sustainability

An energy-saving thermostat and high-tech clothing tags that take the guesswork out of washer and dryer settings were among the award-winning ideas hatched by College of Architecture students in a contest sponsored by the Mays Business School’s Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship.

The New York Times featured Texas A&M architecture professor John Fairey's beloved Peckerwood Garden, a 39-acre living repository of rare and unusual plants from the southern United States and Mexico, in its April 18 issue.

Addressing tghe 38th IAHS World Congress on Housing last April in Istanbul, Jorge Vanegas, dean of the Texas A&M College of Architecture, discussed global solutions to meet the need for quality, affordable, sustainable, high-performance housing.

The grace and power of equestrian events at this summer’s Olympic games in London will be showcased in a venue designed by Charlie Kolarik ’04, a Texas A&M Master of Architecture graduate.

Student-designed concepts imagining the future of health facility design education and research at Texas A&M University and the facilities to house those initiatives were showcased at the Langford Architecture Center in an April 25 public review.

A College Station area consisting of strip malls and parking lots would become a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use, downtown core in an award-winning master plan proposed by Master of Landscape Architecture students at Texas A&M.

Evidence-based design and eco-effective, or sustainable, design are fundamentally compatible despite some conflicts, concluded Mardelle Shepley, professor of architecture of Texas A&M, in a research paper she’s presenting this May at a conference in Beijing, China.

Construction science students at Texas A&M recently got a peek at two alternative futures for the city of Houston in the year 2040 during a video presentation showcasing future scenarios imagined in a two-year research project undertaken by the Center for Houston’s Future.

A solar-powered beach umbrella capable of powering portable electronic devices, built by a team of Texas A&M Design Process students, earned third place in the nationwide Innovative Design Competition sponsored by Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc.

Two design educators from the United Kingdom, Jon Goodbun and Karin Jaschke, will present “Architecture and its Resources: Towards a New Materialist Practice,” 5:30 p.m. Monday, April 16 in Preston Geren Auditorium as part of Texas A&M’s Department of Architecture Lecture Series.

As the 2012-13 WHR Architects Tradewell Fellow, Akshay Sangolli, a graduate Texas A&M architecture student, will work on some of the firm’s upcoming projects alongside some of the nation’s leading healthcare facility design professionals.

Former Rice School of Architecture dean Lars Lerup, whose work focuses on the intersection of nature and culture in the contemporary U.S. metropolis, and on Houston in particular, kicked off the Department of Architecture’s 2012 Spring Lecture Series with a Feb. 13 presentation about new urbanism.

Next fall, students from a variety of academic programs will collaborate to install and monitor a green roof atop a campus building; an initiative preparing students as leaders in energy conservation, said Bruce Dvorak, an assistant professor of landscape architecture.

Texas A&M graduate architecture students impressed a design jury at a 2011 Nashville healthcare design conference with their concept to convert an antiquated public health facility to a holistic healing center for “everyday athletes.”

An award-winning solar light device developed at the Texas A&M Department of Architecture that can significantly reduce electric bills by delivering a bounty of natural sunlight deep into the interior of a building, will soon enter a new phase of development at the College of Architecture’s Digital Fabrication Facility.