Bruce Lindsey
Dean, College of Architecture | Graduate School of Architecture
E. Desmond Lee Professor for Community Collaboration
Dean's Letter, Spring 2013
College of Architecture
Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design
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ROLL CALL
Graduate students: 246
Undergraduate students: 165
TOTAL: 411
Master of Urban Design students: 10
Master of Landscape Architecture students: 20
Students in Helsinki: 23
Students in Florence: 14
Students going to Shanghai: 13+
Visiting Faculty
"We will refer to the SHAPE as a sensitive translation of the environment, using extreme environmental conditions as an opportunity to develop radical solutions that express which is the way the object is related to the landscape. This shape will be derived from a deep knowledge of the particular environmental problems, as a boat is not the same if you sail a swamp or a restless Ocean."—-Angel Alonso
The Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professorship brings a distinguished practitioner to the school each semester. Established in 1986 through a gift from Ruth and her brother Norman Moore, the endowment also supports the Ruth and Norman Moore Chaired Professorship, currently held by Robert McCarter. Joining us this spring as the Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor is Angel Alonso of aceboXalonso architects of Madrid Spain. Founded in 1996, the studio has gone on to receive over 20 awards for architectural competitions, including the Centre of the Arts in Coruna, which was exhibited in New York at the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition On-Site: New Architecture in Spain. This building was awarded the National Young Architecture Award in the Spanish Biennal, Best Light Facade at VETECO Arch Congress, and nominated for the Mies Van Der Rohe European Award.
"We will then consider the future of this region through a series of landscape scenarios that propose programmatic, administrative, and formal approaches to current shifts in climate and related flood/drought patterns."—Jesse Vogler
Jesse Vogler also joins the faculty from New Mexico as a visiting professor in the landscape architecture program. Jesse is an artist and architect whose work investigates the spatial practices, material culture, and political economy of the American landscape. His work on the administration and territorial logics of the Postal System won the prestigious Rita Lloyd Moroney Prize for Postal Scholarship. Jesse will teach a design option studio titled "Confluence: Charting the American Bottom" where "those that control the levees, control the territory." The work of the studio will culminate in an exhibition mounted in conjunction with the Center for Land Use Interpretation. There will be several spots open for graduate architecture students in the option studio sequence.
Oliver Schulze, formerly of Gehl Architects in Copenhagen and now with Schulze + Grassov Urban Design Studio, returns to teach the spring semester urban design studio, where students will continue work begun last year along Los Angeles' Figueroa Blvd. Heather Woofter and Christof Jantzen will teach a graduate architecture option studio that will develop architectural proposals in relationship to the urban design students' work. There are 4 spots open in the urban design studio for graduate architecture students in the option studio sequence. Oliver will also lead a spring break workshop in Copenhagen, where students will do a public life survey focusing on public space design in Copenhagen. The workshop is open to all advanced undergraduate students, graduate architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design students.
Mehrdad Hadighi, professor and dead of the Department of Architecture at Penn State University, will lead the Laskey Charrette, which will kick off at the All-School Meeting Friday, Jan. 18. The charrette, funded through an endowment in the name of Architecture Professor Emeritus Leslie Laskey, is a two-day workshop and exhibition of projects developed by teams of art and architecture undergraduate sophomore students with the assistance of Mehrdad and the sophomore faculty. The projects will be exhibited Sunday afternoon in Steinberg Hall Gallery, and all are invited to attend the closing reception, where $1,000 in awards and book prizes will be given.
It's A Small World: but a big city
Design practice is increasingly an international practice as the makeup of our student body and faculty illustrate. We bring the world to St. Louis through this diversity, through the Museum and its exhibitions, and through our visiting faculty, lecturers, and guests. Additionally, we take the students to the world through the extensive international programs offered by the School, directed by Raymond E. Maritz Professor Adrian Luchini. These programs are developed in relationship to the specific degree curriculums and chosen specifically for the differences that the cities and cultures bring to the study of design. The courses are taught, for the most part, by practicing designers and scholars from the host cities, and the city itself acts as the "third teacher." Students work as practitioners living in a new context wherein they are asked to propose how the city might evolve—through architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design and increasingly through these disciplinary interrelationships. This requires an active participation in the life of the city. It requires a compass, a pencil, good shoes, and an open imagination. It is not enough to be a tourist. As urban explorers, students must become (according to visiting faculty Oliver Schulze), the "blogger, charmer, detective, surveyor, and the nerd."
Professor of Practice Eric Hoffman and associate dean Peter MacKeith join the regular faculty in Helsinki, with Pentti Kareoja and Matti Rautiola teaching design studio, Sirkka-Liisa Jetsonen teaching history, Julie Scheu teaching furniture design, and Kimmo Friman teaching Buildings Systems. Long-time contributor to the program Juhani Pallasmaa will also be involved. The studio project will focus on the use of long-span wood structure in the design of an institutional building sited in Helsinki.
This summer John Hoal, chair of the Master of Urban Design program, and the urban design students will again hold their "degree project" studio in Shanghai, continuing work done over the last two years. In partnership with Tongji University's Department of Architecture, 15 students and faculty from Tongji will be in attendance for the research portion of the studio, which is held in St. Louis immediately following Commencement. Students will develop urban design proposals informed by comparative research analysis for sites in Shanghai and Vancouver. Several spots will be open in the program for graduate architecture students.
Fourteen undergraduate students are studying in Florence this spring under the direction of faculty members Zeuler Lima and Stephen Leet. Art and design students will join the program next spring, when an interdisciplinary art/design/architecture studio and commons course seminar will be offered as part of the new art and architecture curriculum.
The summer study program in Florence will be directed by Igor Marjanovic, director of the undergraduate program, and will include two courses: "Disegno: Encounters in Public Space" and "Rethinking Renaissance Visual Culture." The Summer Travel Drawing Program led by Zeuler Lima will travel to Portugal, Spain, and France and will be preceded by a one-week Italian language workshop. Both programs are open to all undergraduate students.
LAAB
This spring, from Feb. 24-27, the Master of Landscape Architecture program will host the Landscape Architecture Accrediting Board (LAAB) visiting team. This visit will be part of the process leading to the accreditation of the program, which was granted candidacy status last year. The team will conduct faculty and student interviews, review student work, meet with university administrators, and provide a preliminary public response before it leaves. The program will be evaluated according to seven standards: 1. Program Mission and Objectives; 2. Program Autonomy, Governance & Administration; 3. Professional Curriculum; 4. Student Program Outcomes; 5. Faculty; 6. Outreach to the Institution, Communities, Alumni, and Practitioners; and 7. Facilities, Equipment, and Technology. The team's report, including its recommendation, will be submitted to LAAB later in the semester, where it will be reviewed and voted on by the board of directors.
As part of the program evaluation required by this process, we have brought together two three-person advisory groups who have agreed to give feedback and evaluation for the program over the next three years. The national group that met in early December of last year consists of Elizabeth Mossop, professor of landscape architecture at Louisiana State University; Kristina Hill, professor of landscape architecture at the University of California,Berkeley; and Ignacio Bunster Ossa, with Wallace Roberts and Todd in Philadelphia. The local advisory board is comprised of Anne Lewis of Lewisites; Chip Crawford, landscape architect and senior
principal at Forum Architects; Austin Tao, landscape architect and principal with Austin Tao Associates, and Peter Wyse-Jackson, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden. The local group will meet January 24.
A successful visit will result in the program's initial accreditation for a term of up to six years. A Self Evaluation Report (SER) has been prepared and submitted to LAAB and the visiting team in preparation for their review and will be available to students and faculty in the library. This process will be an important step in the development of the program, allowing the broader school to see the work of the faculty and the students, while celebrating the accomplishments of the first professional program of landscape architecture in the state of Missouri. Please welcome the visiting team to the school in February; I invite all to participate in the process. A detailed schedule will be forthcoming. Thanks to all the faculty and students who have helped prepare for the visit with special recognition to chair Dorothée Imbert, who is leading this effort, and to faculty member Justin Scherma, for his dedicated work in writing the SER.
Form Follows the Weather
In an address to the University community in Graham Chapel in November, days after Hurricane Sandy revealed New York City's vulnerability to global climate change, educator, author, and environmentalist Bill McKibben pointed out that last July was the warmest month on record in the United States and the fourth-hottest month globally. Missouri suffered the driest summer in history, and predictions about this winter suggest that in order to stave off a continuing drought and bolster the already dangerously low Mississippi River, we will need a minimum of 8 feet of snow this winter. McKibben also talked passionately about his first writing job at The New Yorker and his sadness in seeing on the news after the storm hit the flooded New York subway entrances that he had once used daily as a young writer. McKibben wrote End of Nature, one of the first books for a general audience on climate change, nearly
25 years ago.
Ten years ago sustainability = LEED, and like the global urbanization milestone reached in 2005 in which more people live in cities than don't, a recent article in Architect magazine cited statistics that suggest nearly 50 percent of new construction in the United States is green. New York City has the nation's second-largest number of LEED-certified buildings at 739—yet while 7 World Trade Center's (LEED Gold) Energy Star score is 74, the Chrysler building scores 84 and the Empire State building 80. All three lost power during the week following Hurricane Sandy, and while lower Manhattan's power was restored after a week, the city's public housing projects—consisting of more than 400 buildings with over 4,000 apartments—remained without heat, power, and hot water for more than two weeks. Architect Michael Sorkin, who weathered the storm in his 16th floor lower Manhattan apartment, writing in Architectural magazine points out, were you to remove the vulnerable areas of lower Manhattan, you would see the original outline of the 17th-century island.
March 23-27 the School will host an international workshop titled MISI-ZIIBI: Living with the Great Rivers—Climate Adaptation Strategies in the Midwest River Basins, organized by Derek Hoeferlin and John Hoal and sponsored by the Sam Fox School and the Royal Netherlands Embassy, Washington, DC. Building on Hoeferlin's multiyear projects Gutter to Gulf and Dutch Dialogues, the workshop will bring regional stakeholders and policy makers together with design and engineering professionals and students to outline issues and strategies for long-term climate change planning for the middle Mississippi riparian corridor. Last year's historic floods have been replaced with a drought that has parts of the river 50 feet below last year's level. The river, according to the American Waterways Operators, transports 60 percent of the nation's grain, 22 percent of its oil and gas, and 20 percent of its coal. If the river is closed to barge traffic, which is likely, it is estimated that it would hold up $2.8 billion of the $180 billion of annual cargo and affect 8,000 jobs.
From April 5-7 the University will host the 6th annual Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), which will be focused on climate change. Former President Clinton will be in residence for three days, during which time he will give plenary remarks and participate in University-wide discussions and events. Approximately 1,200 students from around the country will join students here for the discussions, which will also include a daylong service project on Sunday. The Sam Fox School will be leading a design build project as part of the initiative.
In a recent e-mail from the National Architecture Accrediting Board (NAAB) the following quote appeared:
"It is evident that architectural education is facing a crisis ... it's clear that the way architecture is taught has not kept pace with the challenges of epochal or technological change. ... [T]he groves of academe are seen as increasingly detached from critical realities. ... What is urgently required is a new and more fully human paradigm for architectural education that genuinely and intimately engages with culture and society."—Catherine Slessor, Architectural Review (October 2012).
While we can always do more, I hereby extend an invitation to Catherine Slessor to visit the school this spring to provide evidence to the contrary.
Have a great semester!
Sincerely,
Bruce Lindsey, Dean
