architecture

June 4 was an evening of celebration as former students, colleagues and friends toasted retiring architecture professor John Only Greer '55. Greer, a former department head, interim dean, executive associate dean and mentor to generations of Aggie architects, retired in May after 49 years on the Aggie faculty.

Rodney Hill, professor of architecture at Texas A&M, added another award to his lengthy list of teaching honors May 2 when he was named a Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation. Hill was one of ten academicians receiving the 2011 award honoring superior educators, which includes a $5,000 honorarium.

Some of the architecture world’s leading lights shared their knowledge and experiences in the Spring 2011 Department of Architecture Lecture Series. The six public lectures took place in Preston Geren Auditorium.

Texas A&M Architecture Ph.D. student Simge Andolsun is investigating how a modified air-conditioning system can produce energy savings for low-income households in hot, humid climates. Her study is funded by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

As part of an international design experiment in social media, students in a design studio joined architecture students from around the globe for a collaboration with top Italian designers that culminated in an April 15 exhibit at the renowned Milan Design Fair in Milan, Italy.

Students developed housing prototypes with designers from two acclaimed firms — Wonnie Ickx and Carlos Bedoya, founding members of Mexico City-based PRODUCTORA, and Tom Wiscombe, principal of the L. A. firm EMERGENT — in the inaugural Mitchell Lab Visiting Designer Program.

An exhibition in the Swedish Museum of Architecture co-curated by Peter Lang, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M, looks back at a landmark 1972 exhibit of radical Italian design and architecture at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Now that her senior thesis examining why great logos are memorable was named one of the year’s best undergraduate scholarly works at Texas A&M University, senior environmental design major Lori Lampe said her next major undertaking will be landing a job as a graphic designer or working for an architecture firm.

For outstanding teaching and research-based contributions to their respective disciplines, 10 Texas A&M College of Architecture faculty members have earned promotions. “They have empowered and emboldened students through their dedication,” said Lou Tassinary, executive associate dean at the college.

Students studying abroad in South Africa are designing a starter campus for the university and developing a business plan for a nonprofit utility company while working on a groundbreaking real estate development located on the coast of the the country’s Eastern Cape.

As part of its bid to offer a retirement home for the space shuttles Discovery or Atlantis, the Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History had Texas A&M students develop design concepts for a building to temporarily house the orbiter while a permanent structure was built.

The glow of light sculptures designed by visualization students at Texas A&M partially lit a darkened exhibit hall in the Langford Architecture Center during a review April 11. Students led by Richard Davison, professor of visualization, designed the sculptures for the Langford C courtyard.

A video that played at the 2009 gala opening of Texas A&M’s Soltis Center for Research and Education in Costa Rica includes comments by an assistant dean at the College of Architecture, whose students’ design concepts significantly influenced the final appearance of the center’s buildings.

“The Sourcebook of Contemporary Green Architecture,” a new book by Sergi Costa Duran featuring 100 of the world’s most outstanding examples of environmentally-friendly architecture, opens with an introduction from sustainability expert Pliny Fisk, a professor at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture.

Elena Manferdini, principal of Atelier Manferdini, which specializes in computer-aided design of exotic forms, visited the college March 20 – 25 as an artist in residence. In a video interview, she discusses the installation she and students designed and erected in the Azimuth coffee shop.