017 KPF Traveling Fellowship Justin Foo (B.Arch. ’18) was one of three winners of the prestigious 2017 Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF) Traveling Fellowship. Foo traveled across the globe to sites in Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, Bangladesh, Japan, and the U.S. during an eightweek journey this past summer. The ambitious itinerary allowed Foo an extensive investigation of “the most ubiquitous architectural material in the world—concrete,” according to his proposal. Foo has long been interested in materiality and has tried to challenge the limits of every material used in his work, including wood, metal, and plastic. His particular fascination with concrete is based on its difficulty of classification. “[Concrete] is at once liquid and solid, polished and rough, ancient and modern, natural and constructed, brutal and sensitive,” Foo says. The buildings he selected to investigate during his trip were examples of the adaptability of concrete to each architect’s agenda, and also chosen for their divergent geographic and cultural contexts. Sites include the Bank of London and South America in Buenos Aires; the church of Saint-Pierre in Lyon, France; the Palazzetto dello Sport in Rome; the Kyoto International Conference Center in Kyoto, Japan; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, among many others. Winners of the annual competition are selected by portfolio review. Foo’s portfolio included various projects that address some of the sites he visited this summer. “Justin’s portfolio contained an impressive range of scales and types of work,” says Mark Cruvellier, department chair and the Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture. “Beyond this, however, was a unifying close engagement with and representation of materials—whether by means of spectacular models or through inventive, projectspecific drawings, and often both working together. These representations directly supported the theme for his proposed itinerary: namely, an in-depth and exhaustive study of concrete in architecture.” Each year, KPF awards three travel grants to students who are in their penultimate year at one of 26 design schools. The goal of the award is to allow students to broaden their education through a summer of travel before their final year at school. Each winner receives $8,000 for their trip and another $2,000 after submitting a report about their travels.AAP

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1 Justin’s Foo’s sculpture, titled Octopus Transformer, in the Duane and Dalia Stiller Arcade. photo / provided 2 B.F.A. students gather around their work in the studio at AAP NYC. 3 Students work on the Colebrookdale Railroad during the HPP Work Weekend. photo / Alyssa Loorya

Honoring the Dead of Willard Asylum A group of planning and landscape architecture students engaged in a self-directed cemetery design project for a local conservancy associated with the preservation of the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane, a former mental asylum opened in 1879 on the shore of Seneca Lake in Willard, New York. Zhuo Cheng ’18, Nicolas Grefenstette (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’16), Huan Liu ’16, Xiao Shi (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’16), and Wenjun Xu ’18 explored the overlap between issues of land-use planning, historic preservation, and landscape architecture, to come up with ideas to create a field-like memorial space in keeping with minimal budget and low-maintenance requirements. Approved by the New York State Office of Mental Health, the design for the cemetery of unmarked graves consists of ribbons of perennials or bulbs along the edge of a mowed path, timed to flower in sequence. The facility is now a specialized state prison for the treatment of drug-addicted convicts.AAP

Student Notes Graduate students in art and CRP received 2017–18 International Research Travel Grants from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Farhana Ahmad’s (Ph.D. CRP ’22) proposal, titled Climate Adaption and Water Scarcity in Khulna, Bangladesh, will explore how local institutions and activists influence urban water adaptation in the context of climate change. British Dancehall: Changing Culture, From the Outside In, the project of Sasha Phyars-Burgess (M.F.A. ’18), is an exploration of the Caribbean dancehall culture in the United Kingdom. Seema Singh’s (Ph.D. CRP ’23) project, Exploring Transport and Gender Linkages in Indian Cities, examines how women experience urban transport and their ability to access transport facilities in Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur. In A Stinking Problem? Sanitation, Sewage, and Small Cities in Tamil Nadu, India, Nidhi Subramanyam’s (Ph.D. CRP ’23) case studies of those small cities examine how

decentralization affects the provision and maintenance of sanitation infrastructure, and how excluded communities may obtain access to clean and improved sanitation. Yuanshuo Xu’s (M.R.P. ’13, Ph.D. CRP ’21) proposal, titled Shrinking Cities in Urbanized China: Geographic Diversity of State Rescaling, will build a model of shrinking cities in China, identifying the problematic regions and regional problems, and the implications on planning and policy responses. During the spring semester, Patrick Braga (B.A./B.S. URS ’17) gave talks, held an exhibition, and completed his thesis project for a dual degree in urban and regional studies and the departments of Music and Economics. In February, Braga hosted an archival exhibition and talk in Sibley Hall titled Suburbanizing Rio de Janeiro: 1929–1939. In April, he gave a presentation titled “Arquitectura Cuba and the Early Revolutionary Project” at the Cuba at a Crossroads Symposium at

SUNY Geneseo. In May, he presented “Urban Design Challenges in Brazilian Cities,” focusing on problems with zoning regulations in Rio de Janeiro, at Congress for the New Urbanism 25 in Seattle. During the conference, Braga joined professional architects doing work in Central and South America and a real estate developer from Panama on a panel titled “Seeding Urbanism in Latin America.” Braga graduated summa cum laude from the Department of Music for his thesis project Eyes That Do Not See (opus 42), an opera about Le Corbusier, modernist architecture, and city planning that debuted last year in Milstein Hall dome. Akanksha Chauhan (M.R.P. ’18) was selected as an Arcadis 2017 Waterfront Scholar by the Waterfront Alliance. Chauhan, Sarah Daugherty (M.R.P. ’16), and Saumitra Sinha (M.R.P. ’17) represented Cornell at the Waterfront Conference at Pier 40 in May.

Led by Pamela Chueh (B.Arch. ’17), Sergio Preston (Ph.D. HAUD ’22), and Gretchen Worth (M.A. HPP ’20), #BlowingUpTheDome was an event intended to exhibit “the participatory space-making of Burning Man.” During the event, students and invited guests from all sectors of the college released scores of balloons in Sibley Dome. Additionally, Preston was accepted with full tuition to Cornell’s School of Criticism and Theory during the summer months. The student-led planning group Design Connect took on four projects in New York state during the spring semester— a recreation plan for the town of Berkshire, an interpretive building for the Sterling Nature Center in Cayuga County, improvements to Ernie Davis Park in Elmira, and a project for the Geneva Public Library. The project managers were Samuel Baer ’17, Thackston Crandall ’19, Liz Fabis ’19, and Hannah Plummer (M.R.P. ’18).

Benjamin Coleman (M.R.P. ’17) was interviewed for an “M.R.P. Spotlight” piece for the Cornell University Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies Southeast Asia Program website. Coleman discussed his interest in international studies in planning, language learning, and research on disaster risk mitigation—specifically the social factors that affect risk—and his work with the Philippine’s Department of Transportation on a bus rapid transit system for Cebu City. Several Ph.D. candidates in history of architecture and urban development (HAUD) received funding, prizes, fellowships, and scholarships during the spring semester. Salvatore Dellaria (Ph.D. HAUD ’23) won the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) Collection Research Grant Program summer fellowship, a six-week research residency funded jointly by the CCA and Cornell, to conduct research in the CCA’s James Stirling archives and photography

holdings for his dissertation. Aslihan Gunhan (Ph.D. HAUD ’22) presented a paper titled “From Hygienic Bodies to Destructive Bodies: A Study on the Performative Assemblies at the Station Square in Ankara,” presented at “The Body’s Politic: Architecture and the Modern Subject,” a conference organized by UCLA Architecture and Urban Design as a graduate symposium. Additionally, Gunhan received a Helen O. and Stephen Jacobs Fund conference grant, an A. Henry Detweiler Fund research and travel grant, and was named Ottoman Summer Program Fellow at Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul, Turkey. Anna Mascorella (Ph.D. HAUD ’19) gave the introductory remarks for alumna Sophie Hochhäusl (M.A. HAUD ’10, Ph.D. HAUD ’15), who won the Bruno Zevi Prize for her essay, From Vienna to Frankfurt: A History of Crisis, Limited Resources, and the Modern Kitchen. Mascorella and

Hochhäusl discussed the winning essay at the award ceremony at the Fondazione Bruno Zevi in Rome in April. First-year Ph.D. candidate Ana Ozaki was accepted to the Campus Ultzama 2017 conference in Pamplona, Spain, held in June. Additionally, a proposal written by a reading group that Ozaki belongs to received funding for the next academic year from the Institute for Comparative Modernities. The proposal, titled Postcolonial Studies and Space, was written by Ozaki and Gunhan, with contributions by first-year Ph.D. HAUD candidates Michael Moynihan and Nidhi Subramanyam, with Jonathan Lohnes, history. Other members of the reading group of first-year Ph.D. candidates include Shoshana Goldstein, and Mary Kate Long, Asian literature, religion, and culture. In a student-faculty collaboration, Maddy Eggers (B.Arch. ’19) and Davide Marchetti, visiting critic in architecture at Cornell in


Art Students Explore Artistic Practice During New York City Semester Art students in New York City this spring created and exhibited their work, met leading artists and curators, and took on internships during the bachelor of fine arts semester at AAP NYC. The 14 students took studio and seminar classes, an interdisciplinary art history class, and a professional practice class with an internship component. Class discussions, readings, writing assignments, and studio projects were augmented by access to the city’s artistic and cultural bounty. “The really salient feature of the program is the art and the resources the city has to offer,” said curator and writer Linda Norden, visiting critic in AAP. Visiting Lecturer Masha Panteleyeva’s art history class, titled Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Metropolitan Studies, covered contemporary art and urbanism, architecture, and city planning, including the work of Robert Moses. Visiting Lecturer Jane Benson and

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Visiting Critic Beverly Semmes, both artists, also arranged several artist studio visits. Firsthand experiences and encounters around the city also included visits to major exhibitions, galleries, and art fairs. Guest lecturers at AAP NYC included artists Katie Holten, Damien Davis, Nayland Blake, and Ryan Trecartin. Internships at artist studios, galleries, museums, and nonprofits were an option about half the students took this year. Among them, Kelsey Burgers (B.F.A. ’19) and Ashley Mbogoni (B.F.A. ’19) both worked for artist Ann Craven. Jada Haynes (B.F.A. ’19) interned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s concerts and lectures department. Le-Tone Wei (B.F.A. ’19) worked with Time In Children’s Arts Initiative, a nonprofit enriching the lives of children from underserved schools.AAP

Give a Scoop, Get a Scoop From left, Karen Wang (M.Arch. ’17), Mingyue Yang (M.Arch.II ’17), and Dan Kuhlmann (M.R.P. ’14, Ph.D. CRP ’22) enjoy an ice cream treat during Give a Scoop, Get a Scoop, an event hosted by AAP’s career service office, AAP Connect, in May. Using laptops that were set up in the Green Dragon café, students completed a survey asking about their plans for the summer and the following year. More than 190 responses were received, and some of the summer internship and career destinations included Gensler, SOM, and Cornell, among many others, in cities ranging from L.A. to Oxford, England.AAP

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HPP Work Weekend During the 2017 Historic Preservation Planning (HPP) Work Weekend in April, graduate students in the Department of City and Regional Planning worked on projects associated with the historic Colebrookdale Railroad Station in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. The group was made up of students in the spring semester Planning and Preservation Practice class taught by Associate Professor Jeffrey Chusid, who led the excursion, joined by several alumni, as well as CRP faculty members Nathaniel C. Guest ’98 (M.A. HPP ’12), visiting lecturer; and Thomas J. Campanella, associate professor. The tourist railroad operates in Berks and Montgomery counties, northwest of Philadelphia, overseen by the Colebrookdale Railroad Preservation Trust. Guest, who is the trust’s founder, said the Work Weekend accomplishments help the community and propel the economic revitalization efforts that the trust promotes. The students pitched in on numerous projects, including cleaning and sorting thousands of brick pavers and demolishing the nonhistoric interiors of two train cars.AAP

Rome, entered a design competition for Concentrico, an annual architecture festival in the small, historic town of Logroño, in northern Spain. Their proposal for an elevated viewing platform above the central plaza, titled The Tower of Memory, took second prize in the competition. Joyelle Gilbert (B.A./B.F.A. ’19), an undergraduate pursuing a concurrent degree in the Department of Art and College of Arts and Sciences, was commissioned by Entrepreneurship@Cornell to paint a mural on a 40-foot wall in the new eHub in Kennedy Hall. The mural took approximately 90 hours to complete, and features motifs of pathways, inspiration, and clouds to convey the theme of entrepreneurship. The mural was finalized in January. Mitch Gillam (B.S. URS ’17) completed the coursework for his URS degree while playing on the Cornell men’s hockey team as a goaltender. In his final season, Gillam was awarded the

Nicky Bawlf Award, the team’s highest honor of most valuable player. In the spring, he signed a short-term contract that begins what he hopes will be a longer professional career in hockey. In late April, Wylie Goodman (M.R.P. ’17) was interviewed by a journalist from Agence FrancePresse about her exit project concerning controlled environmental agriculture in New York City. The story was then picked up by a number of Englishlanguage journals and websites, including Inquirer.net and the Science Times. In the Barnes Hall Auditorium in March, the Original Cornell Syncopators, a Cornell student jazz group led by cornet player Colin Hancock (B.S. URS ’19) recreated the historic, first-ever jazz recording session of the Original Dixieland Jass Band, captured in 1917 in New York City. Hancock did much of the research for the project. A Cornell Baker Program in Real

Estate team took second place in the 2017 ARGUS University Challenge. The team included Paul Heydweiller (M.P.S. RE ’18), Alejandro Santander (M.P.S. RE ’18), Yufei Wang (M.P.S. RE ’17), Yang Yang (M.P.S. RE ’17), and Julin Yong (M.P.S. RE ’18). The competition was a combined portfolio-level hold/sell and investment analysis, using three scenarios to project the risk/return and determine potential loan-to-value ratios. Jingyang (Leo) Liu (M.Arch.II ’15, M.S. ’20); Val Mack ’17, an M.P.S. candidate in information science; and engineering students Mutahir Kazmi ’17 and Khalil Hajji ’17 are the force behind Dimitri, a student start-up and member of the 2016–17 eLab business accelerator program at Cornell, who are looking to make 3D printing more accessible. Starting with developing the perfect-fitting shoe, the students learned about 3D printing, the areas where innovation is needed, and how it will be

possible for average consumers to create 3D-printed products for themselves. Tianshu Liu (M.Arch.II ’17) and Linshen Xie (M.Arch.II ’17) were awarded second place in the prestigious eVolo 2017 Skyscraper Competition. Using metropolitan Manila as an example, Liu and Xie’s entry, titled Vertical Factories in Megacities, investigates the benefits of moving factories back to urban areas, and how redesigning and relocating high-rise factories into Manila would address issues including waste management, drainage and flooding, and reuse of organic waste to create fertilizer, heat, and electricity. Patricia Nakaghala Muumba (B.Arch. ’19) was featured in a story in CURBED magazine titled “How Can Architecture Schools Increase Diversity?” In the story, Muumba recalls the cultural shock of moving from Uganda, which is largely black, to America, where architects are

Happening on Twitter @cornellaap

predominantly white. Kent Kleinman, the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP, was among several deans of prominent U.S. architecture schools interviewed for the story, which enumerates AAP’s efforts to increase the diversity among faculty as well as the student body. During the spring semester, Hanna Reichel (B.S. URS ’17) was one of the comanagers of the Farmer’s Market at Cornell, a weekly market offering local food and artisanal goods. The market had been located on the Ag Quad since its founding in 2010, but moved to the Arts Quad in the spring semester because of construction in the former location. Reichel was featured in an article in the Cornell Daily Sun, talking about the move to the Arts Quad, the new vendors being added, and future plans for the market. Andrea Restrepo-Mieth (Ph.D. CRP ’18) was awarded three grants for travel and research to continue her scholarly work in

Medellín, Colombia. RestrepoMieth received a 2017 Engaged Graduate Student Grant for research for her proposal titled Agents of Change: Institutionalizing Progressive Planning Practices in Medellín, Colombia; and two grants from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies—a 2017 Conference Grant from the Latin American Studies Program and a 2017–18 travel grant. Pauline Shongov’s (B.F.A. ’18) abstract submission titled A Visual Palimpsest: Object Memories through HybridIdentity was selected for presentation at the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) from more than 4,000 submissions. The NCUR 31 conference was held at the University of Memphis in April.

Held to honor the shared history with U.S. African American soldiers in World War II, the meetings received extensive local news coverage. Ziye Zhang, a Ph.D. candidate in Urban and Regional Science, presented a paper titled “An Investigation of Vertical Housing Information” at the Student Symposium 2017: Global China–Cornell, hosted by the Cornell East Asia Program Contemporary China Initiative and Cornell Institute for China Economic Research.

The CRP Rome Workshop made the Italian news as URS students, led by instructors Greg Smith and Mildred Warner, met with the mayor of Barga and with residents in Sommocolonia.

News22 | Fall 2017 | 11


Hide Kate Huffman (M.F.A. ’18) in her studio in The Foundry. Behind her is Hide (2017), oil paint and thread, 5' x 5'. Huffman says, “For my work, I spend a lot of time engaging with natural elements. I read extensively about the environment and dedicate time to trying to understand particular movements that are common in the biological world.”



CRP Undergrads Receive Prestigious Scholarships

Students

Two CRP students received highly competitive undergraduate scholarships this spring. Skye Hart (B.S. URS ’18) was selected for a competitive Udall Undergraduate Scholarship. The Udall Foundation awards approximately 60 scholarships annually to students whose work addresses matters related to the natural environment; or, who are Native American and/or Alaskan Native and dedicated to issues those communities currently face. Hart is affiliated with the Tonawanda Band of Seneca as a member of the Snipe Clan, and is researching conditions that affect Native American peoples living in urban areas in the Pacific Northwest.

Hart began to research Seattle-area Native American communities during the summer of 2016, when she was nominated and selected to join the Hunter S. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholars program. The Udall Scholarship provides her with financial assistance for tuition, room, board, and other expenses as she continues her studies this fall and advances her research. Alec Martinez (B.S. URS ’18) received a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, which awards $30,000 to undergraduates who intend to pursue careers in public service, to help fund graduate studies. During the spring semester, Martinez participated in Cornell Design Connect’s neighborhood revitalization project in Corning, New York, and he volunteered in an alternative breaks program in New York City, where he worked with Harlem Grown to transform vacant lots into urban farms. In addition to aspiring to public office, Martinez plans to earn a master’s in urban and regional planning, and then start his own urban planning firm and parallel nonprofit.AAP

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Spring Semester Field Trips The extreme landscape of Madeira, Portugal, was the setting for a trip taken by undergraduate and graduate students in the architecture option studio taught by Visiting Critic João Almeida and Gensler Visiting Critic Paulo David, titled Designing on the Limit. Volcanic, green, and rugged, Madeira’s high cliffs give dizzying views of narrow pebble beaches, while deep valleys and dense arboreal forest contrast with a harsh environment on the peaks above the cloud layer. For their proposals, most of the students selected sites on the irregular coastline on the tip of the eastern end of the island. Classes in architecture also took field trips to Bogotá; Berlin; Marco Island, Florida; and New York City. Additionally, the Mellon Collaborative Studies seminar traveled to Havana, Cuba. Art students visited Berlin, New York City, and Wells College in Aurora, New York. Classes in CRP took field trips to Buffalo and Rochester, New York, and to Washington, DC. Graduate students in the Cornell Baker Program in Real Estate took a field trip to Dallas and Houston, Texas.AAP

Odd Year

1 Students hike along the cliffs of Madeira, Portugal. photo / Christopher Andras (B.Arch. ’18)

M.F.A. students and instructors gather in advance of the opening of their 2017 M.F.A. group exhibition, titled Odd Year. The exhibition was hosted for the second consecutive year by Caelum Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan. The show was curated by artist Douglas Ross, and featured the work of the 12 first- and second-year M.F.A. students. The annual M.F.A. exhibition is supported by the Cornell Council for the Arts and the Department of Art.AAP photo / Gabriel Ramos (M.F.A. ’18)

2016 –17 Student Academic Awards and Prizes Architecture Abadan Graduate Award Haoran Wang (M.Arch. ’20) A. Henry Detweiler Scholarship Fund Elvan Cobb (Ph.D. HAUD ’18) Aslihan Gunhan (Ph.D. HAUD ’22) Elizabeth Muller (Ph.D. HAUD ’19) Ana Ozaki (Ph.D. HAUD ’23) A.I.A. Certificate of Merit Jordan Berta (M.Arch. ’16) Evan Rawn (B.Arch. ’17) A.I.A. Henry Adams Medal and Certificate of Merit Christopher Battaglia (M.Arch. ’17) Aashti Miller (B.Arch. ’17) Alpha Rho Chi Pamela Chueh (B.Arch. ’17) Maggie Zou (M.Arch. ’17) Baird Prize Ihwa Choi (B.Arch. ’20) Yue (Lancer) Gu (B.Arch. ’20) Dylan Manley (B.Arch. ’20) Belcher-Baird Architectural Design Award Eliana Drier (M.Arch. ’20) Xiaoxue Ma (M.Arch. ’20) Bradford and Phyllis Friedman Perkins Graduate Award Catherine Breen (M.Arch. ’20)

Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Award Laura-India Garinois (B.Arch. ’17) Natalie Hemlick (B.Arch. ’17) Andrew Moorman (B.Arch. ’17) Helena Rong (B.Arch. ’17) Clifton Beckwith Brown Memorial Medal Jessica Jiang (B.Arch. ’17) Douglas W. Hocking and Melinda K. Abrams Award Alexander Terry (M.Arch. ’20) Earl R. Flansburgh Merit Award Ramses Gonzalez (M.Arch. ’20) Christopher Yi (M.Arch. ’20) Edward Palmer York Memorial Prize Xin Yue Wang (B.Arch. ’21) Zhenbang Xiong (B.Arch. ’21) Jingxin Yang (B.Arch. ’21) Jian Kun (Davis) Zhu (B.Arch. ’21) Elliot M. Glass Graduate Award Hafsa Muhammad (M.Arch. ’20) Eschweiler Prize for Merit and Distinction in M.Arch. Design Studio Christopher Chown (M.Arch, ’17) Alex Jopek (M.Arch. ’17) Christopher Morse (M.Arch. ’17) Warisara Sudswong (M.Arch. ’17) Helen Fagan Tyler Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Mwanzaa Brown (M.Arch. ’19) Samuel Capps (M.Arch. ’19) Tess Clancy (M.Arch. ’19)

Osehikhueme Etomi (M.Arch. ’19) Hyojin Lee (M.Arch.II ’18) Jingsi Li (M.Arch.II ’17) Lingling Liu (M.Arch. ’19) Lingzhe Lu (M.Arch. ’19) Yue Ma (M.Arch. ’19) Heather Mauldin (M.Arch. ’19) Lu (Cheryl) Xu (M.Arch. ’19) Linjun Yu (M.Arch. ’19) John Hartell Graduate Award for Art and Architecture Jamie Mitchell (M.Arch. ’19) Konstantinos Petrakos (M.Arch.II ’17) Alireza Shojakhani (M.Arch. ’19) Kittleman Graduate Award in Architecture, Art, and Planning Linshen Xie (M.Arch.II ’17) M.Arch.II Award for Outstanding Performance in Architecture Marwan Omar (M.Arch.II ’17) Il-Sang Yoon (M.Arch.II ’17) Linning Zhang (M.Arch.II ’17) Mary M. Lyons Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Kun Bi (M.Arch. ’19) Samuel Capps (M.Arch. ’19) Stephen Clond (M.Arch. ’19) Xiaoyan Dong (M.Arch.II ’17) Alexandre Mecattaf (M.Arch. ’19) Marawan Omar (M.Arch.II ’17) Matthew L. Witte Graduate Award Emma Boudreau (M.Arch. ’20) Olive Tjaden Scholarship Gary Esposito (M.Arch. ’19) Konstantinos Petrakos (M.Arch.II ’17)

RGB Endowed Graduate Award Nicolas Leonard (M.Arch. ’20) Robert D. MacDougall Memorial Scholarship Salvatore Dellaria (Ph.D. HAUD ’23) Gökhan Kodalak (Ph.D. HAUD ’19) Whitten Overby (Ph.D. HAUD ’19) Ana Ozaki (Ph.D. HAUD ’23) Robert James Eidlitz Travel Fellowship Jessica Jiang (B.Arch. ’17) Rachel Kaplan (M.Arch. ’14) Joseph Kennedy (B.Arch. ’15) Katie MacDonald (B.Arch. ’13) Helena Rong (B.Arch. ’17) Christopher Ryan (B.Arch. ’12) Kyle Schumann (B.Arch. ’13) Sonny Meng Qi Xu (B.Arch. ’13) Ruth Bentley and Richmond Harold Shreve Award Christopher Battaglia (M.Arch. ’17) Mark Leskovec (M.Arch. ’17) Christopher Morse (M.Arch. ’17) Warisara Sudswong (M.Arch. ’17) Sheinfeld Lindenfeld International Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Isabel Brañas Jarque (M.Arch. ’20) Stephen W. Jacobs Fund Aslihan Gunhan (Ph.D. HAUD ’22) Anna Mascorella (Ph.D. HAUD ’19)

Susan T. Rodriguez Graduate Award Stefani Johnson (M.Arch. ’20) Tui Pranich and Lucilo Pena Graduate Award Daniel (Max) Piersol (M.Arch. ’20) William S. Downing Prize Elie Boutros (B.Arch. ’18) Justin Foo (B.Arch. ’18) Yichen Jia (B.Arch. ’18) Carmen Johnson (M.Arch.II ’17) Anuntachai (Ben) Vongvanij (M.Arch. ’18)

Edith Adams and Walter King Stone Memorial Prize Kylie Corwin (B.F.A. ’18) Pauline Shongov (B.F.A. ’18) Jay Wonsuk Yang (B.F.A. ’18)

John W. Reps Award Shannon Cilento (M.A. HPP ’17)

Elsie Dinsmore Popkin ’58 Art Award James Quinn (B.F.A. ’17)

Michael Rapuano Memorial Award Carsten Schmidt (M.R.P./ M.L.A. ’18)

Faculty Medal of Art Naima Kazmi (B.F.A. ’17) Gibian Rosewater Traveling Research Award So Yeon Kim (B.F.A. ’18)

Art

John Hartell Graduate Award for Art and Architecture Madeleine Cichy (M.F.A. ’17)

Charles Baskerville Painting Award Diana Clarke (M.F.A. ’17) Veronica Constable (B.F.A. ’17)

John “Kip” Brady Memorial Award Emma Regnier (B.F.A. ’19) William Smith (B.F.A. ’19)

Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Award Rebecca Allen (B.F.A. ’17)

CRP

David R. Bean Prize in Fine Arts Jada Haynes (B.F.A. ’19) Steav Sung Eun Kim (B.F.A. ’19) Natalia Marra (B.F.A. ’19) Yukimi Ohashi (B.F.A. ’19) William Smith (B.F.A. ’19) Department of Art Distinguished Achievement Award Laura-Bethia Campbell (B.F.A. ’17)

Addison G. Crowley (B.L.Arch. ’38) Prize Joshua Glasser (B.S. URS ’18) American Institute of Certified Planners Outstanding Student Award Hannah Bahnmiller (M.R.P. ’17) Department of City and Regional Planning Graduate Community Service Award Dylan Tuttle (M.R.P. ’17)

Merrill Presidential Scholar Hadar Sachs (B.S. URS ’17)

Pamela Mikus Graduate Fellowship Sena Kayasu (M.A. HPP ’20) Peter B. Andrews Memorial Thesis Prize Xiao Shi (M.R.P. ’16) Portman Family Graduate Student Award Yanlei Feng (M.R.P. ’17) Robert P. Liversidge III Memorial Book Award Paige Barnum (M.R.P. ’17) Thomas W. Mackesey Award Jacob Stock (M.R.P. ’17) Urban and Regional Studies Academic Achievement Award Patrick Braga (B.A./B.S. URS ’17) Samuel Coons (B.S. URS ’17) Aaron Ong (B.S. URS ’17) Urban and Regional Studies Community Service Award Hadar Sachs (B.S. URS ’17)


26 Broadway Maggie O’Keefe’s (B.F.A. ’19) 26 Broadway (2017), oil, 24" x 18", was created in a studio class taught by Visiting Critic Beverly Semmes at AAP’s New York City facility located at 26 Broadway. It was shown in the class exhibition as well as several other exhibitions. News22 | Fall 2017 | 15


Faculty&Staff

Profile

Studying Suburbia: From Development to Redevelopment “I never had any doubt about what I wanted to do when I was younger—I wanted to be an architect,” says Assistant Professor Suzanne Lanyi Charles of the Department of City and Regional Planning (CRP). After completing a master of architecture degree, Charles spent nearly 10 years working professionally in the field of architecture, first at Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Paris and then at Booth Hansen in Chicago, where she advanced to the position of vice president. “It was while working on large projects in Chicago that I began to realize how very different a developer’s concerns were from most architects, which was often frustrating,” says Charles. “It was common to struggle with developers every step of the way, defending our intent, the building, and design decisions we had made because, as architects, we had little awareness of or access to the information developers used to make crucial, often market-driven decisions. I was fascinated by why—and even how—that could be.” Charles’s interest in the relationship between form and development finance expanded as she became intrigued by the larger context operating around growth and change in the built environment. Her singular career path began to officially diverge in 2003, when she enrolled at Harvard GSD to study practices in finance, real estate, and planning, which she saw as separate yet essentially linked in inseparable ways to the field of architecture. Charles received a master’s degree in design studies in 2005, and a doctorate in urban planning and design in 2011. “At the GSD, I studied phenomena related to neighborhood change and gentrification, which we as planners most often think of as a specifically urban development problem,” she recalled. “And because I had a substantial network in Chicago, as well as

detailed knowledge of the city’s organization, I was able to connect much of what I was reading to the data I was collecting in the inner-ring suburbs and I saw similar development patterns, both spatially and economically speaking, begin to emerge. My research also revealed how much we have to learn, particularly about the suburbs and the large populations of people who live in those areas. It was then that I took a deeper interest in the physical, social, and economic changes occurring there.” Charles is part of a relatively small group of planning professionals who, rather than focus on economics, policy matters, and development patterns within the strictly urban built environment, dedicate their research to studying suburbia—what Charles sees as a blind spot in the planning profession. She recalls beginning her inquiry of the suburban condition with questions that are standard to the study of most developing areas, for instance, “What are the forces at work? Or, why is this happening here?” Although typical, these questions, when applied to the innerring suburban areas of Chicago, revealed ground fertile enough to expand her research well beyond her doctoral study. In 2015, after teaching urban planning at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and architecture at Northeastern University in Boston, Charles joined AAP as an assistant professor. Bringing to CRP what former department chair Susan Christopherson called “an unusual combination of knowledge and experience” and a “broad view of urban development,” Charles has taught classes for graduate students in CRP and the Cornell Baker Program in Real Estate. While she often discusses design and form in her classes, she invariably emphasizes the importance of the study of social and economic systems as they relate to buildings, cities, neighborhoods, and suburban areas. “I’ve always been interested in the built environment, and while my point of entry certainly centered on how buildings are designed and built—or what defines ‘good design’—I have spent a great deal of time integrating that approach with one that allows students to meaningfully engage in the practice of real estate development,” Charles explained. “In the classes I offer in both planning and development, I include topics for discussion and information that I feel will cultivate a deeper understanding of the forces that

affect the physical form of real estate and provide a greater sense of impact for different communities as the built environment affects how and where they live.” At Cornell, Charles continues to address processes of redevelopment in suburban areas with continuously expanding sets of questions and data. She has written several articles and book chapters on the specific phenomenon of “mansionization,” attempting to understand what drives the phenomenon. Her research often draws on theories and literature outside of urban planning. Her current work explores relationships between development and socioeconomics, for instance, the theory of conspicuous consumption, an economic explanation for the culture of “keeping up with the Joneses.” Charles’s work and the sources she uses reflect not only why suburbs take the form they do, but also what is at stake for the people who live in areas where real estate values change dramatically as a result of not only redesign, but redevelopment. Charles recently received a grant from the Cornell Institute for the Social Sciences supporting her research project titled Housing Redevelopment and the Evolution of Suburban Immigrant Communities. At Cornell, as well as at the institutions where she taught formerly, she works toward larger programmatic development and curricular modifications that will support interdisciplinary exchange and learning in the fields of planning and real estate. Currently, Charles serves as a faculty advisor for the Cornell Real Estate Women student group, and frequently moderates panels related to her areas of expertise at conference events organized by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, the Urban Affairs Association, and the American Real Estate Society. “There is always a more complete picture, an often hidden piece of the puzzle when it comes to the built environment,” says Charles. “My combined fascination and frustration with this reality is what inspires me to continue seeking new models for research, teaching, and professional practices, both within and across planning and real estate. And I am consistently motivated by the idea that cultivating integrated knowledge of the form and finance of the built environment supports students in learning how to become professionals who create places that are economically viable, socially just, and environmentally sustainable.”AAP Edith Fikes


WATER ( EDGE ) Spring semester review of WATER(EDGE), the thesis of Cristina Medina Gonzalez (B.Arch. ’17), second from right. Reviewers include guest critics Erin Pellegrino (B.Arch. ’14) and Andrey Bokov, standing from left; and Hans and Roger Strauch Visiting Critic Rychiee Espinosa, center.


Faculty&Staff

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Alumni and Industry Leaders Celebrate Don Greenberg Industry leaders, academics, and former students gathered on April 12 in San Francisco to celebrate the legacy and continuing impact of Don Greenberg ’55, Cornell’s Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics. Greenberg directs the Program of Computer Graphics, which he founded in the late 1960s. The program has become a world leader in 3D computer modeling and animation. Greenberg has mentored hundreds of Cornell students, many of whom have made fundamental contributions in computer graphics and rendering. The event was hosted by former Autodesk CEO and AAP Advisory Council member Carl Bass ’78, who said that his first conversation with Greenberg was the most influential one of his life. Nearly 200 alumni and colleagues across fields including architecture, engineering, entertainment, higher education, and medicine paid tribute to Greenberg’s accomplishments. In attendance were Greenberg’s former students Marc Levoy (B.Arch. ’76, M.Arch.

’78), professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University and a principal engineer at Google; and Rob Cook (M.Arch. ’82), commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Service and retired vice president of software engineering at Pixar Animation Studios. Levoy described Greenberg as a “pathfinder with a long list of firsts,” including revolutionizing computer animation and developing the first architectural fly-through of computer-generated renderings, Cornell in Perspective, which Levoy worked on in the 70s. Cook, an Academy Award winner in computer animation, said Greenberg’s “drive for impact made him a natural in industry, and an instinct for insight and rigor made him great in academia.” “We’ve gone through 50 years of exponential growth in the digital world, and computer graphics is a mature topic today,” said Greenberg, whose interests extend to bioengineering and neuroscience as foundations for advancing virtual realities. “It’s time to rethink the structure and the organization of

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Maria Park Named Director of Exhibitions and Events for AAP Associate Professor Maria Park, art, was named director of exhibitions and events for AAP, effective June 1. The director is responsible for all major events hosted by the college, and especially for overseeing and curating college-wide exhibitions. Park’s own work has been exhibited internationally, and she is represented nationally by Nancy Toomey Fine Art in San Francisco and Margaret Thatcher Projects in New York City. “Maria is deeply knowledgeable of the issues affecting our disciplines, and knows firsthand the complex choreography of hosting high-quality exhibitions,” said Kent Kleinman, the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP. Park takes the place of Mark Morris, AAP’s inaugural exhibition director, who was in the role since November of 2013. Morris has taken a leadership position as head of teaching and learning in London, at the renowned Architectural Association.AAP

universities so that we no longer teach in silos and have the opportunity to take advantage of projects where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” An animated, visual representation of Greenberg’s former students developed by Autodesk software engineer Eric Haines (M.Arch. ’86) underscored Greenberg’s impact on the careers of hundreds of alumni. Addressing his former students, Greenberg said, “You guys made my life.”AAP

Chair Appointments for All Three Departments

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Following an international search, Associate Professor Andrea Simitch was appointed chair of the Department of Architecture, effective July 1. Simitch has been a faculty member at Cornell since 1986, and served as director of the bachelor of architecture program from 2011 to 2014, as director of undergraduate studies from 2007 to 2008, and as associate dean of AAP from 2002 to 2003. In 2016, she was awarded the Stephan H. Weiss Presidential Fellowship, the highest award for undergraduate teaching excellence at Cornell. Simitch was an Outstanding Educator for the Merrill Presidential Scholar Cornell in 1995, 2000, and 2013. She succeeded Mark Cruvellier, the Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture, who has served as chair for four terms, totaling 12 of the last 19 years. Associate Professor Michael Ashkin was reappointed to chair the Department of Art for a second term. Previously, Ashkin served as the director of graduate studies from 2007 to 2011. He was

awarded the Watts Prize for Faculty Excellence in both 2007 and 2011. With a creative practice that includes sculpture, installation, photography, video, poetry, and text, Ashkin holds a B.A. in Oriental studies from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Middle East languages and cultures from Columbia University, and an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the Art Institute of Chicago. In CRP, Associate Professor Jeffrey Chusid was named chair, effective July 1. Chusid served as interim chair for the spring 2017 semester, following the death of Professor Susan Christopherson in December 2016. An architect and planner, Chusid has been a member of the CRP faculty since 2005, and has ongoing research interests in a number of critical areas of historic preservation. His work encompasses conservation in the context of cultural exchange and conflict, development in modernist areas in India, historic materials, and sustainable development.AAP


Glover’s Art Selected for Exhibition Honoring the Birth of Thoreau Artwork by Lindsey Glover (M.F.A. ’08), advanced digital media services coordinator for AAP, was selected for the Musketaquid Art Ramble 2017 outdoor exhibition at the Concord Hapgood-Wright Town Forest in Concord, Massachusetts. The sitespecific exhibition, titled Slow Eyes, Solace & Site, honored the 200th birthday of Henry David Thoreau. Glover’s piece, Drift, was composed of found plant material collected on the forest floor, intended as a reconfiguration of the natural environment and reflection on human desires to organize the landscape. Work by AAP alums Carolyn Benedict Fraser (M.F.A. ’16) and Ahmed Ozsever (M.F.A. ’15) was also part of the show, which was curated by Jenn Houle (M.F.A. ’15).AAP

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A New Metric for Daylight Evaluation in Residential Buildings “A New Framework for Residential Daylight Performance Evaluation,” a paper coauthored by Assistant Professor Timur Dogan, architecture, and Ye Chan Park (B.Arch. ’20), was presented and published at the Building Simulation 2017 conference this summer. Dogan and Park developed this new residential daylighting score that captures essential residential daylight qualities such as access to direct sunlight within an apartment or on balconies, as well as differences in seasonal or diurnal daylight availability. Along with students in architecture, planning, civil engineering, and computer science, Dogan and Park conducted their research for the paper in AAP’s Environmental Systems Lab (ESL). Computer simulation software now allows architects and designers to predict climate-based daylight performance at an hourly resolution. According to the authors, because daylight is a valuable resource in architecture, daylighting is essential and provides psychological and physiological benefits not obtainable with electric lighting or windowless buildings. As urban centers and populations grow, Dogan and Park argue that daylight will hold greater potential for the creation of livable and resource-efficient habitats and will continue to be sought after. The coauthors hope that the daylight score will aid architects and urban designers in optimizing building forms and provide better information in real estate transactions for existing buildings. In addition to Park, current and recently graduated AAP students involved in the lab included Gary Esposito (M.Arch. ’19); Maksis Knutins (B.S. URS ’17); Guoyu Sun (M.Arch. ’18); and Jingyuan Yang (M.Arch. ’18). Former students involved in ESL included Paola Cuevas (B.Arch. ’17); Kate Kerbel (M.Arch. ’16); Binsi Li (M.Arch.II ’16); Fahir Burak Unel (M.Arch.II ’16); and Junhan Zhao (M.Arch. ’16). Dogan is the lead developer of Urban Daylight, a simulation software plugin for Rhino5 and Grasshopper CAD modeling software.AAP

photo / Lindsey Glover (M.F.A. ’08)

1 A photomosaic displayed at the reception for Greenberg was created from collected photos of people connected to the Program of Computer Graphics over the years. photo / Brian Long

2 Don Greenberg, center, at the reception in his honor. 3 Maria Park. photo / provided 4 From left: Jeffrey Chusid, CRP; Michael Ashkin, art; and Andrea Simitch, architecture.

5 Assistant Professor Timur Dogan, left, in AAP’s Environmental Systems Lab with Jingyuan Yang (M.Arch. ’18).

Happening on Instagram @cornellaap

Faculty & Staff Notes Associate Professor Esra Akcan, architecture, received the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, and a Graham Foundation publication grant for her forthcoming book Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship, and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/87 (Birkhäuser, 2018). Additionally, Akcan has been selected as the director of the Cornell Institute for European Studies at the Einaudi Center, effective July 2017. She published several articles and presented her research on West Asian and European modernisms, in general, and Berlin and Istanbul, in particular, as well as her methodological pursuits on the global history of architecture, in conferences and lectures at the University of Hong Kong, Graham Foundation, American Academy in Berlin, ICI Berlin, Technical University of Berlin, Stockholm Royal Institute of Art, Technical University of Munich, University of Duisburg-Essen, George Washington University, Canadian Center for Architecture, and Harvard University. Akcan also conceptualized and co-organized the “Finding Refuge: Istanbul-Berlin” symposium for the Harvard Mellon Initiative at Harvard University. In addition to Akcan’s publication grant, the Graham Foundation also awarded a publication grant to Gensler Visiting Critic (fall 2014–15) Kunlé Adeyemi and former visiting critic Suzanne Lettieri (M.Arch. ’11) for Water

and the City, a comprehensive publication documenting parts of the ongoing research project African Water Cities, a body of work initiated by Adeyemi in 2011, and continued by him with Lettieri and student teams in 2014–15. Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit’s 2016 book, Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, has received the 2017 Brendan Gill Award from the Municipal Art Society. Thomas J. Campanella, associate professor in CRP, contributed two essays to the book. Memorial events were held in April for Susan Christopherson, CRP, who died in December. A celebration of her life as a professor, mentor, and colleague was held for the Cornell community in the Abby and Howard Milstein Auditorium and the Milstein Hall dome. The Department of City and Regional Planning and the Women’s Planning Forum invited notable alumni to an open panel discussion of Christopherson’s many contributions to both the department and the field of economic geography; her dedication to public policy; and the myriad ways she influenced and advocated for her many students over the course of nearly 30 years at Cornell. The panel included Martha Armstrong (M.R.P. ’96), Susan B. Boyle (M.R.P. ’82), Allison Rachleff (M.A. HPP ’94), and Katelyn Wright (M.R.P. ’10).

In May, CRP’s Associate Professor and Chair Jeffrey Chusid, Associate Professor Thomas J. Campanella, Assistant Professor Suzanne Lanyi Charles, and Professor Kieran Donaghy participated in a workshop at AAP NYC titled Rebuilding the Built Environment, organized by the Cornell Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and AAP NYC. Charles and Donaghy were presenters at the daylong collaborative event where engineers, New York City government leaders, infrastructure investors, and Cornell University sustainability experts addressed ways to rebuild crumbling urban infrastructure systems. In addition to the conference, Chusid published two articles during the spring semester: a review of two books on Frank Lloyd Wright in Preservation Education and Research Journal 9 (2016), and the cover article for the APT Bulletin: Journal of Preservation Technology XLVIII, no. 1 (2017), titled “Joseph Allen Stein’s Experiments in Concrete in the U.S. and India.” In addition to authoring the article, Chusid’s photograph of Stein’s Treveni Kala Sangam Arts Center in New Delhi (1957) was used on the cover. Norway-based Rintala Eggertsson Architects, the firm of spring 2017 Baird Visiting Professors Dagur Eggertsson and Sami Rintala, received the Architizer A+ Award in the

transportation infrastructure category for their design of the Tintra Footbridge located in Vossevangen, Norway. The pedestrian bridge replaced a historic structure that was lost in a flood. The Alfred University School of Art and Design Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) hosted visiting associate professor of art Renate Ferro for a weeklong visiting artist residency. During the residency, Ferro, who holds multiple master’s degrees in art practices, experimented with the IEA’s contemporary printing technologies and printed from her archive of video work from her Super 8 film and early low-resolution digital video projections. Professor John Forester, CRP, gave the Annual Sir Peter Hall Lecture at The Bartlett School in London in May. The lecture was titled “Creative Improvisation and Critical Pragmatism: Three Cases of Planning in the Face of Power.” In the summer, he gave a lecture and workshop at Tongji University, Shanghai, during a three-day lecture series titled Frontiers in Ecophronetic Practice Research. Forester’s lecture was titled “Exploring the Practices of Ecological Wisdom: The Triple Helix of Value, Fact, and Action.” Also attending the Tongji University lecture series was George Frantz, an associate professor of the practice in CRP.

Bill Gaskins, associate professor of art, was the guest speaker at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, for the lecture and discussion titled “2017 Whitney Biennial and Controversy, ‘What’s Wrong with This Picture?’” The 2017 Whitney Biennial sparked debate and controversy by exhibiting Dana Schutz’s Open Casket painting of Emmett Louis Till, an African American teenager who was lynched after being falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. William Goldsmith, professor emeritus in CRP, gave the keynote address at the official presentation of the Co-City project in Turin, Italy. The Co-City project, developed within the framework of the European program Urban Innovative Action, aims at experimenting with innovative solutions to regenerate abandoned spaces and/or structures and to fight urban poverty. Turin is one of 18 Co-City projects worldwide. Neema Kudva, associate professor in CRP, was awarded an American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Research Fellowship in spring 2017 to carry out her project titled Waste in the Nilgiris. During the fellowship, Kudva was on sabbatical leave in Kotagiri, India, with a research affiliation with the French Institute of Pondicherry. Kudva’s project focuses on the relationship of

waste with water, biodiversity loss, and human health in the complex socio-ecological system of the rapidly urbanizing Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. The project is part of the work Kudva has been doing with colleagues and students at the Nilgiris Field Learning Center (NFLC), where she is currently the faculty lead. Kudva focused on the challenge of collaborative teaching around issues of sustainability at the NFLC as a Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts Faculty Fellow-in-Residence at the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future in fall 2016. She also presented ongoing research on “Water and Waste in the Nilgiris” at the French Institute of Pondicherry’s talk series in June. As the recipient of the 2017 Urban Edge Award from the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Assistant Professor Aleksandr Mergold, architecture, cotaught a master class with Sergio Lopez-Pineiro and delivered a lecture on recent work on campus in March. The Urban Edge Award is modeled after the Marcus Prize for emerging architects. Additionally, in June, Mergold gave a talk on the practice of aesthetics, titled “The (Un)Timely Practice,” at the [Un]timely Aesthetics symposium and Ph.D. colloquium in Innsbruck, Austria. The conference was organized by the Independent Architecture

Research Colloquia of the University of Architecture of Innsbruck. Along with Nikole Bouchard (B.Arch. ’05), Irina Chernyakova (B.Arch. ’10), Heesun Han (B.Arch. ’18), Sophie Nichols (M.Arch. ’17), and several others, Mergold helped organize a partnership comprised of organizations connected to U.S. architecture education (AIAS, ASCA, NAAB, Archinect, and ArchiteXX) for a bid for the official U.S. presentation at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice (La Binenale di Venezia, 2018) around the theme of education of architects in the U.S. The team of advisors included Rosalie Genevro, Architectural League of New York; Judith A. Kinnard, Tulane University; Mary N. Woods, architecture; Suzanne Stephens, Architectural Record; Joan Ockman; Mark Morris, Architectural Association; Tomà Berlanda, School of Architecture, Planning, and Geomatics, University of Cape Town; James Biber, architect of the U.S. Pavilion in the 2015 Milan World’s Fair; Sean Anderson, Museum of Modern Art; Paul Petrunia, Archinect; Lori Brown, ArchiteXX and Syracuse University School of Architecture; Allan Wexler, Parsons School of Design and The New School; and Rachel Law, AIAS and ACSA. Assistant Professor Jennifer Minner, CRP, was awarded a $5,000 Affinito-Stewart grant from the President’s Council of

News22 | Fall 2017 | 19


Critically Now Event Series Supports Screenings, Classes, Exhibitions

Faculty&Staff

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CRP’s Warner Continues Research in the U.S., New York State, and Rome CRP Professor Mildred Warner has received a $500,000, threeyear research grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The grant, which was awarded in April, will fund a study titled State Policy and Local Fiscal Stress: Implications for Rural Governments. The study will investigate local government responses to fiscal stress by creating a nationwide database assessing the role of state policy on local government fiscal stress, and by conducting a survey of county and municipal service provision, delivery, and revenue strategies after the Great Recession of 2008. The project will provide the first 50-state assessment of local governments’ responses to the recession. Warner’s research team includes Yuanshuo Xu, Ph.D. candidate in CRP; Yunji Kim (Ph.D. CRP ’17) of the University of Wisconsin–Madison; and Linda Lobao and Mark Partridge of Ohio State University. The team is collaborating with the National Association of Counties and International City/County Management Association to conduct this research. In addition to the USDA grant, Warner, together with Cornell in Rome Visiting Critic Greg Smith and teaching associates Viviana Andriola and Serena Muccitelli, received an Engaged Cornell Opportunity Grant for the Rome Neighborhood Workshop last spring. During the semester, 18 URS students worked in four locations to uncover elements that make a neighborhood friendly for children and elders. The team partnered with Generazione Urbana and Biennale dello Spazio Pubblico to translate the work into Italian and share the results with Italian planners. A fall workshop in Ithaca is planned to share this work with New York communities. Also in the spring semester, with the assistance of Kim, Austin Aldag (M.R.P. ’18), and Tyler Keegan (B.S. URS ’17), Warner used a grant from Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences to work with the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials and the Association of Towns of the State of New York to conduct a survey of all 1,500 local governments in the state. The survey results show that state-imposed fiscal stress creates a gradual erosion in local government capacity to provide basic urban services. The survey is the subject of a planned fall workshop with local government leaders and students in Warner’s CRP 6120 Devolution and Privatization class. In addition to conducting research and teaching, Warner coauthored a number of scholarly papers published in various journals this spring.AAP

Established in the spring semester to respond to current events such as the travel ban, immigration and statelessness, civil liberties, infrastructure projects, climate change, and automation and employment, Critically Now: A Pop-Up and Growing Event Series brought together open classes, exhibitions, film screenings, and seminar and studio collaborations in the architecture department. Critically Now was launched by architecture faculty members Esra Akcan, associate professor; Richard Meier Assistant Professor of Architecture Luben Dimcheff; Jeremy Foster, associate professor; George Hascup, professor; Aleksandr Mergold, assistant professor; Edgar A. Tafel Assistant Professor Caroline O’Donnell; Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Assistant Professor Jenny Sabin; and Sasa Zivkovic, assistant professor. During the semester, Critically Now held open classes led by Akcan, Foster, and Visiting Assistant Professor Tao DuFour. Additionally, Critically Now supported the screening of two films: Havana Vignettes,

which was shot during a field trip to Cuba led by DuFour; and Reversing Oblivion, a documentary by Ann Michel ’77 and Phil Wilde ’73, which features a field trip taken to Poland by one of Mergold’s architecture option studios. Also supported by Critically Now was the exhibition Architecture Beyond Borders, designed and organized by O’Donnell and Daniel Toretsky (B.Arch. ’16), with guidance from Akcan and 20 participating faculty. On display for two weeks in April, the exhibition featured works from—or by architects from—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, and was intended as a sign of solidarity with Cornell’s global community and of commitment to Cornell’s founding principle— “Any person, any study.” Critically Now is expected to grow over time, continuing to invite the participation of faculty, staff, and students in the examination of architecture’s role and critical potential in current events.AAP

AAP Staff in Ithaca and Rome Mark Anniversaries

2 1 Mildred Warner (back row second from the right) and URS students in the spring 2017 Rome Neighborhood Workshop. photo / provided 2 Donna Stevens.

In the spring semester, AAP offered congratulations to four longtime staff members marking significant anniversaries with Cornell and AAP. Donna L. Stevens, who retired in August, had been with Cornell for 40 years. Stevens’s first job at Cornell was in the Bursar’s Office in 1977, and her first position in AAP was as accountant for the Department of Architecture. When she retired, Stevens was senior finance and HR associate for the off-campus programs Cornell in Rome and AAP NYC. “I have many great memories of former chairs and staff I have been privileged to work with,” Stevens said. “And I am so proud of the many accomplishments that I have seen by former students. It has kept me young at heart.” Additionally, Cornell in Rome administrative director Anna Rita Flati marked 30 years with the program. Tina Nelson, graduate field coordinator for CRP, also celebrated 30 years, and Sarah Albrecht, management information and reporting manager for AAP, marked 25 years with the college.AAP

Praise for Solo Exhibition by Carl Ostendarp Associate professor of art Carl Ostendarp’s solo exhibition of new paintings at Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York City was selected by Artforum magazine to be featured as a “Critic’s Pick.” The exhibition, which ran from January 21 to February 25, was Ostendarp’s fifth solo show at the gallery that represents him. In addition to Artforum, the exhibition was reviewed in The New Yorker and ARTnews, and was selected as one of the city’s top five exhibitions in Time Out New York. Also in the spring, Ostendarp and his former student Joe Zane (M.F.A. ’03) had a dual show at Carroll and Sons Art Gallery in Boston.AAP photo / Etienne Frossard, courtesy the artist and Elizabeth Dee, New York

Faculty & Staff Notes continued Cornell Women for the research project Former Mega-Event Sites: Adaptation, Collective Memory, and Public Space. The funding will be used to expand and deepen Minner’s research in Brisbane and Adelaide, Australia, and San Antonio, Texas. Minner presented her newly published book chapter, “Geodesign, Resilience, and the Future of Former Mega-Event Sites,” at the Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management conference held in Adelaide in July. The chapter appears in the book Planning Support Science for Smarter Urban Futures (Springer, 2017), edited by S. Geertman, A. Allan, C. Pettit, and J. Stillwell. An article coauthored by Minner and Xiao Shi (M.R.P./M.L.A. ’16), “Churn and Change along Commercial Strips: Spatial Analysis of Patterns in Remodeling Activity and Landscapes of Local Business,” was published online

in the journal Urban Studies. Further, Minner and A. C. Micklow (Ph.D. CRP ’19) were part of a multi-institutional research team, Scenario Tools for Equitable Corridor Reinvestment and Affordable Housing Preservation, which won two national awards for development of a new methodology, scenario planning tool, and curriculum to aid in prioritizing transit corridors for affordable housing preservation. The American Planning Association’s Technology Division awarded the research project a Smart Cities Award, and the Scenario Planning Applications Network gave the research team an Exemplary Implementation Award. In addition to her scholarly activities, Minner organized an exhibition of photographer Jade Doskow’s images of former world’s fair sites, titled Lost Utopias, in John Hartell Gallery in March and April. Doskow

and Minner collaborated on the recently published book of Doskow’s photography by the same name. Professor Jonathan Ochshorn, architecture, presented his paper titled “Revisiting Form and Forces: A Critique of Graphical Statics,” at the 2017 Architectural Engineering Institute Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The paper covered how graphical statics provided a practical means for solving and refining commonly encountered structural problems during the time before digital computation. Azure magazine named Edgar A. Tafel Associate Professor Caroline O’Donnell, architecture, in “30 Must-Know Women Architects.” The article noted O’Donnell for Urchin, the installation created by O’Donnell’s design practice, CODA, for the

2016 Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial. Greg Page, associate professor in art, was awarded the Watts Prize for Faculty Excellence this spring. The Watts Prize is awarded annually and recognizes distinguished achievement in undergraduate teaching as well as overall dedication, concern for education, and demonstrated technical expertise in the fine arts taught within the scope of the bachelor of fine arts curriculum at Cornell. Page has been a member of the faculty in the art department for 37 years. Maria Park, associate professor in art, had a solo show at Margaret Thatcher Projects in New York City in the early spring. Hoping for Clear Skies was related to work Park created earlier in the spring for a 150-foot mural on a temporary barricade adjacent to the construction of

the Central Subway Chinatown Station on Stockton Street in San Francisco. The mural, titled Sight Plan, incorporates images of sky and clouds inspired by and painted from 150 photographs Park took during the last 10 years. The photos were the subjects of the solo show. Seneca House, a residence designed by Simitch + Warke Architecture, the firm of associate professors in architecture Andrea L. Simitch and Val Warke, was featured in Architectural Record. The 4,000-square-foot home is located in Lodi, New York. Professor Michael Tomlan, CRP, recorded a podcast titled Historic Preservation— Background and Impact for the National Real Estate Forum. Additionally, Tomlan was a speaker at the World Heritage and U.S. Civil Rights

Sites Symposium held in Atlanta, where he lectured about the management of world heritage sites. Professor Mary N. Woods, architecture, presented a lecture about Indian cinema halls as architectures of migration and immigration at the Yale School of Architecture. The lecture included clips from a documentary film by Woods and Vani Subramanian, a documentary filmmaker from India and 2013 Fulbright Fellow in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell. Supported by a Cornell South Asia Program grant, Woods and Subramanian interviewed and filmed Mumbai migrant workers for the documentary. This fall, grants from the Cornell Council on the Arts and the Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban and Landscape Studies will fund Woods and Subramanian’s

filming of migrants’ backstories in their Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat villages. Additionally, Woods launched her new book, Women Architects in India (Routledge, 2016), at the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, with a lecture and panel discussion with several of the architects featured in the book. Articles and interviews about the book have appeared in Domus India, Mumbai Mirror, Quartz, Inside Track, and Elle Decor. Also during the spring semester, Woods and Mumbai photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri began work on a book and exhibit about the city’s “architecture of the night.” Woods also prepared and coordinated the successful nomination of Brinda Somaya, Mumbai architect, as a Cornell A. D. White Professor-atLarge. Somaya’s six-year appointment began July 1.


Alumni

Profile

Integrating Structure and Site For heneghan peng architects, the work is all about fully integrating a structure with its site— both the physical and cultural environment. It’s an approach Shih-Fu Peng (B.Arch. ’89) learned and embraced while studying at Cornell, and it continues to drive the success of the Dublin-based office he established at the turn of the new century with partner Róisín Heneghan. Peng and his office have earned a reputation for recognizing the opportunities presented by sites that present geographical, historical, or socio-political challenges. In fact, a significant portion of the office’s work is on UNESCO World Heritage sites, he notes. “We tend to win competitions where the site is difficult,” says Peng, who explains that heneghan peng gets all of its jobs through competitions. “We are interested in sites that are challenging, and from our experience we know how to respond to such difficult situations. We will respect the site, learn to understand it.” The Palestinian Museum in the West Bank, which opened in June, is a prime example of his office’s ability to design a building that addresses its environment on different levels. “The museum sits on the top of a hill and comprises a series of terraces. We determined that, because it is difficult to move lots of rock, we would trace the contours of the existing terrain through a series of geometric facets, creating a landscape solution that is so specific to the site it cannot be moved to any other place. It belongs there and nowhere else,” Peng says. The approach to the Palestinian Museum was to draw on a history of the terraced landscape, embedding the museum into its immediate site and drawing from this site to tell a larger story of a diverse culture, Peng says. “It responds to the land; the hillside terraces are filled with flora familiar to the West Bank, including crops ranging from indigenous species to plants domesticated over the centuries,” he says. Individual terraces include indigenous plants on the edges of the site, with domesticated varieties on the

levels closer to the museum in a radial, nearly concentric fashion. This ability to think outside the box with his designs, looking at the big picture, was nurtured at Cornell under the guidance of Associate Professor Val Warke, Peng says. “He allowed me to see architecture as a genesis of peculiar or deviant ideas. That was a school of thought at the time—site-specific,” he says. “I learned that it’s not just the design or form, there is a complexity of space involved in any project. The solution to a problem is not always where you think it is. Sometimes you have to go with your gut, and be flexible with plans for a specific project.” Peng is following in the footsteps of his father, an architect who worked for the renowned I. M. Pei before forming his own firm and designing more than a hundred buildings in Asia, primarily in Taiwan. “He was skeptical when I decided to go out on my own, after running the numbers on the chances of success, but he has supported me throughout my career,” Peng says. That career was launched after Peng graduated from AAP and then earned a master’s degree from Harvard. He was a senior designer at Michael Graves Architects from 1991 to 1996, and an associate at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP from 1996 to 2001. He met Heneghan at Harvard, and the pair began collaborating on competitions in 1991. Ten years later they won their first building project, Áras Chill Dara, the Kildare County Council headquarters in Ireland. “We run the business together and we complement each other well,” he says. The partners share most duties, with Peng focusing on drawing and creating all 3D models for competitions. heneghan peng established its base in Dublin, Ireland, in 2001, and has a staff that ranges from 25 to 40 employees, depending upon the scale of a given project. “Everyone here does a little bit of everything in the office to keep it running,” says Peng. The practice established itself on the basis of competition-winning projects, including one of the world’s largest architectural competitions for the Grand Museum of Egypt, at the pyramids in Giza, in 2003. Peng has a particular interest in the structure and facade elements in his designs, which is particularly evident in the Grand Museum, as well as in the Giants Causeway Visitors’ Center in Northern Ireland (which is now depicted on a series of postage stamps issued by the Royal Mail) and the Central Park Bridges at the 2012 London Olympic Park.

For the Egyptian Museum there were 1,507 different entries for the bid. “A majority of the submissions created a strong form or identity in dialogue with the pyramids, but the reality is, one cannot be in dialogue, one can only be humbled by the pyramids, so any of the contest entries that exceeded the height of the plateau at the site were eliminated from the competition, immediately removing more than two-thirds of the entries,” says Peng. To win that bid, heneghan peng created a design that integrates the building with the desert plateau on which it sits. This creates a new “edge” to the plateau, a surface defined by a veil of translucent stone that transforms from day to night. It includes a vast exhibition space, a children’s museum, conference and education facilities, a large conservation center, and extensive gardens. Peng is now working on the Canadian Canoe Museum, a project located beside the Peterborough lift lock in Peterborough, Ontario. The lift lock is the tallest mass concrete lock in the world and the canal is part of a historic network of waterways, he explains. “The design approach was to undulate the facade of the museum to create the maximum interface with the canal. The museum itself maintains a low profile, which allows the lift lock to maintain its ‘superlative.’ The approach draws heavily from an in-depth site analysis. It’s interesting working again in a North American context, after 15 years of working on European and Middle Eastern projects.” In addition to his designing and building tasks, Peng has retained links with academia as a lecturer at MIT, the Yale University School of Architecture, and Harvard GSD, and as a studio tutor at University College Dublin and Cornell. A self-described nomad, Peng has lived in Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong, among other locales around the globe. He is married with two children, and lives in Dublin. He enjoys indulging an interest in gourmet cooking when time allows. “If I could make time stop, there are two things I would do in my life: work for chef Ferran Adrià at the elBulli restaurant in Catalonia before it closed; and work for Rem Koolhaas for one year,” he says. “But the nice thing about architecture is that you do what you love. There is no need to take a cooking or painting course at night to make life fulfilling,” he says.AAP Jay Wrolstad

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Alumni

Flexible Furniture In May, architecture and design firm CL3 and multidisciplinary design practice Lim + Lu unveiled a custom pushcart furniture collection at AAP NYC, AAP’s New York City studio located on the 20th floor of 26 Broadway, the historic Standard Oil Building. The two firms collaborated to design and fabricate the “flexible furniture” line specifically for AAP NYC. Spearheaded by William Lim (B.Arch. ’81, M.Arch. ’82), founder of CL3, alongside the cofounders of Lim + Lu, Vincent Lim (B.Arch. ’12) and Elaine Lu (B.Arch. ’12), the results are sofas that convert to coat racks and “thrones,” a lectern and a bookshelf that become coffee tables, a seat that becomes a model display, and more. photo / CL3


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CRP Alum’s Design Brand Addresses FastFashion Consumption “Being an AAP student was key to awakening the designer that I am today,” says designer, artist, activist, and entrepreneur Allen Thomas Litton-Navasero (B.S. URS ’15). Litton-Navasero says his design philosophy stems from his Cornell studies of the interconnections between design, sociology, cognitive science, sustainability, and art, under the tutelage of Associate Professor Neema Kudva, CRP, and Associate Professor Elisabeth Haley-Meyer, art. He has worked to address “fast-fashion” consumption as both a designer and activist. Born in San Francisco, Litton-Navasero has also lived in Italy, Indonesia, Singapore, and currently in the Philippines. As he analyzed the relationships between urban design and social fabric during his Cornell in Rome semester, LittonNavasero says he realized the potential of fashion as a tool to change the social fabric of the city. “People’s clothes are a part of the architecture of a city,” Litton-Navasero says, “and, as the

second most polluting industry in the world after oil and gas, fashion has the capacity to change a significant part of the world.” Before completing his Cornell degree, Litton-Navasero was admitted to the MA Fashion Futures program at the University of the Arts London. During his studies there his work was featured in the video titled Luxury x Sustainability: Art to Artillery on the luxury lifestyle web channel Nowness. After completing his master’s degree from MA Fashion Futures in 2016, Litton-Navasero moved to the Philippines, where he began Bodies as Clothing, what he calls “a social enterprise in the fashion industry.” According to Litton-Navasero, Bodies as Clothing is “a metaphoric brand name and philosophy that aims to further bridge the gap between organic food and organic fashion consumption.” Arising from the interdisciplinary approach Litton-Navasero pursued at Cornell, the company has produced experimental organic garments and cosmetics, and will launch this fall with midrange and luxury garments. In the future, Litton-Navasero hopes to establish a residential community in the Philippines that is built around hemp and food crop farming, as well as a food concept that aims to deliver nutritious organic meals competitive with fast food.AAP

Recent Exhibitions by Hannah Levy

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Work by Hannah Levy (B.F.A. ’13) was included in a group show titled Things I Think I Want: Six Positions of Contemporary Art, at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt, Germany. Levy’s work was also part of Past Skin, a group exhibition at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York.AAP

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photo / N. Miguletz, © Frankfurter Kuntsverein, courtesy Hannah Levy and Galerie Parisa Kind

Distinguished Art Alumna Exhibits in Ithaca Marianne Van Lent’s (M.F.A. ’74) first solo show took place in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1978. But, perhaps surprisingly, it has taken decades for her work to be exhibited in her hometown of Ithaca, New York. Van Lent exhibited in a juried exhibition titled Order/Chaos: The World That Surrounds, as well as in a dual exhibit with Masha Ryskin, Collision of Realms, both at the Corners Gallery in Ithaca this summer. Van Lent has exhibited widely nationally, and in New York state, especially in the Hudson Valley and New York City. Public art grants for installations and public murals include Creative Time, H.A.N.D.S., NYSCA, and Art for Transit, all in New York City. She has taught at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; Art School of the Berkshires, Stockbridge, Massachusetts; and Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Recently, she curated two exhibitions, Shifting Ecologies 1 and 2, at The Painting Center in New York City, and the Athens Cultural Center, in Athens, New York. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times; Art Scene and Arts Alive, Greene County, New York; and the Galveston Daily News, among many other places. While at Cornell, Van Lent was awarded a graduate teaching fellowship in photography. Following graduation from Cornell, Van Lent was art director and instructor at Lansing High School, in Lansing, New York. Additionally, she has worked as a print stylist and designer in the New York garment district, a food stylist assistant, and as the owner/director of a decorative painting business located in New York City. In addition to her master’s degree from Cornell, Van Lent holds a bachelor of fine arts from Temple University. “The Hudson River and its environs have become the inspiration for the imagery of my paintings,” she writes. “Filtered through memory, my work examines the mysterious forces of the physical world and investigates our fragile position in the universe.”AAP

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Richard Meier Endowed Scholarship Established In response to a Cornell fund-raising challenge, architect Richard Meier (B.Arch. ’56) has endowed a scholarship gift to benefit AAP graduate architecture students. Meier previously endowed a professorship at AAP—the Richard Meier Professor of Architecture— which is a tenure-track appointment in architectural design at the rank of assistant professor. The recipient of the highest honors in the field, including the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, and the Gold Medals of the American Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects, Meier views his deep engagement with Cornell as a personal commitment as well as a family tradition; his brother and uncles also went to Cornell. Speaking about the new scholarship, Meier said, “We feel that Cornell is an extraordinary place, and I want to do whatever I can to keep it extraordinary.” “There are many avenues that architecture students can take,” he said. “I hope that this gift will encourage them to look at the broadest range of possibilities in their career.”AAP

1 Allen Thomas Litton-Navasero (B.S. URS ’15) in a photo campaign for his company, Bodies as Clothing. photo / provided 2 Marianne Van Lent (M.F.A. ’74), From Errors in Process of Replication (2015), fresco secco and dispersed pigment in polymer on canvas, 24" x 24".

Happening on Instagram @cornellaap News22 | Fall 2017 | 23


Alumni

Iu + Bibliowicz Architects Earn AIA Award Natan Bibliowicz (B.Arch. ’81) and Carolyn Iu ’75, cofounders and partners of New York City – based Iu + Bibliowicz Architects, were the recipients of a 2017 American Institute of Architects (AIA) award for excellence in architectural design for the Carnegie Hall Studio Towers Renovation Project. The seven-year-long, $230-million project concentrated on renovating, reorganizing, and repurposing 167,000 square feet of the nonperformance venues in the north and south studio towers of the national historic site located in Midtown Manhattan. The project raised the 125-year-old roof above the 2,800-seat performance space and saw the creation of a music education wing, expanded backstage space, consolidated administrative offices, a new rooftop terrace, and facade lighting to better display the landmark. Other features of the renovation include acoustically attuned music rooms, new practice spaces constructed as rooms within rooms featuring floating floors, ceilings hung from spring isolators, and double glass walls to help reduce street noise. The AIA architecture awards program celebrates the best contemporary architecture regardless of budget, size, style, or type. In addition to the 2017 AIA award, Iu + Bibliowicz received a 2015 Lumen Award of Excellence for the facade lighting, a 2016 AIA New York State Excelsior Award for Public Architecture, and a 2016 AIA New York State Award of Merit for the Carnegie Hall project. Founded in 1999, Iu + Bibliowicz Architects is a full-service architectural and interior design firm.AAP

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1 Carnegie Hall with new exterior architectural lighting. Jeff Goldberg / Esto 1 Carnegie Hall with new 2 Exposed trusses during the exterior architectural lighting. construction phase. photo / 2 Iu Exposed + Bibliowicz trusses Architects during the construction phase. 3 Administrative offices with 3 new Administrative mezzanineoffices suspended with new mezzanine from reinforced trusses. suspended fromGoldberg Jeff reinforced/ Esto trusses.


This Jacket Saves Lives Live Jacket, the thesis project of Laura-India Garinois (B.Arch. ’17) embeds technology in a jacket to generate electricity, Wi-Fi, and more. Taking inspiration from “the neglected digital potentialities of the refugee crisis in Lesvos, Greece,” says Garinois, “the design transforms from a life jacket, to a regular jacket, to a sleeping unit, as well as aggregating into various pop-up public social spaces.” Garinois’s thesis advisors were Caroline O’Donnell, Edgar A. Tafel Associate Professor; and Assistant Professor Sasa Zivkovic.


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