architecture

“Black Narcissus,” an intricate architectural installation designed and fabricated by eight Texas A&M architecture students now graces the VIP room at the tony La Riviera restaurant in Bryan, Texas.

Students will have a unique opportunity to work with internationally renowned, contemporary artists in specialized workshops during the Spring 2012 Artist in Residence program at A&M’s College of Architecture. The workshops are open to anyone in the college, and no previous art experience is required.

As higher education leaders across the nation wrangle with budget constraints and consider reforms aimed at doing more with less, Texas A&M College of Architecture educators continue to embrace the studio, the time-tested cornerstone of design education, as the most critical component of modern design pedagogy.

Designs for an eye hospital in Puyang, China, created by students in a Texas A&M health facility design studio in collaboration with students at Southeast University in Nanjing, China and the University of Oklahoma, were unveiled in a public presentation Dec. 5 in the Wright Gallery.

Anat Geva, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M is the 2011 recipient of the J. Thomas Regan Interdisciplinary Faculty Prize, an award recognizing faculty who are committed to interdisciplinary work in the built environment disciplines.

Chris Grossnicklaus ‘06, a Texas A&M Master of Architecture graduate is editor-in-chief of Columns magazine, the quarterly publication of the American Institute of Architects’ Dallas Chapter. Grossnicklaus is currently working as an architect for RTKL's Healthcare group.

As a semifinalist in a national solar power design competition, a student team from the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s Design Process class is building a portable solar-powered umbrella capable of powering portable electronic devices.

Five students pursuing graduate certificates in facility management attended an International Facility Management Association conference in Phoenix with five IFMA scholarships totaling $15,000, part of which paid for their trip to the conference.

The renovation of Texas A&M’s historic YMCA building, overseen by Nancy McCoy ’81, FAIA, an outstanding alumna of the College of Architecture, is mostly complete. McCoy, a founding principal at Quimby McCoy Preservation Architecture, LLP, is an award-winning preservation architect.

A herd of bony dinosaurs and other creatures created by students in a Texas A&M sophomore design studio invaded the College of Architecture’s Langford Atrium this fall providing a fanciful setting for the amusement of passersby.

One former and one current student from Texas A&M’s College of Architecture were roommates for a week in Leogane, Haiti in November, part of a Habitat for Humanity effort to build homes in the city ravaged by a 2010 earthquake and hurricane.

Four businesses headed by former college students Shan Jenkins ’88, Richard Garza ’88, Phillip Wales, ’78, ’79 and Ryan Pape ’01 are on a list of the 100 fastest-growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world compiled by the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Mays Business School.

Texas A&M environmental design graduate Shawn Evans ’93 is overseeing the preservation of Ohkay Owingeha, a 600 year-old Native American settlement in New Mexico as the director of preservation and cultural projects at Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, a Philadelphia design firm.

A single Navajo mother and her 10-year old son are living in The Windcatcher House, a sustainable home in southwest Colorado co-designed by Mark Olsen ’07, a former Texas A&M environmental design student completing his graduate work in the University of Colorado at Denver.

Peter Lang, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M, joined curators, designers, artists and architects from across the globe to discuss experimental curating for design and architecture exhibitions at “Curating and Counter Curating,” a September 2011 conference in Stockholm, Sweden.