Archive

TEX-FAB, an organization founded by three former Texas A&M environmental design students, is facilitating collaborative exchanges through an emerging network of companies, institutions and design professionals in Texas and the Southwest that are working with digital fabrication and parametric modeling.

Except for the zombies, the dystopian futures depicted in popular Hollywood fare are edging closer to fact than fiction, said Texas A&M's resident futurist Rodney Hill, who believes hope for a besieged world can be found in creative solutions.

For their work on Disney/Pixar’s summer smash hit movie “Brave,” two former Texas A&M visualization students are nominated for an Annie award, the highest honor bestowed by the International Animated Film Society.

An award-winning eco-park concept aiming at informing the public about the systems bringing food to dinner tables and the waste it produces, developed by students in The Design Process class at Texas A&M, was featured in a Nov. 26 Voice of America newscast.

On Nov. 2, five groups of Texas A&M construction science students took field trips to various destinations around Texas to investigate the latest construction, material production and manufacturing practices.

Two hurricanes and a snowstorm buffeted Texas A&M third-year construction science student Nathan Atkins during his internship, but he said the experience has given him complete confidence that he’s ready to graduate and enter the “real world.”

Construction science students at Texas A&M will soon learn to accurately estimate the cost of construction projects in a state-of-the-art lab funded by a $250,000 gift from San Antonio-based Joeris General Contractors.

The teaching this fall of an experimental undergraduate visualization studio was significantly enhanced by the “vertical studio” concept: in addition to learning from peers and interaction with their instructor, the students gained valuable knowledge through mentor/protégé relationships resulting from a unique mix of novice and veteran students.

Art as therapy for chronic pain and “the disembodying effects of the digital age” were themes of final projects by Natalie Pittman and Jose “Weecho” Velasquez, who will walk the Reed Arena stage Dec. 15, 2012 as the first two graduates of Texas A&M’s Master of Fine Arts program.

Facilities, the world’s leading scholarly journal in the facility management field, begins its fourth decade with new co-editor Sarel Lavy, associate professor of construction science at Texas A&M. He and fellow editor Joseph Lai of Hong Kong Polytechnic University replace Edward Finch, who held the editor's post 18 years.

This fall, graduate Texas A&M architecture students collaborated with their counterparts at the University of Oklahoma and Southeast University in Nanjing, China to develop a campus master plan for a 27-acre, cancer center and 300-bed cancer rehabilitation hospital in Hainan Island, China.

A new, $250 million stadium to house Baylor Bears football will be designed with the help of a building information modeling system coordinated by Ken Stone ‘11, a Texas A&M construction science former student. “It should be a very exciting project because the design team is 100-percent on board,” said Stone, an engineer with Flintco, LLC.

Lower Rio Grande Valley officials will have help planning regional hurricane evacuations from a study undertaken by researchers at Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center in collaboration with the university's Colonias Program.

For the sixth straight year, the landscape architecture degree programs at Texas A&M are rated among the best in the nation in preparing students for professional success in the field, according to rankings published annually by the Design Futures Council, a national interdisciplinary network of design, product and construction leaders.

A federal study aimed at enhancing plant safety throughout the U.S. chemical manufacturing system benefitted from the work of Michael Lindell, a professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University who contributed sections on risk and decision analyses and emergency management.