Congratulations Graduates!!
Congratulations to all of our seniors, fifth-years, and masters, who graduated this year!! We are so proud of you and look forward to updates of life beyond the hedges.
Check out pictures from our Commencement Ceremony as well as our Award Ceremony here.
Rice Hermann Park Centennial Pavilion
The Rice Hermann Park Centennial Pavilion, designed and built by Rice Building Workshop students and volunteers, is complete and within walking distance! The opening ceremony and toast, this May, was a wonderful success, and we are extremely thankful for all of the donors and helping hands that made this project come to fruition.
Be sure to check out the pavilion, located just a short 5 minute walk from the Architecture building, at the front entrance to the Rice campus. Download a map here! And check back to our website for a new detailed page dedicated to it.
AIA National Convention Reception
Headed to the 2014 AIA National Convention in Chicago? Join us for a reception honoring RSA alumni and friends at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers Tennessee Room on June 26th from 6-7:30pm. To RSVP contact Tanya Dominguez at td6@rice.edu or 713.348.5577.
Happy 100th Birthday Elinor Evans!!
This summer is former faculty and continuing inspiration Elinor Evans' 100th birthday!! We’ll be hosting a brunch at Brochstein Pavilion in her honor, as well as a roundtable conversation and exhibition in the upcoming fall semester. Check back on our events page for updated information on all of Elinor’s upcoming celebrations.
RSA in the news
Graduating senior Pyline Tangsuvanich is featured in this fabulous video by Brandon Martin at Rice News. We're so very proud of her, and all of our amazing students. Also check out this great article on the graduate option studio course that Jeanne Gang taught with us this semester.
But wait, there’s more: NPR covered the Odebrecht Award winning "Drift and Drive" project, by fifth-years Joanna Luo, Weija Song, and Alex Yuen on the Morning Edition! Listen to it here.
But wait, there’s more: NPR covered the Odebrecht Award winning "Drift and Drive" project, by fifth-years Joanna Luo, Weija Song, and Alex Yuen on the Morning Edition! Listen to it here.
Student News
Traveling Archis
This summer takes our Archis all over the world. Undergraduates and graduates are interning as close as Gensler, WHR, and Morris (all in Houston) and as far as RSP in Bangalore, India (rising sophomore Neha Sahai) and K2LD in Singapore (rising junior Younha Kim and rising senior Ellen Marsh). We've also got students at Kevin Daly Architects in Los Angeles; Continuum in Boston; Kengo Kuma in Shanghai; Mack Scogin Merrill Elam in Georgia; and SHoP, Terreform One, and SO-IL in New York (just to name a few). Three of our graduate students were also invited to join Assistant Professor Jesús Vassallo in Italy to work on a project for the Venice Biennale with Hans Ulrich Obrist. Read more about the project here.
Thesis Book now online
Have you seen our new Thesis Book section on the RSA website? Check out the complete 2014 thesis book, as well as featured individual books, and look forward to yearly updates of our MArch students' thesis accomplishments!
RSA Students, Architectural Storytellers
Congratulations to current graduate students Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison, as well as Joseph's wife Mari Altshuler, who won third place in Blank Space's "Fairy Tales" competition. Their project, "Oscar Upon a Time" tells the story of Oscar's lifelong relationship with a family of four strange and steadfast object-companions. Images and the full story can be seen here.
Students are finalists in design challenge
Recent BArch graduate Joanna Luo and her sister Eva were finalists for the Harvard Deans' Design Challenge: Urban Life 2030. Their project, Carewrite, is an app that aims to provide better coordination for care giving of a loved one.
Faculty News
Jesús Vassallo wins Grant
Assistant Professor Jesús Vassallo has been awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, to develop research for his latest book manuscript, titled Building with Images.
Vassallo's project deals with the exchanges and collaborations between photographers and architects in the digital age. This project foregrounds a new generation of young photographers and architects in Central Europe who are operating in a mode which produces images of architecture made from fragments of reality. As opposed to previous generations, the pairs of designers and artists in this book no longer need to collaborate directly, but rather influence and usurp each other's role in order to produce distilled images of possible worlds.
Vassallo's project deals with the exchanges and collaborations between photographers and architects in the digital age. This project foregrounds a new generation of young photographers and architects in Central Europe who are operating in a mode which produces images of architecture made from fragments of reality. As opposed to previous generations, the pairs of designers and artists in this book no longer need to collaborate directly, but rather influence and usurp each other's role in order to produce distilled images of possible worlds.
Dean Whiting lectures
Dean Whiting spoke at Columbia’s Figuring Democracy Conference this spring, as well as at the Baker Society on why “Architecture Matters.” She also lectured at MIT on "Engaging Autonomy." which is available for online viewing here. In March, she presented “Urbanism’s Past Participle and Future Tense,” at the Stadt als gedankliches Abenteuer symposium, at ETH in Zurich.
Sara Stevens on Resource Histories
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and RSA instructor Sara Stevens (BArch '00) presented at a symposium this spring, jointly sponsored by the Pratt Institute and Syracuse University, on Resource Histories. Her presentation was titled, “Just So Stories in Real Estate History; or, How the Apartment Tower Got Its Glass Skin”.
CHICAGOISMS
CHICAGOISMS, an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, examines the city’s architectural legacy and future potential. The exhibition runs from April 5 through Jan. 4, 2015 and includes a model from our own WW (Dean Whiting and Associate Professor Ron Witte’s firm), as well as models by DOGMA, PORT, and UrbanLab, among others. Read more about it here and visit WW’s site to see more of their work here.
Sara Stevens and Stephen Fox interviewed
The Houston Chronicle’s article “Prototype School Designs Save Time, Money” from Saturday, May 3 features interviews with Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Sara Stevens and Senior Lecturer Stephen Fox. Read it online here.
Scott Colman publication
Senior Lecturer Scott Colman’s research on Ludwig Hilberseimer has been published in an anthology charting the evolution of city planning, titled Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture, edited by Robert Freestone and Marco Amati.
Neyran Turan publishes
Assistant Professor Neyran Turan's speculative design project titled TYPO has been published in the most recent issue of the Chicago-based architecture journal MAS Context. TYPO proposes a network of campus typologies for the city of Istanbul and speculates on specific architectural interactions between scale and form through experiments on legibility, repetition, and iconicity at the scale of territory. Neyran also published an article titled "Strait," in the recent issue of MONU and attended graduate studio reviews at Yale and the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.
Carlos Jiménez tours Chile
Professor Carlos Jiménez organized an RDA international tour of Santiago, Chile, with lecturer Stephen Fox, titled “Chile: Land of a Thousand and One Sights,” which takes place this month. He was also a visiting critic for final reviews at Cornell and Washington University; a juror for a Masonry Design/Build Student competition at NJIT, and the Springfield AIA 2014 Awards in Springfield Missouri; and a participant in a conversation with students at Hammons School of Architecture in Springfield Missouri.
Earlier this year, Carlos participated as respondent in Latitude6, a symposium on architecture in the Americas at the School of Architecture University of Texas Austin, and also contributed an epilogue for publication in Center: Architecture and Design in America "Latitudes 3 and 4”.
Stephen Fox lectures
This spring Stephen Fox delivered papers on the twentieth-century architecture of the Texas-Mexico border at the Docomomo U.S. National Symposium in Houston, and at the annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians in Austin. He also delivered the keynote address at the Austin Seminar, “Austin and the Place of Historic Architecture in Rapidly Growing Cities,” at the Society of Architectural Historians conference in April and spoke on the history of historic preservation in Houston at the annual symposium of the Center for Heritage Conservation at the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University. Fox lectured on the history of architecture in Laredo for the Laredo section of the American Institute of Architects at Texas A&M International University, and on the architecture of John F. Staub for the Galveston Historical Foundation. Fox also conducted an architectural-historical tour of Houston for British scholars participating in the British Perspectives on American History Conference at Rice University and was tour leader of the Rice Design Alliance’s architectural tour of San Diego and Tijuana earlier this year.
Alumni News
Peter Rowe awarded Laureate
Peter Rowe (MArch ’71) was awarded the Rice Laureates Distinguished Alumni Award for the 2014 year. Congrats, Peter!
Charles Renfro to design Rice Opera House
After a ten month search, Rice University officials have selected Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design the Shepherd School of Music's new opera house. The RSA is proud to welcome Charles Renfro (BArch '89) back to campus! Read all about the new opera house on Culture Map and check out this great video interview with Charles Renfro on The New York Times website.
Marc Swackhamer is named Head of Architecture
Congratulations to Marc Swackhamer (MArch '97) who has been named head of the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota.
Henderson-Hopkins redevelopment
Rob Roger’s (BArch ’81) Henderson-Hopkins school in Baltimore is working towards redevelopment. Read about the grand urban experiment to make the
school the centerpiece of a major redevelopment project, in the New York Times.
Danish Kurani talk
Danish Kurani (BA ‘07) discusses the relationship between the built environment and urban schools in his Designing Future Libraries and Learning Spaces talk, available online here.
CENTER 19: Curtains
The nineteenth volume of CENTER, published by the Center for American Architecture and Design at UT School of Architecture, features a project proposal by Andrea Manning and Nicholas Hofstede (both MArch '07), titled "Ghost Rooms;" and Mark Cottle (MArch '88), titled "He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven." Get a copy of CENTER 19: Curtains here.
Have news to share in our next issue?
RSA students, faculty, and alumni are encouraged to submit current news items to Tami Andrew at (713) 348-3465 or rsa-public@rice.edu.