Faculty Updates
Beth Blostein(assistant professor, architecture) and Bart Overly (lecturer, architecture) claimed first prize in a New York design competition, New Housing New York. The competition focused on expansion of existing concepts for high quality affordable housing in New York City, and concerned three sites that represent prototypical contexts for future affordable housing development; East Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens. The Blostein-Overly submission investigated potential new prototypes of a brownstone, proposing an offset-level,casual, brownstone. Their submission was published in Architectural Record, May 2004. Blostein and Overly also received special recognition from the Ohio Senate and the Columbus AIA for their prize.
Brooks Breeden(professor, landscape architecture) participated in a State Art project, Looking for America. The project was taken on by of a group of photographers, mostly professionals, who have traveled to each county in a state, photographing the state's name in various contexts. From these, a montage is created and offered for sale as signed, original photographic art works. Breeden and his spouse, Peggy, were the State Art photographers for Ohio, and spent months looking for "Ohio" in each of its 88 counties.
Their photography will be on display in an exhibition, Looking for "America", at the Washington Gallery of Photography in Bethesda, Maryland. Their piece consists of 153 images from every county in "Ohio", arranged in an 18" by 24" poster.
Breeden also recently entered into a contract with McGraw-Hill for production of a second installment of S.M.A.R.T (Self-Paced Mechanics Algorithmic Review & Tutorial). S.M.A.R.T. is a new set of web-based tutorials and algorithmically-generated exercises to accompany McGraw's Mechanics of Materials, 2nd Edition by Beer and Johnston. These compliment the S.M.A.R.T tutorials he and George Staab (Engineering Mechanics) prepared for Beer and Johnston's Mechanics of Materials: Statics and Dynamics, 6th Edition last summer.
Maria Manta Conroy(assistant professor, city and regional planning) recently published an artilce, EcoCity: Columbus, using an Ohio State planning class to bring sustainability concepts to Columbus, Ohio in the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2004.
Conroy and Steven Gordon (professor, city and regional planning) had their article, Utility of Interactive Computer-based Materials for Enhancing Public Participation, published in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, vol. 47, No. 1, January 2004.
Jennifer Evans Cowley recently published an article, Work and Play: Drive Development Along the Texas Coast, in Urban Land, April 2004. Another article on impact fees was accepted by Growth and Change.
Together Conroy and Cowley published a study, City Planning Departments Use of E-government for Citizen Participation, in Summer 2004, Issue 80, of InfoText, the newsletter of the Information Technology Division of the American Planning Association.
Todd Gannon (lecturer, architecture) reviewed The Shape of Things to Come conference held at KSA in Winter Quarter and You Shall Know Our Velocity, by Dave Eggers in Loud Paper, Vol 4, No 3.nbsp:
Deborah Georg(associate professor, landscape architecture) and Jack Nasar(professor, city and regional planning) have accepted positions on the University Senate Council on the Physical Environment.
Jean-Michel Guldmann(professor, city and regional planning) had several of his PhD students successfully complete their dissertations in 2003-04: Kemal Mert Cubukcu, Geography and the Cost of Network Infrastructure: The Case of Local Telephone Systems: Kang-Ping Shen, Airshed-Based Statistical Modeling of the Spatial Distribution of Air Pollution: The Case of Sulfur Dioxide, Tae-Kyung Kim, Dynamic Analysis of Sulfur Dioxide Monthly Emissions in U.S. Power Plants: and Mustapha Beydoun, Vehicular Characteristics and Urban Air Pollution: Socio-Economic and Environmental Policy Issues.
Guldmann has been active in publishing and presenting as well. 2003-04 publications include; Spatial Interaction Models of International Telecommunication Flows, a chapter in the book Best Practices in Spatially Integrated Social Science (Oxford University Press, M.F. Goodchild and D.G. Janelle, editors, 2004), International Water Resources Allocation and Conflicts; The Case of the Euphrates and the Tigris with M. Kucukmehmetoglu, in Environment and Planning (A, Vol. 36, No. 5, pages 783-802, May 2004): and Optimizing Patterns of Land Use to Reduce Peak Runoff Flow and Non-point Source Pollution with an Integrated Hydrological and Land-Use Model, with I.-Y. Yeo and S.I. Gordon in Earth Interactions (Vol. 8, No. 6, pages 1-20, 2004). He presented at the Fiftieth North American Meeting of the Regional Science Association International in Philadelphia in November 2003 on Geography and the Cost of Network Infrastructure: The Case of Local Telephone Systems (with M. Cubukcu), and at the American Geophysical Union Annual Fall Meeting in San Francisco in December 2003 on Hierarchical Regression Approach to the Global Optimal Solution (with I. Yeo and S.I. Gordon).
Kay Bea Jones (associate professor, architecture) received competitive funding from OSU's Honors and Scholars Center to develop a new seminar bringing together both architecture students and non-majors to focus on contemporary issues in urban design, landscapes and architecture. The eight credit-hour course includes visits to several local sites and includes travel to Rome for ten days following exams. Last year, she had 21 students and worked with Faculty TA and Development to improve the course in the process. The course will take place again this year.
Jones also received funding from the Italian Ministry of Culture (Ministero per i Beni Attivita Culturali) to develop three exhibitions about the work of Italian modern architect Franco Albini to take place in Rome, Milan and Genoa during 2005 (100th anniversary of the architect's birth). She is working with his son, Marco Albini, to curate the exhibitions.
Jones wrote the feature article and translated seven essays from English to Italian for the Do.Co.Mo.Mo publication about the city of Genoa published in July 2004. Do.Co.Mo.Mo is a biannual journal, and stands for Documents for the Conservation of the Modern Movement.
The new OSU Child Care and Community Center located at Buckeye Village that Jones designed with Andrew Rosenthal is proceeding ahead of schedule, and is anticipated to open in early 2005. Susan Farricielli of Branford, CT will install a climbable sundial as the site-based art work, funded by a gift from Tammy Schultz. The project also received a contribution from Herb and Marilyn Minken for the Art Room. This project was initiated through Jones' research with Dr. Beverly Toomey for co-housing for single parent students and has developed the Access Collaborative.
Jones will be speaking at the Columbus Museum of Art in January about the exhibition, Georgia O'Keefe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place.
Finally, she is currently serving on the OSU search committee for the new director of The Women's Place, and is working with a committee to develop the first gender studies Living Learning Program to begin accepting freshman residents in Autumn 2005.
Jeff Kipnis(professor, architecture) had his film, A Constructive Madness, accepted into the 22nd International Festival of Films on Art Montreal, March 11-21, 2004. This is his seventh film festival, in addition to five major showings Museum of Modern Art, NYC, etc.), and one television showing in Australia. In an article titled "After the Decay of Decay, a New Modernity", Kipnis was cited by New York Times writer and art critic Herbert Muschamp as, "surely the most adventurous architecture curator we have in this country." A Constructive Madness was also reviewed in the Saturday, August 14, 2004 edition of The Washington Post.
Mark McCord (professor, city and regional planning) was awarded the 2004 Lumley Interdisciplinary Research Award for Excellence in Research Contributions from the College Honors, Honorary Degrees, and Awards Committee of the College of Engineering.
Jack Nasar(professor, city and regional planning) and Jean Marie Cackowski (managing editor, Journal of Planning Literature) had their research cited in Greenery: A sight for sore minds, an article that appeared in The Dallas Morning News on March 21. They found through their research that close proximity to nature promotes mental well-being. The team first subjected 106 college students to various stressors in the lab, then measured anger levels. Next the subjects watched one of three videos, a drive on a scenic parkway in a wooded area with few manmade structures visible, a drive on a garden highway that was not a wooded but with relatively few manmade structures, or a drive on a highway through an area of strip malls, utility poles and signs, with little vegetation. Those who had watched the video with the most natural scenery showed less frustration, compared with the other two groups. "The newer work is starting to say that vegetation is not only preferred, but it's physically restorative," Nasar said.
Jose Oubrerie(professor, architecture) gave two lectures in Paris in 2004 at the Paris-Belleville School of Architecture and at the Societe Francaise des Architectes. In each he showcased his recent work under the theme of "the dissolution of modern space."
Kivi Sotamaa's work will be on exhibit around the world this fall, including in a commissioned architectural installation of Spanish Dancer at the opening exhibition of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa Japan: in the New Trends of Architecture in Europe and Asia-Pacific 2004-05 exhibition in Lille that will travel subsequently to Hong Kong, Melbourne, Tokyo, Cork and Madrid: in The Busan Biennale where Ocean North will be featured at the Busan Metropolitan Art Museum: and in The Venice Biennale, where Sotamaa and Johan Bettum's Jyvaskyla Music and Art Center project will be featured. The Jyvaskyla exhibit will also include study models on the development of the project designed in the Wireframe seminar by KSA graduate students. Sotamaa will also present his recent work in the third wave of digital practices at the Non Standard Praxis conference in late September.
Terence J. Sullivan(lecturer, architecture) has accepted a one-year appointment to serve on the NCARB Mechanical and Electrical Systems Division of the Architect Registration Exam (ARE). This subcommittee prepares the exam questions for the Mechanical/Electrical portion of the ARE exam and its members are architects, engineers and educators from across the United States. Sullivan is a registered engineer in 12 states, a registered architect in three states, and holds a NCARB certificate. In addition to his adjunct position at KSA, he is a principal with the Columbus A/E firm of Schooley Caldwell Associates.
Aron Vinegar (assistant professor, architecture) is the co-editor of a book of essays on Learning from Las Vegas for the University of Minnesota Press that is now in progress. He has also finished a book-length manuscript on Learning from Las Vegas entitled Skepticism and the Ordinary, From Burnt Norton to Las Vegas. He is currently at work on a book on Viollet-le-Duc entitled Perspicuous Views and the Foundations of Possible Buildings.
Vinegar recently gave a paper entitled "Delays in Judgment" at an international conference, Architecture of Philosophy/Philosophy of Architecture, Congress for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and History, University of Leeds, July 9-11, 2004. In the Fall, he will be giving an invited lecture, "War Machine" at the Graduate School of Architecture and Design, Columbia University. He is also the invited respondent to a panel on Viollet-le-Duc at the 2005 College Art Association Annual Conference in February 2005.
Vinegar is currently organizing a conference entitled "The Concept of the Horizon and the Limits of Representation" that will take place in May 2005 at the Knowlton School of Architecture. Vinegar received a Seed Grant from the College of the Arts and Humanities and from the Knowlton School of Architecture for this conference.
Douglas Way(professor, landscape architecture) presented "Predicting Gross Value of Agricultural Production in China Using Geographic Factors" at the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Conference in Denver in May.
Christos Yessios (professor emeritus, architecture), along with David Kropp, founded AutoDesSys, a privately held company, in Columbus, Ohioin 1989. Yessios continues to act as President and CEO. From the very beginning AutoDesSys aimed at offering advanced 3D modeling technology on personal computers at an affordable price. Such technology previously only existed on large machines and in research laboratories. This aim was partially achieved when the company's flagship product, form-Z, was first released in 1991.
Form-Z's ability to combine solid and surface modeling has made it a favorite in multiple design fields and industries that include architecture, product design, the entertainment industry, as well as illustrators, exhibit display designers, furniture manufacturers, forensic animators, web designers, desktop publishers and many more.
In 2003, form-Z received much praise. The December issue of Architectural Record magazine recognized form-Z 4.0 as an outstanding product in its "latest and most innovative offerings" section. Form-Z 4.1 was released in 2003, and work on form-Z 4.5 is progressing.
Form-Z's international versions are also being released. The German version was released recently, in addition to the Japanese, Italian and Spanish versions that already existed. The Korean, Greek, Chinese and French localizations will follow soon.
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Posted: 9/22/2004