Here are major highlights of faculty accomplishments in 2009-10
Several College of Architecture and Planning faculty and students presented at the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute’s Third Annual Symposium in October on the CU-Boulder Campus. Joe Juhasz, Professor of Architecture, and Robert Flanagan, Associate Professor of Architecture, presented their recent research related to their work with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. M.Arch student Christopher Conant supplied the graphics artwork for the poster presentation. Kevin J. Krizek, Associate Professor of Planning and Design, Director of the Active Communities / Transportation (ACT) Research Group, and Director of the PhD Program in Design and Planning, and PhD student/IGERT trainee Dan Piatkowski presented their research "Measuring the Substitution Effects of Non-Motorized Travel and Reductions in Carbon Dioxide."
Architecture Faculty
Fred Andreas, Assistant Professor Adjunct of Architecture, received the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Denver 2009 President’s Award, for his ongoing and diligent efforts to create a key outreach tool for the chapter through a presentation of the International Energy Conservation Code 2009. His firm UNiT design studio, p.c., was chosen as the architect for the State Capitol for the next phase of reconstruction; the Colorado State Capitol is the only “green” LEED Certified capitol building in the US. In September Fred gave a national webinar, “Practical Partnerships: Collaborating with Academic Institutions,” through the National Non Profit Centers Network, on green building and his Advanced Greenbuilding Studio’s work on actual projects with non-profit organizations. In August he was the keynote speaker addressing energy policy and green building concepts at the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado’s grand opening of the Next West’s Home in Boulder, the nation’s first LEED Platinum Zero Net Energy Home. Fred was also the featured keynote speaker in September at the grand opening of the new Colorado Green Spaces, a non-profit center based in NYC and Denver. In addition, he was a featured speaker at the Pikes Peak Sustainable Building Network sponsored by the Catamount Institute in November presenting concepts of green building, energy and codes to Federal Government agencies in Colorado Springs.
Associate Professor of Architecture Osman Attmann’s book Green Architecture: Advanced Technologies and Materials was published in November 2009 in McGraw-Hill’s Greensource Series. Green Architecture includes information on green technologies and materials needed to design and construct energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, and sustainable buildings. It surveys and illustrates new developments, innovative techniques, and advanced technologies that will help restore the balance between the user and the natural environment. It aids architects in understanding the engineering side of the design process. U.S. and international case studies are included. The book can be ordered here.
Meredith Banasiak, Instructor of Architecture, is a participant in the President’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative 2010 cohort of faculty researchers. The PTLC is committed to establishing the University of Colorado as a leader in research on teaching and learning. Open to all faculty of the University of Colorado System, the PTLC seeks to promote the practice of inquiry in teaching and of measuring student learning. In particular, the Collaborative assists University faculty in developing scholarly projects on teaching and learning intended for publication. This program is modeled on the Carnegie Foundation’s national work on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Meredith’s project is The fun factor: Developing and evaluating a process for integrating research into the design studio. Findings from Meredith’s 2008 AIA Research for Practice (RFP) grant for the project titled “From Benchtop to Bedside: Exchanging research lessons learned in an undergraduate program” are available online at the AIA website. The report was also published in the AIA Soloso online database and in a nationally distributed publication: The American Institute of Architects Report on University Research, Volume 4.
The Design Studio III taught by Senior Instructor of Architecture Joe Colistra in Fall 2009 was featured in a story on Channel 7 News on December 8, UC Denver Students Design Mexican Orphanage. Students developed a comprehensive master plan and conceptual design for a rural center in northern Mexico for Colorado-based Our Family Orphan Communities, Inc. The final plan for the community includes a greenhouse, aquaculture facility, a school, medical clinic, an eco-hotel, and ten houses for the children and supervising adults.
Phil Gallegos, Associate Professor of Architecture, wrote a chapter, “Early Mentor,” in the book Moving Beyond Borders: Julian Samora and the Establishment of Latino Studies, edited by Alberto López Pulido, Barbara Driscoll de Alvarado, and Carmen Samora, and published by University of Illinois Press in 2009. Moving Beyond Borders examines the life and accomplishments of Julian Samora, the first Mexican American sociologist in the United States and the founding father of the discipline of Latino studies. Phil was co-chair and a main organizer for the 2009 ACSA Southwest Fall Conference, “Chang[e]ing Identities; Design, Culture + Technology,” held in October in Albuquerque, NM. While working at host institution University of New Mexico, Phil wrote the original conference proposal. At the conference he was a reviewer and moderator of a session on community engagement.
Professor of Architecture Julee Herdt’s Fall 2009 Green Technology class was featured in a January 11 Boulder Daily Camera article, “Where are and green practices meet,” which describes the students’ recent design projects constructed from ReSource construction waste and found objects. The article also describes an upcoming “green build” project that Julee, researcher Kellen Schauermann (M.Arch 2009), and the CU BioSIP research team will be building at ReSource’s new Arapahoe site in Boulder in late spring or early summer. The “Solar-powered BioSIP Research Structure” will be used by ReSource as a site office and is a continuation of Julee and her studio and Green Tech students’ long-standing relationship with ReSource and Boulder’s Center for Resource Conservation. The upcoming research structure is funded through a State of Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) waste diversion research grant, Heimbold Foundation funding for renewable energy research, Simple Solar renewable energy in education support, and University of Colorado backing. Julee was elected to serve as one of the nine university-wide members of CU’s “Committee on University Discoveries.” The committee reviews university patent policy, issues, and changes, inventor grievances, recent court decisions affecting university patent policies, and CU Technology Transfer’s “state of affairs.” Since 2005, Professor Herdt has collaborated with CU Tech Transfer on development and filing of her invention BioSIPs, a structural insulated panel system which is based on her biobased building material research and material applications. BioSIPs is the first College of Architecture and Planning patent filing in CU’s history.
Professor of Architecture George Hoover’s book-length Auraria Campus Design Guidelines were approved unanimously by the leaders of University of Colorado Denver, Metro State College of Denver, Community College of Denver, and Auraria Higher Education Center. In 1970 Auraria was conceived as a park-like campus with free-standing “pavilion” buildings. Today its institutions forecast substantial growth and need for additional space. Since campus land is limited, the Guidelines envision a dense, urban model of streets, blocks, and squares rather than a diffuse rural model of parks and pavilions. Design work has begun on the first two campus projects to be developed under them — Metro’s Student Success Center and the School of Hotel Management. This fall George also served Denver International Airport as architectural and planning advisor for the selection of the Program Manager for the airport’s forthcoming major expansion. As the sole architectural/planning advisor external to the DIA staff for the selection process, he helped to formulate the qualifications criteria for the team that will provide the comprehensive design, program management, and construction implementation services for the approximately $1 billion Terminal and Landside Area Redevelopment Program.
Matt Jelacic, Assistant Professor of Architecture, will help to direct a summer workshop August 1-6, 2010, in San Cristobal, NM. "Contemplative Environmental Studies: Pedagogy for Self and Planet,” sponsored by the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, explores the relationship between internal growth and external political change, with the assumption that environmental well-being depends on humans deepening their own self-understanding, and creating more environmentally-sound institutions. Aimed at environmental studies professors in various disciplines, it offers the opportunity to develop pedagogical tools for teaching in ways that connect more deeply with students, and research methods that take more advantage of one's inner resources for generating insight. Part workshop, and part retreat, this 5-day institute includes discussions with distinguished scholars, focused conversations among colleagues, artistic exercises, and regular sessions in yoga, meditation and other contemplative practices.
Michael Jenson, Associate Professor of Architecture, has been named a Center for Humanities and the Arts Fellow for the 2010-2011 CHA Seminar at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The theme for the interdisciplinary seminar is “China.” As a fellow, Michael will attend monthly work-in-progress sessions and lecture series events, and present a piece of his work at a Colloquium in Spring 2011.
Joe Juhasz, Professor of Architecture, is now a blogger for Psychology Today. His blog, called “Place of Mind,” deals with psychology and architecture. Joe was chair and discussant in the symposium “The virtual world, the invisible world, and the Sacred World” at the American Psychological Association annual convention in Toronto in August. Associate Professor of Architecture Robert Flanagan and Lecturer in Architecture Rori Knudtson were also participants in the session.
Instructor of Architecture and alumnus Rob Pyatt, Associate AIA, LEED AP (B.Envd 2005, M.Arch 2007), had his Box House featured on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green: World’s Greenest Homes on February 6, 2010. See the Planet Green website.
Peter Schneider, Professor of Architecture, is a participant in the President’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative 2010 cohort of faculty researchers. The PTLC is committed to establishing the University of Colorado as a leader in research on teaching and learning. Open to all faculty of the University of Colorado System, the PTLC seeks to promote the practice of inquiry in teaching and of measuring student learning. In particular, the Collaborative assists University faculty in developing scholarly projects on teaching and learning intended for publication. This program is modeled on the Carnegie Foundation’s national work on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Peter’s project is The Work of Remembering: Enhancing Learning in a Design Curriculum through the Use of Reflective Biographical Narratives.
Melanie Shellenbarger, Senior Instructor of Architecture and Research Associate with the Center of Preservation Research, gave a paper entitled “Modern Mountain Views: Constructing Summer Homes and Civic Identity” at the Western History Association Annual Conference in Denver in October 2009. Through the lens of Denver’s eagerness to capitalize on the economic opportunities generated by tourism and the thousands of summer homes built in the early decades of the twentieth century, the paper examines the complex and often contradictory notions of tradition and modernity, as well as the discourse that surrounded them at the time.
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Renovation that was done in the Maymester 2009 Design-Build class taught by Rick Sommerfeld, Senior Instructor and Associate Chair of Architecture, and Rob Pyatt, Instructor of Architecture, won a 2009 Gold Hard Hat Award for Outstanding Small Project from Colorado Construction magazine. The annual Gold Hard Hat Awards is a competition to determine the best projects completed by firms in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota in a calendar year. Projects were selected based on design quality and innovation, craftsmanship, the project’s contribution to the community and the industry, solution of unique design and construction challenges and overall excellence.
Landscape Architecture Faculty
Austin Allen, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, spoke at several meetings in the fall, including Rebuilding the Bayou: Visions of Restoration in the Central Wetlands, a panel and discussion in August in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward with community members and experts to learn what’s happening and share the vision for restoration of the Bayou Bienvenue/Central Wetlands area. He subsequently was quoted in an article in the Times-Picayune. Austin presented at New Orleans Under Reconstruction: The Crisis of Planning, a national conference at Tulane University in October. He was a panelist at the Greenbuild 2009 International Conference and Expo in Phoenix, AZ, on November 12. Austin’s session, “Community Beyond Housing,” focused on the necessity to thoroughly address landscape and urban design issues in various community resource garden and open spaces within the Make It Right Target Area and the surrounding Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans.
Lois Brink, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Director of the Colorado Center for Community Development and Director of Learning Landscapes, is lead investigator for a $3 million National Institutes of Health grant received by Learning Landscapes and the Center for Human Nutrition at the UC Denver School of Medicine to study how Denver’s redeveloped schoolyards, in combination with nutrition education, affect childhood activity levels and obesity rates. The five-year grant will look at 24 Denver Public Schools’ (DPS) elementary playgrounds; 12 that have Learning Landscapes in place and 12 control schools that have older playground equipment and pea gravel yards. Learning Landscapes was one of 12 “relevant and innovative best practices in play” case studies in a national report released by KaBoom! entitled Play Matters: A Study of Best Practices to Inform Local Policy and Process in Support of Children’s Play. Lois presented on a best practices report panel for Play Matters at the National League of Cities Congress of Cities in San Antonio in November. In January, Lois and Landscape Architecture Lecturer Leanne Paez Duncan presented at the 6th International Conference on Environmental, Cultural and Social Sustainability in Cuenca, Ecuador.
John Lanterman, Instructor in Landscape Architecture, moderated a panel discussion in November in conjunction with the sold-out Growing Power Workshop with Will Allen, urban farming pioneer and the winner of the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." The panel discussion focused on Planning and Design Issues for Urban Agriculture. Topics included the role of energy in the food system, reconnecting cities to their food systems, and emerging trends. John and Austin Allen, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, taught the Landscape Architecture Studio 3 in Fall 2009 that centered on integrating agriculture into urban areas, using the study area of Eldorado Springs.
Planning Faculty
Bruce Goldstein, Associate Professor of Planning and Design, has had two “in press” papers go into print:
· Goldstein, Bruce Evan. (2009). Resilience to surprises through communicative planning. Ecology and Society 14(2): 33.
· Goldstein, Bruce Evan and Butler, William Hale. (2009). The Network Imaginary: Coherence and Creativity within a Multiscalar Collaborative Effort to Reform U.S. Fire Management. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 52(8), 1013-1033.
Kevin J. Krizek, Associate Professor of Planning and Design, Director of the Active Communities / Transportation (ACT) Research Group, and Director of the PhD Program in Design and Planning, has given many presentations since August: in Jaipur, India, at the International Association of Travel Behavior Research conference; in Incheon, Korea, at the International Symposium "Cycling toward Commuting Friendly City"; in Beijing, China, at the school of Public Affairs and Civil Engineering at Tsinghua University; in Montreal, Canada, at the School of Urban Planning and Civil Engineering at McGill University; at the University of Toronto in a lecture series offered by the Department of Geography; at the national meetings of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, DC; at the Transportation Center at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL; and at two all-day trainings on Health Impact Assessment.at the Minnesota Department of Health in St. Paul, MN.
Kevin was the lead author of these recently published manuscripts:
· "Is There a Role for Evidence-Based Practice in Urban Planning and Policy?" in Planning Theory and Practice, Vol. 10, No. 4 (December 2009), 459-478.
· "Explaining changes in walking and bicycling behavior: challenges for transportation research," in Environment and Planning B, Vol. 36 (2009), 725-740.
· The multi-year research study "Access to Destinations: Application of Accessibility Measures for Non-Auto Travel Modes," published by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (July 2009).
He also co-authored the manuscript "Health Impact Assessment in Planning: Development of the Design for Health HIA tools, " published by Environmental Impact Assessment Review (2009). Kevin’s research examining land use-transport was highlighted in the January 2010 issue of the national newsletter, Surface Transportation Innovations. A review of the book Planning for Place and Plexus, co-authored by Kevin, appeared in the Autumn 2009 issue of the Journal of American Planning Association. He is Co-PI on the project Non-motorized Transportation Intercept Survey: Development and Testing, awarded a $60,000 research grant from the Mineta Transportation Institute, to develop and test a suite of survey modules and associated sampling strategies for measuring non-motorized travel at the local level. Finally, Kevin has been appointed as an affiliate member of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), an interdisciplinary joint research effort between the University of Colorado at Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and appeared as part of an interview in the documentary "The Boulder Bike Story," prepared by Bikes Belong.
Jeremy Németh, Assistant Professor of Planning and Design and Director of the Master of Urban Design Program, has had two articles published recently:
· “Defining a Public: The management of privately owned public space” in Urban Studies, Vol. 46, No. 11 (2009), 2463-2490.
· “Security zones and New York City's shrinking public space” with Justin Hollander, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 34, No. 1 (March 2010), 20-34.
Jeremy’s paper "Comparing publicly and privately owned spaces in New York City" was part of a special session he organized at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) national conference in Washington, DC, called "Public space and the role of the planner." The papers will be collected in a special guest-edited issue of the Journal of Urban Design in Fall 2010. His Secure Cities project got some recent press: see the Kaid Benfield (Director, Smart Growth Program) blog on Huffington Post, or on National Resources Defense Council Switchboard. The article about Jeremy’s work in Metropolis Magazine on July 8 was picked up on Planetizen also. He was awarded a $5000 research grant from the Institute of Social Sciences at Cornell University for a project asking how "public" our public spaces really are by examining 500+ spaces in New York City. Using field research, user-intercept surveys, and interviews, this study will help planners and designers better understand how people perceive various design and regulatory measures that aim to make places more secure.
Willem van Vliet, Professor of Planning, Director of the ENVD Division and Director of the Children, Youth and Environments Center, has been working over the last several years with a small group of people (among others, Susan Clarke, Bernard Amadei, and Dick Byyny) on a social entrepreneurship project. The effort, which also includes Doug Ragan, PhD student in Design and Planning, has been well received at CU and beyond and was recognized by having spurred the Ashoka Foundation's selection of CU Boulder as a Changemaker Campus. It is one of five nationwide, joining the initial consortium of Cornell, Johns Hopkins, George Mason and the University of Maryland. Led by Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs, the Changemaker Campus partnership aims to develop new models for higher education. The ENVD program has a great opportunity to be on the national forefront of this development.