Quad - Summer 2015

LSU College of Art & Design Magazine

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL! Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with typographic posters

INTERNSHIPS MATTER Preparing students for the transition to the real world

WELL LIT

Casting the limelight on lighting design with alumna Suzan Tillotson

DID YOU KNOW? The buzz about the b-Shack

2015 Summer

EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief/Writer Angela Harwood, Communications Manager, LSU College of Art & Design Copy Editors Laura Aviles, LSU Student, BA 2016, Mass Communications/Art History Julie LeFebvre, Director of Development, LSU College of Art & Design ART Graphic Design Student Office (GDSO) Art Directors Lynne Baggett, Professor of Graphic Design, LSU Rod Parker, Director, LSU School of Art Design, Illustration & Photography Amy Blacketter, LSU Student, BFA 2016, Graphic Design Marci Hargroder, LSU Student, BFA 2015, Graphic Design Tyronecia Moore, LSU Student, BFA 2015, Graphic Design/Photography On the cover: Rendering of the b-Shack; courtesy of Jason Crow, Maria Mingallon, and the students of the Facility for Architectural Research in Media and Mediation at McGill University

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CONTENTS

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FEATURES

CONTENTS

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INTERNSHIPS MATTER

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TEAR DOWN THIS WALL! POSTERS FOR A CAUSE

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Art and design students get real-world experience at firms in China, Costa Rica, London, Brazil, and beyond.

Graphic design students commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A BETTER PLACE TO LEARN Interior design students investigate learning envrironments with Herman Miller.

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DEPARTMENTS 04

A Worldly Vision Dean Alkis Tsolakis brings international

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Four Minutes on . . . Architectural Transformations

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experience to the LSU College of Art & Design.

Did You Know? What’s the buzz about the b-Shack?

Get Outta Town! Art and design students intern and extern around the world!

The Dream of Europe Michael Triegel—painter of the pope!—

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How It’s Made CxC Art + Design Studio demonstarates 3D-printing technologies.

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Rethinking Architecture: The Changing Climate of Building Technology The Nadine Carter Russell Chair brings

evolved as an artist in the challenging climate of East Berlin.

two prestigious designers to the LSU School of Architecture.

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Françoise Bollack explains why buildings that last are buildings that adapt.

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Well Lit Alumna Suzan Tillotson discusses the profession of

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lighting design.

Meet Mark Boyer LSU MLA alumnus Mark Boyer selected to direct his alma mater.

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Class Notes Stay in the loop with College of Art & Design alumni!

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Equipped Printmaker Rachael Noto shows us her studio.

CONTENTS

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A Worldly Vision

By Aaron Looney

Dean Alkis Tsolakis brings international experience to the LSU College of Art & Design.

To say that Alkis Tsolakis is well traveled would be a gross understatement.

A native of Greece with a background in architecture and sculpture and speaker of eight languages, Tsolakis—who serves as dean of the LSU College of Art & Design—has lived in four countries on three continents. His resume includes experience in academia and the public and private sectors, before his arrival at LSU in 2013.

Having such experience comes in handy when leading a college whose programs, while linked by a passion for the tangible world of design and art, feature a variety of disciplines with their own respective intricacies.

“Each program has its own language,” Tsolakis said. “You don’t become diverse by staying within your own little family. You do so by integrating with others and working together. The challenge is to keep that diversity while, at the same time, integrating these exceptional units toward a common goal.”

Bringing the arts together is something Tsolakis has practiced for more than 40 years throughout his career. A self-described “fourth-generation architect and many-generation artist,” he continues to strive for that goal in his leadership role at LSU. After graduating from an American school in Greece—which he said allowed him a classical education in languages including Greek, French, and English from an early age—Tsolakis attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a bachelor’s degree in studio art in 1970. He then traveled to France, studying at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris for two years and working as an architect. He later traveled back to the U.S., earning his master’s degree in architecture from the University of Oregon before returning to Greece to practice. He came back to the U.S. 10 years later, working as a sculptor in San Francisco before accepting a visiting assistant professorship at the University of Oregon.

Tsolakis’s next role presented an exciting new experience for him. He was one of the founding faculty members of the Hammons School of Architecture at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri.

“It was an experimental program, and there’s a great deal of risk involved with that,” he said of the position, where he would stay 26 years. “But, it was also a very rewarding and successful experience.”

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A WORLDLY VISION

In 2002, Tsolakis again returned to Greece, helping to establish a year-round undergraduate study abroad program there for Drury University. After a three-year sabbatical in Dubai— where he led the American University of Sarjah’s architecture school to achieve accreditation from the United States’ National Architectural Accrediting Board, a first for a school outside of the country—he returned to Drury to lead the university’s art department.

In 2012, Tsolakis found himself in another unique position— applying for the deanship of LSU’s College of Art & Design.

“This was the first and only administrative position to which I ever applied,” he said. “I’ve been in many administrative positions, but I was usually pulled from the ranks to assist with a crisis situation or with some special project. I always went back to practice after those situations.”

For Tsolakis, his attraction to LSU and Louisiana came from the state’s rich French and Spanish culture, which he first experienced when traveling to New Orleans working with Tulane University’s summer study abroad programs in Greece from 1986–94.

“One of the exceptional things here is the people,” he said of the state. “It’s a genteel culture of hospitality here. People come here and they become part of that culture. Along with that, I’ve made good friends and good colleagues, and I get to be involved with interesting programs.”

When he arrived at LSU, Tsolakis said, the college was “an organization that was in good shape with good predecessors,” but was also in the middle of an important period of change.

“I came at the moment when we had quite a few retirements or people going elsewhere,” he said. “We had the chance to hire many new faculty in all of the disciplines. We now have several young faculty who are doing many interesting things and are bringing an air of renewal. At the same time, we have wonderful, more experienced faculty who are institutions within the institution. It’s a good mix. Also, a new administration was in place in the university, which brought about a culture of change and that is focused on making sure students receive a quality education.

That has made a big difference.”

As head of a college that has seen its landscape architecture and Master of Fine Arts programs receive prestigious national rankings, one of Tsolakis’s goals for the college includes achieving similar goals for all of its units.

“That means working together within and outside of our

Photo by Jim Zeitz

college, conducting important research, attracting and retaining good students and faculty, and improving our facilities,” he said.

“We have the opportunity here to be a cultural center for not just Louisiana, but for the entire South and the Caribbean.”

In that regard, Tsolakis said another goal is to bring more of an international aspect to the College of Art & Design, including increasing the college’s international student numbers and improving on its current study abroad programs.

“University-wide, about two percent of students take part in study abroad courses. Our college has 25 percent of students taking part in study abroad classes,” he said. “It’s a very important thing for us. It could be everything from a class trip to an internship or externship.”

The college is also working on numerous initiatives on international fronts, Tsolakis said. These include the current LSU/Haiti Task Force, which works to assist the country in solving problems stemming from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated the country in 2010. The college also recently received a planning grant to organize a Caribbean Basin Institute, in collaboration with the LSU College of Agriculture and LSU International Studies Program.

Tsolakis said he enjoys building relationships with students,

whether through teaching courses, attending reviews and gallery openings, or taking part in workshops or other events.

“I love interacting with the students,” he said. “They’re intelligent, interesting, and diverse. I also hang out with students quite a bit. I try to learn and remember students’ names, where they come from, and what they do. I think that’s important to keep in touch with what’s going on within the college.”

Tsolakis said the potential that the College of Art & Design offers is something that gives him confidence.

“There are many creative opportunities here, and I’m surrounded by an exceptionally good and creative faculty and staff,” he said. “We have a great team here that works together. We laugh a lot and have a good time. We’re interested in what we’re doing. It’s not a chore for any of us.”

To that point, Tsolakis cited an example of a recent recruiting event held by the college.

“Just about everyone took part,” he said of the function. “We had about 165 people come in. Everyone was here and having a good time, and that rubbed off to the visitors. They saw that, despite some of the challenges, we have a unique place here. It’s a college that cares and does its best to make sure students achieve the best art and design education possible.”

AAWORLDLY YEAR OF VISION FIRSTS

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Four Minutes on. ..

ARCHITECTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS with Françoise Astorg Bollack, AIA I prefer the expression “architectural transformations,” to the limited vision offered by “adaptive re-use,” “adaptive use,” and “re-purposing”—all recent expressions—because it places transformations of old buildings in a larger architectural context, one with a rich history available for study: from Andrea Palladio’s 1545 wrapping 1 of a “modern” (i.e., Renaissance) loggia around the, by then outmoded, 15th-century building housing the law courts in Vicenza; to Michelangelo’s 1563–64 insertion of a Christian church into the ruined Baths of Diocletian in Rome; to Mount Vernon in Virginia, enlarged by George Washington in 1758 and 1774;2 and to the 1928 Maison de Verre in Paris where Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet inserted a modern residence under an 18th-century house (the tenant refused to move!).

Historically, architectural transformations cover the whole range of changes needed for buildings to survive. To continue being useful and culturally relevant, buildings are updated to satisfy new functions or a new architectural sensibility; they are enlarged, added to, or reconfigured, with the same uses or with different uses. These factors have always been in play, and buildings that last are buildings that adapt, one way or the other.

Histories of architecture are full of architectural transformations and many iconic buildings are additive buildings, even though they are rarely analyzed from this perspective in the history books. As in the case of the Maison de Verre, such buildings are often presented as wholly new, built in one single time period—what is missing from the story is a full analysis that allows us to learn from transformative strategies and their history. Another example, in The Architecture of the Renaissance (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978),3 Leonardo Benevolo describes Alberti’s 1450 design for the transformation of the church of San Francesco in Rimini into the Tempio Malatestiano: “He decided to surround the building with a masonry casing, detached from the original masonry along the sides, in order to free the rhythm of the arches from that of the windows behind them.” The illustrations consist of a plan and photos of the side,

This side view of the Tempio Malatestiano shows the two time periods of the building: the gothic core and the Renaissance “wrap.”

Image by Sailko (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

front, and a detail. The plan shows a partial “wrap” of the old structure with the new loggia. One is curious about the relation of the two, but the photographs offer no clues. Although it is fair to say that Alberti was trying to suppress the older building in order to achieve a contemporary expression, we don’t have to accept this point of view. It is time to look at such designs from a new perspective—the works will gain added significance and we might learn something!

Copyright © Françoise Astorg Bollack, March 2015

Françoise Astorg Bollack, AIA, is principal of Françoise Bollack Architects in New York City and the author of Old Buildings—New Forms: New Directions in Architectural Transformations. She presented a lecture sponsored

by GraceHebert Architects at the LSU School of Architecture and the LSU Department of Interior Design on February 23, 2015.

1. For a suggested taxonomy of architectural transformations see Old Buildings—New Forms: New Directions in Architectural Transformations, Françoise Astorg Bollack, the Monacelli Press, 2013.

2. For an interesting discussion of Washington’s interventions see “Reflections on Mount Vernon: A Declaration of Architecture” by Tom Killian in Material Culture: The Journal of the Pioneer America Society, Fall 2005. Vol. 37, No. 2, p.60–64.

3. First published in Italy in 1968 as Storia dell’Architettura del Rinascimento by Giuseppe Laterza e Figli

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FOUR MINUTES ON . . . ARCHITECTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS

DID YOU KNOW? Q: What’s the buzz about the b-Shack?

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Maria Mingallon, senior structural engineer

at ARUP, and I have been working over the past two years with a team of students at McGill University to create the b-Shack, an innovative hive observation and education center, to raise awareness and foster involvement in urban beekeeping.

Ecosystem health is dependent upon human maintenance of a continuing supply of bees. The threat of colony collapse disorder (CCD)—the inexplicable phenomenon in which the worker bee population of a hive disappears—continues to have a devastating effect on amateur and professional beekeeping and ecosystem biodiversity. The resulting loss of honeybees could reduce human food supplies by a third as a direct result of the loss of bee pollination for agriculture. Within this context, the bee is an important biological indicator. The study of bee mortality rates and analysis of contaminants in honey, particularly pesticides and heavy metals, facilitates qualitative and quantitative analysis of the vitality of a given ecosystem. Large-scale studies of bee mortality rates undertaken in Italy in the mid-1980s with distributed beehives were instrumental in providing precise maps of molecular contamination and to charting the impact of synthetic molecules on the environment. Although no solution has been found to prevent CCD, beekeeping remains crucial as a means not only to remedy the loss of bee population, but also to further educate the public about the critical role honeybees play in our increasingly fragile world ecosystem.

The b-Shack project is conceived to provide infrastructural support to urban beekeeping communities such as the McGill Apiary Association and Montreal’s non-profit Santropol Roulant. The small shack structure will enable these volunteer-driven initiatives of educators and amateur beekeepers to share their knowledge and interest in bees with the public. In addition, the design and construction of the project provides a compelling provocation for emerging students across disciplines to respond responsibly to the plight of the bees.

Jason Crow is an assistant professor at the LSU School of Architecture.

Read more about the b-Shack at architizer.com/projects/le-b-shack/.

DID YOU KNOW?

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Get Outta Town!

145 Internships & Externships

26 Internship Locations Atlanta, Georgia Austin, Texas Avon, Colorado Baton Rouge, Louisiana Beijing, China Cambridge, Massachusetts Dallas, Texas Galveston, Texas

Internship Locations Externship Locations

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Gonzalez, Louisiana Houston, Texas London, United Kingdom Mandeville, Louisiana Metairie, Louisiana Nashville, Tennessee New Orleans, Louisiana New York City, New York Prairieville, Louisiana San Francisco, California San Jose, Costa Rica Santa Monica, California Sao Paolo, Brazil Seattle, Washington Washington, D.C.

Atlanta, Georgia Boston, Massachusetts Chicago, Illinois Las Vegas, Nevada New York City, New York Seattle, Washington

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INTERNSHIPS

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Maria Mu単oz, BLA 2016, interned at Sergio Santana in Brazil. The firm is designing areas for the 2016 10

FEATURE

Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

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hen it comes to preparing students for careers in the art and design professions, classroom lectures, studio projects, and critiques provide a solid foundation. However, preparing students for the transition to the real world is a bit more involved.

Picture a platform with endless destinations—tracks leading to, and through, a variety of fields, specializations, and niches.

How do recent graduates with limited real-world experience know which one is right for them? Should they seek a position at a large firm with numerous opportunities for promotion in a specific area, or get their feet wet at a smaller, independent company? Do they thrive in large, metropolitan cities or prefer smaller, growing communities? How can they balance creative expression and making a living wage?

Internships provide students with opportunities to work with professionals and demonstrate their talents and capabilities to prospective employers as they explore career and lifestyle options and learn more about their interests and abilities. Students who participate in internships apply studio and classroom lessons to authentic work experiences, returning to their studies with increased self-confidence and more mature, realistic views of their chosen professions. They develop important networks with professionals in their field and gain references for future job opportunities. A survey commissioned

by The Chronicle of Higher Education and the American Public Media’s Marketplace indicated that the single most important credential employers look for is internship experience.

LSU College of Art & Design faculty, administration, and alumni help facilitate internship opportunities for students through a variety of methods and platforms, from required, semester-long internships to optional summer and intersession opportunities for course credit and voluntary experiences such as externships. Faculty share opportunities with students through their own professional networks, and alumni play a crucial role as the college works to implement more programs and opportunities for students and graduates.

REQUIRED INTERNSHIPS The undergraduate interior design and landscape architecture programs at LSU require 320-hour internships, which count as six hours of course credit, as part of their curricula.

Required for more than 20 years, Associate Professor TL Ritchie helps facilitate internships for LSU Department of Interior Design students at nationally recognized design firms and manufacturers, as well as with residential designers, furniture designers and stores—even once with a yacht designer! Interior design students are encouraged to complete the internship requirement between the summer after sophomore year and the fall semester of senior year.

Some students participate in two internships, Ritchie explained, first at a local firm after sophomore year then, later, at a larger firm. Or they’ll work at a local firm during the semester

and intern further afield in the summer.

“They make a positive impression on the employers and start to see what they’re doing in school applied in the professional environment. We’ve had students come back completely changed,” said Ritchie.

Interior design students have interned at HKS in Dallas, Gensler in Houston, Hirsh Bedner in Santa Monica, VOA in Chicago/Beijing, Tillotson Design Associates in New York City, and at local firms and institutions in Louisiana.

“A lot of big firms wouldn’t know LSU if we didn’t get our interns out there,” added Ritchie.

Alexandra Near, BID 2015 “Internships are a crucial aspect of our education,” said interior design student Alexandra Near, who interned at HKS in Dallas last summer. “I believe my work has greatly improved, and my teachers have noticed.

Having real-world experience has helped me in every phase of the design process.” At HKS, Alex worked on the commercial interiors team and was exposed to multiple project types in every phase of design from proposals to furniture punch lists. “Don’t let the big firms intimidate you,” she advised. “I don’t think you need to immediately know what type of design you want to do prior to your internship. I got a feel for what the hospitality, healthcare, and sports teams are like even though I wasn’t directly working with them.”

Alexandra Near (in gray dress), BID 2015, having fun in the “Spun” at HKS in Houston. Love this chair designed by Thomas Heatherwick!

Photo by Daryl Shields, courtesy of HKS

INTERNSHIPS MATTER

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Many students take the opportunity to work in their home city or country or to experience living on their own in a large, metropolitan area. Some learn about different cultures by working abroad, such as landscape architecture student William Baumgardner. His internship at Ecoland in Beijing made him cognizant of how American culture, specifically the culture of his hometown of Fort Worth and LSU, influences his design aesthetic. “It has reinforced how important it is to look at projects from around the world at multiple scales and see how that culture and community designed the space to suit them best,” William elaborated. “I think the most significant experience I took home with me is how to work with people of different cultures.”

Maria Muñoz, BLA 2016 “Everything about my internship was exciting—from business to experiences,” exclaimed Maria Muñoz, who won the $15,000 2015 National Olmsted Scholarship. At Sergio Santana, Maria assisted with the design of a large apartment complex in downtown São Paulo, Brazil. The rest of the office was busy designing spaces for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She was surprised to discover that landscape architecture, as a major, doesn’t exist in Brazil. “I’ve also learned the metric system and basic Portuguese,” she added.

During her free time, Maria attended Carnival in Rio and visited SESC Pompeii, the Latin American Memorial, Embu das Arte, and numerous other parks, “with giant trees!”

Helen Dorsett, BID 2015 On her first day at Xanadu Interiors, a small, two-person firm in London, Helen Dorsett’s boss sent her to the Chelsea Market to pick out and bring back “the most fabulous fabric she could find.” Helen passed the “taste test,” and throughout her internship, she prepared presentations and picked out furniture samples for high-end residential clients and vacation homes in Paris. Helen enrolled in a British culture class at the London School of Economics. “It was so much fun. We tried foods, walked streets, read tabloids . . . we covered everything a teenager would want to know about London, backed up with history.” After graduation, Helen wants to return to work in London. “This experience definitely gave me the courage to do this.”

“Architecture by Lina Bo Bardi is amazing,” said Maria Muñoz, who interned at Sergio Santana in São Paulo, Brazil, in spring 2015.

Helen Dorsett, BID 2015, selects granite at the Chelsea Market—an assignment as an intern at Xanadu Interiors in London.

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FEATURE

The LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture requires students to participate in an 11-week internship during the spring semester of the fourth year of the five-year program. By spending an entire semester working at prestigious firms—often with members of the school’s supportive alumni network—the students are fully immersed in the atmosphere of the company and are frequently invited to stay on through summer.

“Landscape architecture is such a diverse profession. We work hard to match students to firms that fit their interests but that will broaden their range,” said Cheryl Lough, a graduate assistant in the MLA program who has been helping Associate Professor Wes Michaels place students at firms throughout the country—and abroad—to fulfill the BLA

internship requirement. “Over the years we’ve been able to get placement down to a science,” she continued.

In spring 2015, students were placed in internship positions at Ecoland in Beijing; MESA in Dallas; Michael van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) in New York and Cambridge; RVi, Johnny Steele Design, and LJA Engineering in Houston; Terrain Studio in San Francisco; Hodgson & Douglas in Nashville; MITHUN in Seattle; Reich Associates in Baton Rouge; and Sergio Santana Planning & Landscape Design in São Paulo, Brazil. Interns are required to blog about their experiences at rrslainterns.blogspot.com throughout the semester.

After graduation, many students end up working at the firms where they interned—often, they are offered jobs prior to graduation, such as Alexa Morales, BID 2015, who was offered a full-time marketing position at Lacayo Arquitectos in San Jose, Costa Rica, which she’ll begin after graduation.

LSU College of Art & Design graduates are working at Gensler, Reed Hilderbrand, CPEX, Callison, the Office of James Burnett, Design Studio, and many other firms because of the impressions and contacts they made during their required internships.

Sometimes, students begin working before they graduate!

Tracy Manuel, BID 2015, has been working throughout the year for Gensler ever since her internship in summer 2014.

Tracy was one of 24 interns working at Gensler’s Houston office last summer, and she thrived in the collaborative, open-office atmosphere at the firm, where she worked with several LSU College of Art & Design alumni, including Principal Greg LaCour (BArch 1982) and Senior Associate Robert Bradford (BArch 2000). As Tracy put it, “You have to seize these opportunities when they come.”

OPTIONAL INTERNSHIPS Students in the BFA program at the LSU School of Art have the option to receive course credit for internships for up to two semesters. They are encouraged to enroll in the internship course during the spring semester of their third year to synthesize what they’ve learned and go beyond what can be done in the classroom. Interns seeking class credit are expected to work eight to ten hours per week. Faculty help facilitate placement for students at a wide range of graphic design firms, galleries, photography, production, and visual effects studios, including STUN, Tilt, Iron 27 Inc., Pixel Dash Studios, FW Gallery, Christopher Palmer Photography, and Lee Michaels Fine Jewelry.

“While our students are very prepared for college, the internship program allows them to transition into the next phase of their career,” said School of Art Director Rod Parker. “They often have job offers prior to graduation as the firms see what kind of creators they’ve got and don’t want to let them go.”

Madeline Kornman, BFA 2015 During her internship at Incendii VFX, an award-winning visual effects and three-dimensional design house based in New Orleans, digital art student Madeline Kornman had the opportunity to shadow her boss on projects such as NCIS: New Orleans and Transformers: Age of Extinction. She also worked on the Academy Award–winning film Selma and the music video, “Tatooine,” for the German musician Curse.

Her internship allowed her to meet professionals who gave her advice on her work, helping her land a job at 3rd Dimension Media in Baton Rouge. “I wouldn’t have gotten the job without the experience I gained at Incendii,” said Madeline.

Madeline Kornman worked on the Academy Award–winning film Selma during her internship at Incendii VFX in New Orleans.

Photo by Tyronecia Moore

Select graphic design and photography students may also receive course credit for working in the Graphic Design Student Office. GDSO provides professional design services for local community organizations and university departments, giving students the opportunity to gain valuable, real-world experience and build their portfolios. Students who participate in GDSO learn communication skills by interacting with fellow designers, clients, printers, and professionals, and are initiated into the problem-solving and collaborative situations they will encounter in future professional activities.

LSU School of Art alumnus Bradley Furnish received a BFA

INTERNSHIPS MATTER

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in graphic design in 2004 and is now an editor at Pixar, where he has worked on feature animations including Toy Story 3 and Brave and the public service announcement, “It Gets Better.”

Furnish said he first learned how to give and take critiques as a student in GDSO. “It takes 100 bad ideas to get to a single good idea, and that is a key principle I learned working in GDSO,” he recalled.

INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERNSHIPS Each summer, the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, a transdisciplinary program of the College of Art & Design, College of Engineering, and School of the Coast & Environment, hires motivated students for paid summer internships. Graduate students and college seniors from a range of fields, including landscape architecture, engineering, architecture, coastal science, media arts, interior design, cartography, urban planning, geography, environmental studies, and public policy collaborate on a variety of projects from visualizations, exhibit design, and design competitions to policy initiatives and communications that address a multitude of environmental challenges faced by vulnerable Gulf Coast communities. Last summer, CSS hired 13 interns from universities across the U.S. Three LSU College of Art & Design students were selected: Lindsay Boley, BArch 2014, and MLA candidates Xinyue Ling and Vedika Nigam. Visit css.lsu.edu for more information about internship opportunities at CSS. Alex Hobdy (right) tests signage for sections of Brooklyn Bridge Park during his internship at MVVA.

Architecture student Nick Griener makes a platform model of Jamaica Bay marsh during his spring 2015 externship at Guy Nordeson & Associates in New York.

Photo courtesy of Catherine Seavitt

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FEATURE

EXTERNSHIPS Externships are experiential learning opportunities designed to give students short, practical experiences in their field of study. The LSU School of Architecture facilitates one-week, unpaid externships during winter and spring break for students interested in learning more about the profession. Students who participate in externships develop a sense for the transition from school to professional practice and are introduced to the environment of a design office and new surroundings, helping them make informed career decisions.

For example, over the 2014 winter break, second-year architecture student Eva Knapp participated in an externship in New York City for H3, a nationally recognized planning and design firm. Knapp spent a week in New York assisting with the firm’s office renovation. While she enjoyed her time at H3, she discovered that living in a big city might not be right for her. She hopes to intern for a small firm located along the Gulf Coast for comparison.

Approximately 40 students have shadowed professionals at prestigious firms across the U.S. and Canada since the school established the externship program in spring 2013, including Behnisch Architekten in Boston, SOM in Chicago, HOK in St. Louis, Olsen Kundig in Seattle, Mack Scogin Merrell Elam in Atlanta, and Perkins+Will in Dallas, Boston, and

New York. Faculty are continually working to research and add firms that students are interested in visiting and observing; interested firms should contact the School of Architecture at sarch@lsu.edu.

WORD OF MOUTH Many College of Art & Design students participate in internships of their own volition, driven by curiosity or financial needs rather than curriculum or course requirements. Certain faculty members in regular contact with industry professionals and alumni, such as Professor Max Conrad at the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, are known for facilitating opportunities between students and employers.

The LSU College of Art & Design lecture series is also instrumental in creating new opportunities for students. Artists, scholars, and designers are invited to the college not only to lecture but to interact with students in classrooms and studios during their visits. Architecture student Nick Griener landed an externship at Guy Nordenson & Associates during spring break, an occasion that came about through Nordenson’s position as the fall 2014 Nadine Carter Russell Chair, a rotating residency within the college.

Alex Hobdy, BLA 2016, credits his internship at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, in part, to the Max Z. Conrad Lecture Series. In 2013, Valkenburgh lectured at LSU and spent time with second-year students—Alex’s class. “I had a conversation with Michael and talked about a design charrette he had us work on. I e-mailed him my portfolio, and, a few months later he contacted me to do an interview with some of his associates researching a project along the False River,” Alex recalled. Alex was invited to participate in a short work trial at MVVA at the end of the fall semester, after which he was offered a spring internship.

Student organizations also provide excellent word-of-mouth opportunities, as do alumni and peers, who share internship and job openings for current students and/or alumni on the college website at design.lsu.edu/jobs.

Monica Perez, BArch 2015 Internships allow students to experiment in niche fields beyond what is offered at the university. As a member of the student organization SHiP (Students for Historic Preservation), fifth-year architecture student Monica Perez learned of an internship at Bayou Preservation, LLC, in New Orleans. Bayou Preservation conservators carefully restore tombs and mausoleums, sculptures, objects, and architectural elements and perform analysis for historic buildings. Since beginning her internship last fall, Monica has worked on three tombs at two cemeteries, St. Joseph’s

Monica Perez (on ladder) has worked on the restoration of three tombs

and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. “I want to get into historic preservation,”

during her internship at Bayou Preservation, LLC.

said Monica. “The experience at Bayou Preservation provides experience

Photo courtesy of Michelle Stanard Duhon

in that field, even indirectly.”

INTERNSHIPS MATTER

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TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

POSTERS FOR A CAUSE Graphic design students learn how to design for social and historic causes by working on a project with the U.S. German Embassy to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

View of the Berlin Wall from the West in the 1980s Photo courtesy of Harald Leder

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FEATURE

N

ovember 11, 2014, marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—a monumental day in history that led to Germany’s reunification and signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War era.

The Iron Curtain divided Germany along a border established after World War II to separate the East and West blocs.

(Fig. 1) Constructed in 1961, the Berlin Wall isolated West Berliners from the rest of the city and the surrounding region.

West Berlin became an island—the sole outpost for the “free” world amidst the German Democratic Republic. The wall was a manifestation of authoritarian repression, and its fall has become a symbol of freedom and a remarkable example of a peaceful revolution.

Berlin marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall with a light installation, Lichtgrenze 2014 (border of light), by artist Christopher Bauder and his filmmaker brother, Marc.

A nine-mile stretch of the former border between East and West Berlin was lined with 8,000 luminous white balloons.

According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 300,000 people gathered to watch as the balloons were released into the night sky, symbolizing the breach of the wall by crowds of protesters in 1989.

Fig. 1

Americans are rightly proud of their own role in this historic event. In 2014, the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., sought partnerships with universities and colleges across the U.S. to mark the occasion, inviting students from all departments to join the 2014 Campus Weeks celebrating the anniversary and commemorating the fall of the wall. They reached out to Harald Leder, a German faculty member at LSU who has previously participated in programs with the embassy. Leder was born in West Germany in Kronach, a small town just five miles from the former East German border. He came to the U.S. permanently in 1990—a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall—and is currently an instructor in the foreign language department and director of LSU Academic Programs Abroad.

Mike the Tiger visited and signed a remaining portion of the Berlin Wall at the Eastside Gallery in Berlin when he accompanied students studying abroad through the APA program LSU in Germany.

Photos courtesy of LSU Academic Programs Abroad

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

17

Leder contacted Richard Doubleday, assistant professor of graphic design at the LSU School of Art and head of the APA Committee at the LSU College of Art & Design, to see how art and design students could contribute to the commemoration activities at LSU. Doubleday shared Leder’s request with his graphic design colleagues, and Professor Lynne Baggett and Associate Professor Courtney Barr incorporated the commemoration project into both sections of their third-year applied typography course (ART 4527). Students were instructed to design “Posters for a Cause,” and could choose the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall or AIDS awareness in Baton Rouge and Louisiana. Half of the students chose to design posters commemorating the fall of the wall.

The project parameters included researching the history of the Berlin Wall and designing a 13 x 19 inch poster to connect to the anniversary celebration, either as an historical reference or an interpretation of the impact of reunification. Their overall goal was to educate an audience that might not be familiar with this momentous occasion.

“Some students had no prior knowledge of this event and extensively researched the questions posed in the project introduction provided by the German Embassy,” said Baggett.

The students spent approximately three weeks creating their designs, and the resulting posters were a visual interpretation of their ideas.

Grace Reaux’s poster was inspired by President Ronald Reagan’s famous speech and stresses the role of Germany’s allies in bringing down the wall. (Fig. 2) “The symbolism of the U.S. and Germany peacefully uniting for what was fair and just for all citizens was the portrait I wanted to paint with my piece,” Grace explained. “To me, using the quote, ‘tear down this wall,’ to create the imagery of a barrier that should never have existed was fitting.

The people of Berlin made huge strides in tearing down the wall, but I wanted to show that, ultimately, we are stronger with allies.”

Amika Khurana designed her poster in honor of the day the wall fell. (Fig. 3) “My purpose was to create a design that experimented with typography and successfully conveyed the message of what this day represents,” she explained. The placement of the letters, with the dates 1961 and 1989 at each “L”, represent a timeline and reflect the lifespan of the wall.

Natalie Rabb’s design took a more architectural approach by depicting the differing skylines of East and West Berlin. (Fig. 4) Her use of reflection gives the viewer a sense of the two different worlds of East and West Berlin before the fall of the wall. She ties in her tagline, “the end of division,” by uniting the two skylines into one solid image.

ArtiFACT

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Fig. 2: Poster by Grace Reaux

Fig. 3: Poster by Amika Khurana

LSU APA offers three intersession programs in Germany, including Footsteps in Berlin, led by LSU School of Architecture Professor Michael Desmond; LSU in Germany; and Encounter Engineering in Europe. Students interested in a more immersive experience can spend a semester or a year studying at a number of universities in Germany.

LSU Academic Programs Abroad featured the commemorative posters in an exhibition in the lobby of Hatcher Hall (November–December 2014) and on their website, international. lsu.edu.

“We are grateful that the graphic design faculty picked up the project,” said Leder, who pointed out the significance of traveling through APA programs.

“Students can safely travel and become acquainted with a history that has so much to do with the world today.”

Mallory Bourgeois’s poster combined the slogan from President Reagan’s speech, colorful graffiti, and the architectural outline of West Berlin’s skyline to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Fig. 4: Poster by Natalie Rabb

Fig. 5: Poster by Mallory Bourgeois

AIDS AWARENESS AND ADVERTISING AWARDS...OH, MY! The students who chose AIDS awareness in Baton Rouge and Louisiana for their “Posters for a Cause” assignment participated in the HIV/AIDS Alliance Region Two 4th Annual HIV Awareness Poster Contest held each year on December 1 as part of HAART’s World AIDS Day festivities.

Amy Blacketter was awarded a $500 scholarship for her HIV awareness poster, designed in the applied typography course at LSU. Her poster also received a silver student award at the American Advertising Awards of Baton Rouge on February 28, 2015, as did the 2015 type calendar, “Design Time for Type”—another project completed by students in the course.

LSU School of Art students and members of the Graphic Design Student Office (GDSO) took home a total of nine 2015 local American Advertising Awards: three gold, including Best

The HIV awareness posters were displayed at the Glassell

of Show Overall for LSU School of Art BFA recruiting material,

Gallery at the Shaw Center for the Arts in conjunction with

and six silver. One of the silver awards went to the winter 2015

the exhibition, HIV/AIDS: Witness, Healer, Survivor, by LSU

issue of Quad: The LSU College of Art & Design Magazine!

School of Art visiting artist Eric Avery, MD.

TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!

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THE DREAM OF EUROPE

by Michael Triegel

Translated by Darius Spieth, Associate Professor of Art History When I was born in 1968, the world was divided. The Iron Curtain cut Europe in two halves. As a result of World War II, Germany had been divided. Western Germany was allied with the United States, and the leadership of the Eastern German Democratic Republic—which in reality was “democratic” only in name—received its marching orders from Moscow. In 1968, the drive for greater freedom in neighboring Czechoslovakia was put down brutally by a military intervention involving troops from the Soviet Union and Eastern Germany. The population in Eastern Germany interpreted these events to mean that any kind of movement for greater freedom could be expected to be stopped in its tracks by the government. It was impossible to travel to those countries not allied with Moscow. Thus Western Germany, Italy, France, and the United States were unattainable places and became, for this very reason, the focus of romantic longing for many people.

When I entered elementary school in 1975, it was in a country permeated by a general lack of personal freedom, always constrained by an omnipresent system of spies and in a climate of fear. While the educational system in the

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THE DREAM OF EUROPE

natural sciences, languages, and the humanities was exceptional, children were raised to become young communists in subjects such as history, philosophy, or so-called “citizenship studies.” The arts were usurped to serve the socialist state. Since neither speaking openly nor showing pictures of unedited reality were real options, artists harkened back to mythical figures and histories of the past, which, in their symbolic form, could speak to the current situation of the country and the hardship of the times without endangering the author by too much frankness. An art of complex metaphors and “double meanings” was born.

I could have done without many of my experiences as a child and teenager growing up in an unfree country. One thing I had to learn the hard way was that both mental and spatial borders force humans to position themselves specifically within these borders, to react to them, to make decisions. This is so because complete freedom is but an illusion, a mirage or an absence of being, a big nothing. Even in today’s society we are bound by laws which organize communal life, or which make communal life possible in the first place. Even in today’s world there are boundaries,

not only spatial ones in other parts of the world, but also financial and social ones in our Western world. Before the Iron Curtain fell, I rejected the politics of the ruling party, but I was not courageous enough, as a very young person, to stand up against it. I was confronted with the choice to behave opportunistically, to have my own thoughts and to stay silent, or to escape the situation by fleeing to the West, which seemed too dangerous, given the tightly controlled border.

Growing up in this climate, I became interested in art, which could open up new intellectual worlds or take me to foreign lands, inaccessible in real life. Thus, I found my freedom, literally speaking, in the vertical, in the world of the mind, of art, of the beautiful.

To the present day, I consider it a matter of grace that in fall 1989, the border dividing the two Germanys was opened. This great historical moment arrived in my own life at just the right moment. I had established my foundations in a medieval closed garden, a Hortus Conclusus. Now, I could choose freely the construction materials for the work I wanted to create. In spring 1990, I embarked on my first extensive travel to Italy—the country of my longings, the cradle of all the art that so much excited my enthusiasm. I was somewhat worried that the dreams in which I had indulged for so many years would go up in smoke upon confrontation with reality, but the contrary was the case. In Italy, I got to know a type of art which had neither been created for the white cube of a gallery nor for the sacrosanct space of a museum, the types of spaces with which I had been accustomed for a long time. I became very much aware that, even in ages past, art could be appropriated by politics and religion for their own ends.

Another aspect that always interested me about art is not only its ability to transcend borders and to open up new worlds, but also to let us see that which is seemingly familiar

in a new light and with different eyes.

It may be a tricky choice to follow the path backwards, as I seem to follow in my art. Some may consider it a step back to something old and outdated, a denial of the present and the future, as regressio. In psychoanalysis, regression is understood to mean a return to childish behavior patterns, a submission to outdated authorities.

Some of my critics may like this interpretation, because, during my childhood and youth, I did not experience freedom in Eastern Germany and was constantly confronted with not making choices of my own. But could this “going back” be interpreted, above all, as non-closure of things past? Are there not things of the past that have not been concluded but repressed, and which need to be confronted in order to be overcome? And are there not things of the past, which have only been forgotten, but which are not dead, and which, in a positive sense, are relevant for the present and future?

This approach one should instead call a reflection, reflexio—a contemplation for the purpose of verification and comparison. The utopias of the past have not been redeemed. This is why I make them time and again the subject of my art.

Even when I depict things supernatural or surreal, I like to ground them in the experience of visual perception. This requires study of nature and solid skills. Only that idea can be realized, for which there is a language, in which it can express itself.

I have found a language for my ideas.

This, I believe, is what the task of the artist is: to express those ideas that are important in one’s own language—not to supply the art market with merchandise, not to run after the fashions of one’s time or to make a career. Through my art, I reference today’s frequently forgotten traditions of “old Europe,” which are vital and young for me. In the world of art, this may be one path among many others, but it is my path.

The statesman of ancient Greece,

Pericles, formulated it as follows: “The secret of happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is the courage to follow one’s own path.”

Michael Triegel is a key representative of the New Leipzig School. He is best known for his portraits, including, famously, a portrait of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. As a visiting artist of the LSU School of Art, Triegel met with students in the studio arts and art history students in the Honors College. His work was displayed at the Glassell Gallery in an exhibition, Freedom of a Different Kind, January 22–March 1, 2015, sponsored by Nadine Carter Russell, and he presented a Paula G. Manship Endowed Lecture at the LSU College of Art & Design.

Opposite: Visiting Artist Michael Triegel Above: Dream of Europa, 2004, by Michael Triegel Images courtesy of Galerie Schwind, Leipzig

THE DREAM OF EUROPE

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A BETTER PLACE TO LEARN LSU interior design students collaborate with a research team at Herman Miller to investigate higher education learning environments.

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FEATURE

Tina with Herman Miller’s famous Aeron chair Photo by Tyronecia Moore

S

ince the 1950s, the name Herman Miller has been synonymous with modern furniture. The manufacturer has produced classic pieces of industrial design, working with legendary designers George Nelson, Charles and Ray Eames, and some of the most outstanding designers in the world. Today, Herman Miller is recognized for their innovations in contemporary interior furnishings as well as their design solutions in the healthcare and workplace environments.

Herman Miller’s innovative work is a result of their research culture, which has been an essential part of their design process for more than 60 years. In 2007, Herman Miller established the Learning Spaces Research Program to investigate how great learning spaces are designed, gaining valuable insights through partnerships with more than 3,000 faculty and students across 30-plus institutions.

Higher-education learning environments exist to support user activities and functions. Yet, in many cases, these environments are located within older buildings, originally designed in earlier, pre-technology decades or for outdated uses—such as the LSU Design Building, built in the early 1980s. These buildings present a challenge for universities as learning and its associated settings evolve.

Interested in finding a solution for this challenge and in continuing the dialog with higher education institutions, Herman Miller partnered with the LSU Department of Interior Design.

Professional in Residence Matthew Edmonds and Jim Sullivan, Chair of the Department of Interior Design, Herman Miller’s regional sales director, Debra Cesaro, IIDA, MCR, and Research Lead of Education Insight and Exploration Susan Whitmer chose to study the activities and behaviors of students, faculty, and staff, focusing on how learning spaces on the fourth floor of the Design Building were being used.

Their research question, “What is trying to happen that wishes it had a better place to happen?” fueled a research seminar that was funded by Herman Miller and taught by Matthew Edmonds.

Edmonds and the students worked closely with Cesaro and Whitmer of Herman Miller, who discussed precedents and introduced the methods, methodology, and tools needed to successfully complete good research. “Both Debra and Susan have been extensively involved in the students’ critiques throughout this process,” explained Edmonds. “They have challenged and pushed the research further than the class could have achieved alone.

Debra has been a true mentor to me, as the instructor, and to each student.”

“This course has changed the way I think,” said Jalen Gibson, a third-year student of interior design at LSU. “I start every project with a research mindset now—studying precedents and questioning what the design can do for the space and the user.”

The students implemented several research strategies. They used dscout, a mobile research application, to document the use of formal and informal spaces on the fourth floor of the Design Building, including studios, classrooms, faculty and staff offices,

Morgan Melancon (front) and classmates at a critique attended by Herman Miller researchers Photo by Tyronecia Moore

and common spaces. The information gathered was categorized and organized according to space types, such as individual work space, group collaboration space, and presentation space.

The students used the Myers Briggs Typology personality assessment test, which evaluates eight basic human traits to determine a person’s overall personality. The studies of these traits reveal tendencies in how people work, interact with others, and process information. The results revealed that a minority of the general population—extroverts—were a majority among this sample of students studying interior design. The results were taken into account when considering best solutions for the design of each space in the building.

The students had a significant breakthrough when they began to look beyond what was expected to occur in a certain room, analyzing the activities instead of the spaces. What was happening?

Where was it happening? And who was making it happen? They positioned Tina, a mannequin, next to a survey question board to gather more information.

“Tina helped us realize that the atrium has a huge transient population besides just design students,” said Emily Abshire, a fourth-year interior design student who audited the research course. “We realized we needed to develop the space for more impromptu interaction and give design students more places to lounge outside of studio.”

The students analyzed the digital and informal data and drew conclusions about activities and their relationship to the space

A BETTER PLACE TO LEARN 23

and to the users, which they used to define activity modes and settings.

They organized their results into three activity processes that occur within the Design Building—development, downtime, and delivery—each comprising eight activity modes.

During final reviews, the students presented an accomplished, comprehensive, and cohesive summary of their research. Cesaro and Whitmer attended the critique, as did Mary Miles, associate director of LSU Facility Services. Miles is on the team for campus-wide renovation, which includes the Design Building, and is interested in the students’ research, particularly how it can be applied to other colleges at LSU. During winter break, the students presented their research to the Learning Spaces Research Program team at Herman Miller headquarters in Michigan. Whitmer and Cesaro, Jeff Vredevoogd, director of Herman Miller Education, and Director of Insight and Exploration Gretchen Gscheidle were among those present. Herman Miller covered the group’s meals and arranged for their accommodation in the historic Marigold Lodge as well as a tour of Herman Miller’s design archives, where original drawings and pieces of classic furniture are stored. But what the students most enjoyed about the trip—besides the huge amounts of snow from a recent blizzard—was visiting Herman Miller’s workplace environment.

“Their workspace also functions as their showroom,” Gibson explained. “We saw the results of planning the right way, what we’ve been researching here.”

“The trip to Herman Miller was eye-opening, seeing such a large-scale manufacturer interested in more than just selling

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NARI WARD FEATURE

products,” added Morgan Melancon, a fourth-year interior design student who said she also gained valuable, real-world experience. “Getting critiqued by so many professionals takes us out of our comfort zone and prepares us for our careers.”

The students returned to Baton Rouge refreshed and excited to begin the next phase of collaboration. This spring, they’ve been hashing out actual settings and creating a hardline program for what the Design Building could become. They obtained and updated a floor plan of the building to determine which spaces are being used when and how often. In a quick but intense design charrette, they produced sketches and diagrams for how they envision the spaces for each activity mode.

The end-of-year goal is to have a completed program, showing how the spaces in the Design Building are actually used versus how they are perceived or intended to be used.

They will visually represent what the Design Building could be, using perspectives to show multiple configurations of the same kit of parts for a variety of activity modes and settings. Most importantly, they intend for their solution to be an adaptable, “future-proof solution with the flexibility to evolve the learning and pedagogies for the next 10–15 years, applicable to other colleges and programs at LSU and higher education institutions,” Cesaro explained.

“We have had the opportunity to conduct true research assisted by industry mentors,” said Edmonds. “Through their research, the students are bringing up questions that people will be uncomfortable with, but they are starting the dialog and laying the foundation of a legacy that—if implemented—could guide such institutions as the College of Art & Design into the

These diagrams show different configurations for lecture spaces, all using the same pieces of furniture and materials.

future of how students learn and faculty teach in the higher education, built environment.”

As for Herman Miller, according to Cesaro, “The students provide a fresh point of view that helps inform our own research—have we hit the mark, or are there different strategies we need to plan for in the future.”

The collaboration has leveraged the resources and expertise of both parties—and LSU as a whole—especially as the focus broadened to include the entire building and all three design disciplines of the College of Art & Design. A benefit for all involved—but, most importantly, for the students.

“It has been great working with professionals, knowing that our ideas are good and gaining confidence in that knowledge,” said Abshire, who decided to audit the course because of this opportunity for interaction. “It’s just so fun when the professionals come in. It’s worth the extra effort.”

Melancon added, “There is nothing else like it in the interior design curriculum, so it has really pushed us and has influenced my designs for all of my projects. For everything I do now, I always ask why.”

Jalen Gibson presents research to the Learning Spaces Research Program team at Herman Miller headquarters in Michigan.

ArtiFACT

The research course fits into the LSU Discover Quality Enhancement Program (lsu.edu/discover). As part of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges reaffirmation of accreditation process, LSU is required to develop a QEP that addresses a well-defined topic or issue related to enhancing student learning. LSU Discover’s primary goal is to establish a basic, flexible, non-intrusive undergraduate research model that can be utilized across LSU’s many and varied curricula, from the arts and humanities to the social and natural sciences to professional programs.

AABETTER BETTER PLACE PLACE TO TO LEARN 23 WHERE ARE THEY NOW? 25

HOW IT’S MADE

Three-Dimensional Word Blocks One of four Communications across the Curriculum studios on the LSU campus, the CxC Art + Design Studio exists as a resource for art and design students where faculty, student mentors, and CxC staff train, guide, employ, and recognize students who demonstrate exceptional communication skills. Studio resources include workstations loaded with 3D modeling and rendering software, 3D printing, and 3D scanning.

Gaining hands-on experience using state-of-the-art digital fabrication technology is a major perk for CxC Art + Design Studio student workers. Third-year architecture students Renzi Terrebonne and Margaret Long serve as student mentors and help Studio Coordinator Vincent Cellucci instruct students and faculty on how to use 3D printers, scanners, and software. Here, they demonstrate 3D-printing technology by creating a word block out of the Quad magazine masthead.

1 Adobe Illustrator Open the existing masthead file in Adobe Illustrator and export to a .DWG file (default AutoCAD file type).

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HOW IT’S MADE

2 Rhinoceros a) Open the .DWG file in Rhinoceros (3D-modeling software). b) Delete any interior hatching included on the masthead. c) Highlight masthead and make a surface from planar curves. d) Click on masthead and type “extrude surface” into the comand bar. e) Change the Solid option to Yes and enter the desired object height—include units. f) Change the view to Rendered to get a more realistic idea of what the object will look like. g) Change the units from inches to millimeters. h) Highlight the object, and go to File > Properties > Units. i) Your file is ready to be exported to the printing software.

Highlight masthead and export to .STL file.

3 CubeX Software a) Open the .STL file in CubeX 3D printing software. b) Rotate the masthead to ensure it looks correct by left clicking with the mouse. c) Select Build. d) Change the printer configuration to ensure desired material. e) Time to print! Save file on the 3D printing flash drive.

4 CubeX Printer a) Prepare printer platform with glue to ensure the Polylactic acid (PLA) material will lay flat. (PLA is biodegradable ther moplastic aliphatic polyester derived from renewable re sources such as corn starch.) b) Open the file on the printer. c) Press print! Printing should take about three hours. d) After printing is complete, remove any excess supports with pliers and sand any rough edges.

Software: Adobe Illustrator Rhinoceros CubeX Hardware: CubeX Trio 3D Printer Materials: Red Polylactic Acid (PLA) Plastic Quad in the quad!

HOW IT’S MADE 27

RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE The Changing Climate of Building Technology In 1998, Paula G. Manship bestowed a fund for the LSU College of Art & Design to establish the Nadine Carter Russell Chair, named for her niece, who received a degree in art history from LSU in 1967. The rotating residency enables the college to annually bring a prominent artist, designer, or scholar to campus. The duties of the chair primarily focus on teaching and public lectures but vary depending on the recipient’s field of expertise.

In 2014–15, due to transformations in the curriculum and changes in faculty appointments, the LSU School of Architecture divided the residency across the spring and fall semesters to bring two prestigious designers to LSU. In fall 2014, Guy Nordenson, structural engineer and professor at Princeton University, lectured at the college and co-taught a course with A. Hays Town Professor Ursula Emery McClure. Architect Kiel Moe, professor of architecture and energy at Harvard Graduate School of Design, joined the LSU School of Architecture in spring 2015. He presented a lecture and co-taught a graduate-level course with Visiting Assistant Professor Shelby Elizabeth Doyle.

“The profession is going through major changes in building technology and how it is conceived,” explained LSU School of Architecture Director Jori Erdman. “The faculty took this opportunity to bring in two professionals at the top of their game in building technology to help strengthen our focus on the coast and

push faculty and students to think more deeply about what we do and how we can design better and more efficiently.”

Nordenson and Moe also met with LSU School of Architecture faculty to discuss changes in the program’s building technology sequence. Erdman said these changes will help students become better designers for the dynamic environment of the 21st century.

“With Professor Nordenson’s expertise in teaching structures and Professor Moe’s expertise in systems, we have been able to seriously reconceive our approach to building technology teaching,” added Erdman. “There is not just one way (as has been the tradition in architectural education) to share knowledge and teach students how buildings stand up and how they feel and perform.”

Nordenson, a partner at Guy Nordenson & Associates, has practiced structural engineering in San Francisco and New York. His current projects include the expansion of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston with Steven Holl and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., with David Adjaye and Phil Freelon. He currently serves as commissioner of the New York City Public Design Commission, as a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and as a board member of the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy.

His research project, “On the Water/Palisade Bay,” won the 2007 American Institute of Architects Latrobe Prize and was published

Left: Structural Engineer Guy Nordenson, fall 2014 Nadine Carter Russell Chair in Architecture Photo by Dominique Nabokov Right: Kiel Moe, professor of architecture and energy at Harvard Graduate School of Design, spring 2015 Nadine Carter Russell Chair in Architecture

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RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE

Photos taken by architecture student Dasjon “DJ” Jordan during his group’s site visit to Yscloskey, Louisiana, located 20 minutes outside of New Orleans

in 2010. The project and book served as the inspiration for the MoMA workshop and exhibition, Rising Currents.

In a lecture presented to faculty, students, and the community last fall, Nordenson discussed “Structures of Coastal Resilience.”

The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and led by his research team at Princeton, along with teams from Harvard, City College, and the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Nordenson explored the development of coastal resilient strategies for the New York and New Jersey region both before and after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 through a series of four intense seminars in McClure’s architecture and anthropology course, “Vernacular Architecture and Material Culture: The LA Tectonic” (ARCH 4440).

“Climate change adaptation is a pressing and difficult challenge to urban design, ecological and engineering planning theory and practice,” stated Nordenson. “Architects, planners, engineers, and designers have an increasingly important role to help cities, especially coastal ones, contend with climate adaptation.”

The students delved into the origins and development of the architecture/tectonic culture of Louisiana and the lower Mississippi valley to analyze and research the technological developments that have allowed occupation in this fluvial terra.

Using the knowledge they gained understanding the Louisiana condition and the engineering principles presented by Nordenson and Catherine Seavitt, associate professor of architecture at City College, the students studied and developed protective strategies for four small towns in southern Louisiana. Each team conducted case studies and developed systemic proposals for their assigned town. They made site visits to their towns—Venice, Ycloskey, Pecan Island, and St. Jean Charles—investigating a different set of issues that affect the state’s coastal communities, such as subsidence, salt water intrusion, erosion, and flooding.

“It was an honor and privilege to teach with Professor

Nordenson,” said McClure. “He brought a much-needed perspective from a different region that added insight to the course and the perspective of the students. As he learned from us about the unique conditions of Louisiana, his inquiry and insight into the specific case studies challenged all of us to look beyond the typical.”

As the spring 2015 chair, Kiel Moe presented a lecture, “Maximum Power Design,” that was open to the university and the public. He has visited LSU several times throughout the spring semester to work with architecture students in Doyle’s graduate design studio.

Moe is co-director of the Master in Design Studies program and the Energy, Environments & Design Research Lab at Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches and coordinates core design studios, seminars on forms of energy, and lectures on architecture and energy. His research and design practice centers on an agenda for design and energy that is at once more ecologically and architecturally ambitious, focusing on buildings as manifestations of large-scale energy systems as well as overlooked and discrete thermal parameters in buildings that have great impact on the power and thermodynamic depth of architecture. He is the author of six books, including Insulating Modernism: Isolated and Non-Isolated Thermodynamics in Architecture (Birkhauser, 2014); Convergence: An Architectural Agenda for Energy (2013); and Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture (2010).

The studio topic was “Architecture of (Wet)Land Building: Wax Lake Delta NERRS Research Center (ARCH 7004).” Students designed proposals for the flagship Louisiana National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) facility in the Wax Lake Delta, intended to be part of the national system that protects more than 1.3 million acres in 28 reserves in 22 states and Puerto Rico.

(Louisiana is currently the only Gulf Coast state without a NERRS site or facility.) The 35,000-square-foot facility will include office space, laboratories, classrooms, exhibition space, and a dormitory—

RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE 29

as well as a program for educational outreach.

As co-instructor of the course, Moe introduced his energy methodology, expanding the students’ understanding of energy systems in architecture—especially in the context of Wax Lake— and exposed students to principles of maximum power, transformation, and feedback as a co-motivator for the design of buildings.

“It has been a privilege to teach with Kiel, and his presence at LSU is a unique opportunity for our students,” stated Doyle.

“Professor Moe’s research provides a productive and generative link between architecture and the dynamic ecology of the Wax

Lake Delta, and I am looking forward to seeing this influence in the students’ design proposals.”

Moe accompanied the students on a field trip to Wax Lake in March. Earlier in the spring, the students visited the National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) in Grand Bay, Mississippi, and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) DeFelice Marine Center in Cocodrie, Louisiana, to experience and document two architectural precedents that combine ongoing scientific research and public education and outreach.

Studio collaborations with Dr. Robert Twilley, executive

15 Years, 15 Chairs Fifteen years ago, the LSU College of Art & Design appointed Greg Watson as the first Nadine Carter Russell Chair.

The residency has allowed the college to bring in an eclectic blend of 15 artists, scholars, and designers who have helped bring a diverse perspective to LSU students, faculty, and the community at large.

LA 2001–02

ART 2003–04

Tooru Miyakoda, FASLA CEO, Keikan Sekkei Tokyo Co. Ltd. Osaka

1998 Endowment Established

ARCH 2000–01

Greg Watson Practicing Adjunct, University of Minnesota (then) Associate Professor LSU (now) 30

RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE

ID 2005–06

Douglas Davis (1933–2014) Artist, Critic, Teacher & Writer New York

ART 2002–03

Grace Knowlton Mixed-Media Artist New York

Erik Hemingway Principal, hemingway +a/studio Chicago

LA 2004–05

John Beardsley Director, Garden & Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks Washington, D.C.

ARCH 2006–07

Hannah Hinchman Artist, Naturalist Montana

director of the Louisiana Sea Grant Program and professor of oceanography and coastal sciences at LSU, and Dr. Pamela Blanchard, associate professor of education, provided the students with important background information to help them develop their proposals. Much of Twilley’s research is focused on understanding the ecosystem ecology, management practices, and biogeochemistry of coastal wetlands in the Gulf of Mexico and throughout Latin America—from Florida to the Yucatan Peninsula. Blanchard served as Louisiana Sea Grant’s education coordinator for four years and helped start the Ocean Commotion and LSU Coastal Roots programs. Her responsibilities in the School of Education are centered on helping elementary and secondary educators teach science in rigorous, creative, meaningful, and engaging ways.

The LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio provided financial, planning, and institutional support for the course. CSS works to envision and design sustainable systems that reduce vulnerability to increased storm strength, coastal hazards, habitat degradation, and global environmental change. The results of this design experimentation provide a sound basis for major policy decisions for adaptation through more sustainable land-use planning, protection, and education.

“It has been an honor to be named the Nadine Carter Russell Chair,” said Moe. “I have enjoyed the opportunity to engage the LSU community and context. The residency provides an excellent opportunity to discuss and apply a wide range of ideas about ecology and design in a rich and complex context. The engagement of the School of Architecture and CSS has been impressive.”

“What fantastic opportunities for LSU School of Architecture students and faculty to work with such esteemed experts,” added McClure. “We have been so lucky to have these two Nadine Carter Russell Chairs engage with students as directly as they did this past year.”

The Nadine Carter Russell Chair endowment allowed the school to bring in the quality of thinker with the freedom to be outspoken, which Erdman said pushed the faculty in a direction that will benefit the curriculum for years to come.

ARCH 2009–10

LA 2007–08

ART 2009–10

Alec Soth Photographer Minneapolis

LUMCON in Cocodrie, Louisiana Top: ARCH 7004 class on top of the seawall flood protection infrastructure in Morgan City, Louisiana Bottom: Rendering by Jennifer Price at time of mid-term review

ARCH 2014–15

ID/ART 2012–13

Seth McDowell Founding Partner mcdowellespinosa Brooklyn & Charlottesville

Donald Kunze Professor Emeritus Penn State Pennsylvania

Opposite Page: ARCH 7004 students kayaking in the marshes near

Guy Nordenson Partner Guy Nordenson & Associates New York

Peter Shire Artist & Designer Los Angeles

LA 2011–12

W. Gary Smith, FASLA Principal, W. Gary Smith Design Toronto

ART 2013–14 Nari Ward Sculptor New York

ARCH 2014–15

Kiel Moe Associate Professor, HGSD Cambridge

RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE 31

Well Lit

CASTING THE LIMELIGHT ON LIGHTING DESIGN WITH SUZAN TILLOTSON Lighting designers operate within a niche of specialists who understand the physics of light production and distribution and the physiology and psychology of how humans perceive light. They focus on fixed lighting, working with architects, engineers, interior designers, theatrical consultants, and others to illuminate the built environment, inside and out. Although the importance of lighting design is ever-increasing as modern design is rapidly changing, requiring dedicated professionals with exact expertise, most people outside the design professions couldn’t name a famous lighting designer or point out an architectural gem known for its lighting design. In fact, most people only notice lighting when it’s absent or poorly done.

Fortunately, Suzan Tillotson (BID 1981), president and founder of Tillotson Design Associates (tillotsondesign.com), has never suffered from this lack of insight.

Suzan has always been interested in light. She transferred to a major in interior design after taking a lighting design course during her second year in the architecture program.

“I fell in love immediately and knew that lighting was what I wanted to do,” she recalled. Thanks to the LSU Career Center and Career Day events, she met several representatives from prestigious lighting design firms who helped further her interest in the field.

After graduation, Suzan began her career in Baton Rouge where she and her husband were living. She worked as a draftsperson at Levy-Kramer Associates and quickly moved up the ladder to head the lighting department. In her six years at the local engineering firm, Suzan cut her teeth in lighting design; she worked on churches, schools, and hospitals, including the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition in New Orleans. “But it still wasn’t quite the work I wanted to do,” she said.

In the economic downturn of the 1980s, Suzan and her husband both started looking for new careers. Suzan’s experience in lighting design helped her land a job at Flack + Kurtz Engineers in New York City, at which point the Tillotsons did something very brave—even by today’s standards. They moved to New York on one salary with a two-year-old son!

Suzan worked at two engineering firms in New York before joining Jerry Kugler, where she became a 49 percent owner and

32

WELL LIT

Alumna Suzan Tillotson is a lighting designer, principal, and owner of Tillotson Associates in New York City.

later formed Kugler Tillotson Associates. She established many of her long-term client relationships during her 16½ years at Kugler. But after 9/11, the majority of architecture projects were on hold, and business continued to slow down due to yet another economic downturn. Proving two economic downturns can sometimes make a right, Suzan left Kugler in 2004 and started her own company, Tillotson Design Associates.

Eleven years later, TDA is at its maximum growth potential.

Suzan likes keeping the firm small as it is easier to manage the quality of work—although small is a relative concept in the field of lighting design. With only 23 employees, TDA is still one of the larger lighting design firms operating in the U.S. According to Suzan, the firm’s location in New York is crucial. “Ninety percent of my clients—architecture firms—are nearby, which makes it easy to meet and interact.”

She also recognizes the importance of taking on more diversified project types. TDA’s impressive list of projects include interior and exterior lighting for academic buildings, corporate facilities, libraries, lobbies, museums and galleries, performance spaces, places of worship, residencies, restaurants, restoration, and retail. The firm completed the lighting design for Lincoln Center Plazas, the School of American Ballet, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Wright restaurant at the Guggenheim, and the East River Waterfront in New York. They worked on the Seattle

TDA designed the lighting for the Wright restaurant at the Guggenheim. Photo by Peter Aaron/Esto

Central Public Library, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Israel Museum, and retail spaces for Diane Von Furstenburg, PRADA, Vera Wang, and more. Outdoor lighting is one of their specialties and an area Suzan particularly enjoys. In 2014, TDA was hired by the Vieux Carre Commission to write exterior building, mounted lighting guidelines, which have since been adopted.

Suzan’s passion for her work is clear. Brimming with excitement, she discussed some of her current projects, such as the Culture Shed, described as “a technically innovative and remarkably agile 200,000-square-foot space on Manhattan’s Far West Side . . . expressly designed to accommodate the evolving forms of artistic and cultural expression of the future,” (nyccultureshed.org). The building is a collaboration of Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Rockwell Group, purposely built for flexibility, with 40,000-square-feet of museum quality exhibition space. A large, telescoping outer shed structure slides open using industrial crane technology to create an additional 17,000-square-feet with a flexible ceiling height of up to 110 feet. TDA is also working on a park on Governor’s Island, a new high rise in New York City at 425 Park Avenue, and a business school for Columbia University.

Suzan is proud of the projects she’s done but also the opportunities TDA has given to so many designers. She enjoys being a mentor and hopes everyone she has worked with can look back and say they learned something from her—whether it be balancing a career with home life or overcoming professional challenges as women. “So many women—still—in the architectural and engineering firms hit a glass ceiling that doesn’t exist in lighting design. Knowing so much about such a specific subject provides security; no one can challenge your level of expertise,” she said.

While she admits it has been a struggle finding LSU graduates who want to establish a career in lighting design—and move to New York on an entry-level salary—she has hired several LSU interior design and architecture graduates over the years, including Krista Kennedy (BArch 2008), who worked at TDA for six years before joining the John Hardy Group in New York City as a project director, and Whitney Mire (BID 2012), who started out as an intern and is now a designer at TDA. “It’s an investment I’m committed to,” Suzan said. “After one or two years of training, they often get homesick and move back to the South or decide lighting design is not for them—but I refuse to give up!”

TDA frequently gives tours to student groups visiting New York. A group of LSU Department of Interior Design students visited TDA while in New York over spring break in April. “We showed them the studio, the exciting projects, and they got an up-close look at a smaller, niche firm,” Suzan said.

As for Suzan visiting Baton Rouge, she and her family are huge LSU football fans. Now that the Louisiana native owns her own firm, she is able to visit Baton Rouge frequently, flying home for the weekend every couple of months. She was the keynote speaker at the LSU College of Art & Design commencement ceremony in 2012, where she was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award for her contributions to the profession of interior design and the advancement of lighting design.

When asked to give advice for those interested in pursuing a career in lighting design, Suzan shared her opinion. “It’s tough living in the city when you’re young, on an entry-level salary. But the sacrifices you make in the beginning will pay off big in the end.”

WELL LIT 33

MEET MARK BOYER Professor Mark E. Boyer, MLA ’96, head of the University of Arkansas’s Department of Landscape Architecture and graduate of the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, has been selected to serve as the school’s new director, effective July 2015.

“It is amazing to come back home,” said Boyer, who was born in Michigan and grew up in Kansas. “I’m not from Louisiana, but—as someone once told me— once you’ve been to LSU, it gets in your blood. I’m excited to come back and completely honored to be offered the position as director of the school.”

Professor Emeritus Van Cox, interim director through June 2015, said Boyer’s sincere passion for the profession reminds him of the school’s founder, Dr. Robert S. Reich. “Mark understands our traditions and is committed to an even better future. We are delighted to welcome Mark back ‘home.’”

After receiving his BS in landscape architecture

Architecture and the American Society of Landscape

er followed two years of practice—he is a registered

Architects. As director, Boyer said, he will focus

landscape architect in Louisiana and Arkansas—with a

on continuing the efforts that have garnered the

graduate degree at LSU.

school’s stellar reputation and top billing in annual

“I was at LSU when Robert Reich was still

and continue his work with ASLA to market and

and be around Neil Odenwald, Suzanne Turner [who

promote the landscape architecture profession as a

headed the search committee for the directorship],

whole. Most of all, he is looking forward to working

Wayne Womack, Dan Earle, Jon Emerson, Chuck

closely with the faculty, staff, and fellow Robert

Fryling, Bruce Sharky, Max Conrad, Sadik Artunc,

Reich School of Landscape Architecture alumni.

“The faculty are essential in establishing the

he laughed. “I understand the foundation and the

culture of the program and the experience of the

legacy of the program and am looking forward to

students so they, too, get LSU in their blood and

building the next phase.”

stay connected as alumni,” Boyer said. “Alumni are

Boyer’s credentials are vast and impressive,

MEET MARK BOYER

rankings. He also has plans to focus on recruitment

teaching,” he recalled. “I was fortunate to work with

and Van Cox—I don’t want to leave anyone out!”

34

such as the Council of Educators of Landscape

with distinction from the University of Kentucky, Boy-

critically important to the success of the school, and

including his professional practice and research, his

I will be relying on those relationships to develop

years teaching at the University of Arkansas, and his

partnerships and create more internship and job

extensive involvement in professional organizations

opportunities for our students and graduates.”

Class NOTES 1960s

James Turner, BLA ’69, land-

Mary Louise Porter, BFA, MFA ’74, has been teaching at the Louisiana

computer labs, corporate

Virtual School and Louisiana School for

historic renovations and span the

Math, Science, and the Arts. One of

East Coast to Beijing and Africa.

scape architect, teacher, volunteer,

her paintings was chosen as the 2014

and noted co-author of Southern

Natchitoches Christmas poster; she was

Plants, is president of Friends of

featured in Louisiana Life Magazine; and

Hodges Gardens, one of Louisiana’s

she had a dual exhibition at Gallery One

greatest garden treasures.

Elleven in Leesville with James Turner.

1970s

Lewis May, FASLA, MLA ’71,

at “LSU Architecture Class of 1984.”

designer at WHR Architects in

professor, helped review the proposed

Houston, advisor and cofounder of

landscape architecture program for

WHR Tradewell Fellowship, has had

Wuhan University, and was a guest

Caress Crake Threadgill, BFA ’87, has worked as a graphic

three incredible decades of designing

lecturer at Sichuan Agricultural

healthcare facilities, from academic

University in China. He is working on

teaching centers to outpatient clinics.

guide certification for Shinrin Yoku,

He is currently working on projects in

a Japanese form of nature therapy.

Houston, Connecticut, Colorado,

He stewards a 140-acre, community

Israel, and Denmark.

centered biodynamic farm and rustic

will be honored during the Chicago meeting in November.

Christopher Flagg, FASLA, BLA ’76, is director of the Design-Municipal

1980s

Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas, MLA ’89, founder and president of CPEX—a non-profit planning organization—started

Education Division of Haskell, a fully

the Louisiana Smart Growth

integrated design-build company

Summit, which is celebrating

headquartered in Jacksonville,

10 years as one of the largest

where he oversees urban design,

multidisciplinary planning

community planning, campus

conferences in the U.S.

master planning, and landscape architecture services.

In 2015, Ray Scott, AIA, BArch

’73, merged his practice with

Unlimited in Baton Rouge.

ASLA Awards in April 2015. Recipients

Karen Shambaugh Rink, BID ’72, worked as an interior designer

small village in France.

Coca-Cola Bottling Company

Boston, chaired the jury for the 2015

passes through Lanzhou, China.

to Germany again, and now lives in a

print manager and marketing for

Keith LeBlanc, BLA ’79, of Keith

river edge as the Yellow River

University, married in 1983, moved

Francisco, and is currently regional

LeBlanc Landscape Architecture in

master plan for the 60-kilometer

of interior design at Eastern Kentucky

designer in Los Angeles and San

lodge in western North Carolina.

entailed the development of a

became tenured assistant professor

reunion in October 2014. Connect with 1984 classmates on Facebook

recent award-winning project

PhD at University of Missouri. She

Architecture Class of 1984 30th

from NCA&T as field faculty associate

lecture at RRSLA in January. His

Purdue University, and began her

Architects, helped organize the LSU

David Kendall, MLA ’78, retired

Design Week and presented a

Germany, completed her MID at

Chris Remson, BArch ’84, principal of Remson Haley Herpin

Charles Cadenhead, FAIA, BArch ’75, senior principal and

associate principal at Page, led

in Baton Rouge, a draftsperson in

headquarters, healthcare, and

Architectural Stained Glass, Inc.,

Jolene Randazzo, BID ’81,

1990s

Matt Cormia, AIA, to cofound

owned by Jeff Smith, BLA ’77,

founded Studio 3 Interiors, LLC, 12

Scott+Cormia Architects and

is beginning fabrication of Phase

years ago. Her clientele and project

president/owner of Landry

Interiors, with offices in Orlando

1: Stained Glass for St. Frances X

types include embassies, law firms,

Design, a professional design

and Manila.

Cabrini Catholic Church in El Paso.

government affairs, high-tech

firm providing comprehensive

Troy Landry, BLA ’92, is

CLASS NOTES

35

Rebecca Barber Bradley, BLA ’01, co-founder of Cadence,

dedicated to providing superior

a landscape architecture and

to clients in Baton Rouge and

urban design practice focused on

surrounding areas.

outdoor living environments

connecting physical and social landscapes located within the FATVillage Arts District in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is celebrating five years of business.

by Rheta Grimsley Johnson, columnist for King Features Syndicate of New York, and a blurb from Julie Kane, former poet laureate of land planning and landscape architecture, based in Alpharetta, Georgia.

Louisiana.

2000s

Amy Harbert, LEED AP, BLA ’00, joined Design Workshop’s

As an associate at Design Workshop in Austin, Philip Koske,

BLA ’03, a registered landscape

Adam McGovern, BLA ’05,

architect in Texas, is managing D.C.

project manager at EHRA, Inc.,

Houston office in April 2014 as its

Green Streets for ASLA headquar-

Houston, is responsible for over-

first staff member and serves as

ters, Superblock Park, and Domain

seeing the design, development,

its operations manager. She is at

Sidewalks Retail and Central Plaza.

procurement, and construction

the helm of several recent projects including 300 Main Street and Memorial Drive. Most of her work focuses on the topic of multi-modal mobility. Outside of work, she enjoys renovating her 1928 cottage.

Haley Blakeman, BLA ’94, serves as the director of implementation for CPEX and

Andrea “Dru” Lamb, IIDA, NCIDQ, LEED AP, BID ’03, recently joined Herman Miller, Inc., as the Louisiana territory manager, a resource for workplace planning

including master planned communities, regional parks, and trail systems for municipalities and various private entities.

serve on the IIDA Delta Regional

Seth Rodewald-Bates, MLA ’05, joined Spackman Mossop

Board of Directors as well as the

Michaels in 2014, after eight

State Board of Interior Designers.

years as an associate at Newton

and solutions. Lamb continues to

Landscape Group. He and his

has led innovative demonstration

wife, Elisabeth Davies, built an

projects that have helped Baton

eco-friendly, modern home out of

Rouge residents imagine how

two, four-ton shipping containers

bike lanes, traffic calming, and

in the Carrollton area of New

beautification measures can

Orleans.

make a meaningful difference for safety, property values, and

Jennifer Scott, BFA ’06,

economic development. She

is senior graphic designer at Paradise Advertising & Design,

currently serves as the ASLA Chapter President’s Council Chair, and she was named one of Baton Rouge Business Report’s 2014 Forty under 40.

Voice author and actor David

36

for a broad range of projects

In 2004, after spending four years with SSOE, Inc., Bert Turner,

BArch ’00, joined Mouton+Long Architects, which became Mouton Long Turner Architects in 2011,

Chad Broussard, AIA, LEED AP, BArch ’04, is an architect at Deborah Berke Partners, an architecture and interior design firm of more than 50 people in Brooklyn.

a strategic creative advertising, digital, and entertainment company in Florida.

As director of Duke Branding,

Isral Duke, BFA ’07, frequent-

Atwood, BArch ’99, of Atwood

where he is now principal architect

Eric Smith, BLA ’04, is co-owner

ly works with startups, inventors,

Voices published his second book

and designer. His focus is on multi-

of Smith and Baker, Leaders

and engineers. He said his time

of poetry, Catfish Bones and Cajun

unit rollouts and site adaptation of

in Outdoor Living, a complete

at LSU played a crucial role in

Ghosts, which included a foreword

corporate prototypes.

design/development collaborative

learning adaptive thinking.

CLASS NOTES

Nicole Hilton, BArch ’07, is the founding partner of Cole Hill, an architectural firm in Atlanta dedicated to creativity and a holistic design approach. The team at Cole Hill is committed to excellence and dedicated to the individuals they serve, with a fundamental belief in sharing ideas through collaboration.

2010s

Michael Griffith, BLA ’10,

has greatly contributed to proj-

James Catalano, BArch ’13,

ects such as Taylor Downtown

moved Future Factory, his 3D

Master Plan, Schwab Austin

printing business co-owned with

Corporate Campus, and Bagby

Adrienne Trahan, BArch ‘13,

and Brazos streets in midtown

to New Orleans, where he joined

Houston. He and his wife,

the new firm One to One, which

Lindsay, welcomed a baby girl

specializes in architecture, design,

to their family last year.

and technology.

received an MLA from UC Denver,

In 2014, after three years of

In August 2014, Brad Odom,

are engaged to be married in

practice at Reed Hilderbrand,

completed his MLA and Master of Urban Design at the University of Colorado in Denver, where he is working at RNL. He and Abigail

Eichenbaum, BLA ’10, who also

BLA ’13, joined Jeffrey Carbo

Alex Strader, BLA ’11, joined

Landscape Architects in Alexan-

Jeffrey Carbo Landscape

dria, where he plays a role in all

Architects in Baton Rouge. His

aspects of design development.

portfolio includes the design

Prior to joining JCLA, he interned

and realization of public,

at WORKSHOP::Ken Smith

institutional, and residential

Landscape Architect and was a

landscapes throughout the

member of the Historic American

and mapping, engineering, envi-

Northeast, Texas, Louisiana,

Landscape Survey Team (HALS).

ronmental services, and advanced

and California.

September 2015.

Mikeila Nagura, MLA ’10, is a landscape designer/environmental project manager at Fenstermaker, a diverse consulting firm in Baton Rouge that specializes in survey

technologies.

Chris Barnes, BLA ’09, senior project manager and landscape architect at SCAPE/Landscape Architecture PLLC in New York City, was recently licensed in New York, where he is project manager for the Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center campus, part of an ongoing capital improvement master plan that will begin construction later this year.

Conners Ladner, BLA ’09, associate, project manager, and professional landscape architect

After completing an internship

Mary Grace Verges, BArch ’10, received a master’s degree

Josh Brooks, BLA ’12, associate at Design Workshop in Denver,

in urbanism, landscape, and

Benton, BLA ’14, accepted a

has contributed to a number

position as a designer for CPEX,

ecology from Harvard Graduate

of significant projects, such as

where he is helping develop

School of Design. She is currently

the Oukaimeden New Town in

a comprehensive master plan

a project architect and urban de-

Morocco and, in Denver, the

for the City of Gonzales. He

signer at Eskew+Dumez+Ripple

I-70 reconstruction, Cover Park,

designed numerous installations

in New Orleans, where she works

Triangle Plaza, and 1144 15th

for Complete Streets develop-

on multiple projects, from interi-

Street. He co-led a field session

ment in Mid City Baton Rouge

or renovations and new building

about Denver’s Riverfront Park at

and administered and designed

construction to large-scale civic

the 2014 ASLA convention and will

façade improvements to several

master-planning proposals.

lead a panel on the detail, design,

Government Street businesses.

and documentation of large urban

Stay in touch!

at Design Workshop in Austin, is

projects at the 2015 convention.

managing and designing projects in St. Tammany Parish, Baton Rouge,

After a year working in LSU’s

Chalmette, Lafayette, Houston, and Austin. He was the lead designer

University Relations, Ashley Stewart, BFA ’12, cofounded

and project manager for the Hous-

Patent Pump, an all-female pow-

ton Arboretum & Nature Center

erhouse that provides full-scale

Master Plan, which won a national

Alex Ramirez, BLA ’11, was

branding, creative development,

honor award from ASLA and the

promoted to associate at Design

strategy, and social media

award of excellence in Texas.

Workshop in Austin, where he

services to lifestyle brands.

at Reed Hilderbrand, Ryan

design.lsu.edu/alumni design.lsu.edu/give

CLASS NOTES 37

EQUIPPED

Rachael Noto – BFA 2015, Printmaking

1. Ink roller—a tool no printmaker could

live without! This is what we use to roll ink for making prints.

2. Dremel—a tool I could not live with-

out! My Dremel enables me to quickly carve large areas of wood and achieve fine detail in my woodcuts.

3. Luster ink is my favorite. I use it as

an accent to add a soft shimmer to my prints.

38

NARI WARD EQUIPPED

4. Pastels, colored pencils, graphite—

7.

5. Copper etching plates are used for

8. Liquid hard ground is another

hand coloring is my favorite method for adding pops of color and highlights to my prints.

creating intaglios—my preferred printmaking technique.

6. Woodblocks are used for creating

relief prints, which produce images with amazing woodgrain texture.

Beeswax I use on virtually all of my prints. When applied, paper becomes transparent, highlighting the natural fibers within.

common tool for printmakers. I use this to seal copper plates so I can draw or etch into the surface without corroding the metal.

9.

I create my own handmade paper out of a variety of fibers such as plants, seeds, and henna.

10. Watercolors—another medium I

couldn’t live without. I watercolor all of my prints with various washes to add depth and movement.

Photos by Tyronecia Moore

A LL RH STE ERY FO GALL

WETLAND RESOU

RCES

G

DIN

UIL

TB AR D STU IO DI N

UI L

B TS AR G

PAINTING Wetlands Building PRINTMAKING Wetlands Building SCULPTURE Studio Arts Building CERAMICS Studio Arts Building PHOTOGRAPHY 229 Art Building GRAPHIC DESIGN 310 Art Building DIGITAL ART 310 Art Building MFA SHOW Foster Hall Gallery

From Our Readers

Read previous issues of Quad online at ISUUU or design.lsu.edu.

In response to the article, “Under Siege,” published in the winter 2015 issue of Quad, Ladd P. Ehlinger, AIA, of Ehlinger & Associates, PC, wrote: “The foundation of the fort was actually not constructed of cypress logs, it was constructed of dressed cypress timbers, 1’ x 1’ square in section, criss-crossed at 90 degrees in three layers to form a grillage . . . The cypress grillage was not meant to stay dry . . . it was meant to stay wet and submerged under the ground water, so as not to rot. There has been no evidence to my knowledge of any rotted cypress timbers at Fort Pike.”

Ehlinger and his staff and consultants shared research accumulated and generated on Fort Pike with the HABS documentation team. A complete bibliography of all sources used to compile the report was included in the official HABS report, which is available, copyright free, at the Library of Congress.

Summer 2014

Winter 2015

19, 2015 – LSU VS. AUBURN

1  02 Design Building Baton Rouge, LA 70803-7010

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