academics

Students in a graduate architecture studio at Texas A&M are developing solutions aimed at improving the quality of life for long-term inhabitants of refugee camps located in Chad, Kenya and Thailand.

Students from all four departments at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture will join in a weeklong charrette early next semester to create unifying, practical and affordable proposals in two areas along one of College Station’s main thoroughfares.

A research project examining the effect of pedestrian and activity-friendly communities on residents’ health led by Xuemei Zhu, assistant professor of architecture, is part of a new American Institute of Architects’ initiative to fund projects leading to design solutions addressing challenges in public health.

An institute promoting the study and application of creativity and innovative thinking at Texas A&M and throughout a network of partners is under development at the College of Architecture.

Dallas-area homebuilders Nicole and Kevin Youngblood toured Texas A&M’s College of Architecture Sept. 28, where a professorship endowed in their names is making a difference for students at the college.

Students seeking jobs and internships in the construction industry had considerably more companies to choose from than in recent years at the Texas A&M Department of Construction Science's fall 2012 career fairs.

A new structural system with the potential to significantly reduce the amount of steel required to construct bridges, arches, domes and columns is being developed with cues from nature by Michael Bunch, a Ph.D. architecture student at Texas A&M.

Shannon Van Zandt, the new director of the Center for Housing and Urban Development, is redefining and expanding the center's mission after its separation from the Colonias Program, the center's primary focus since its inception in 1991.

New appointments to the College of Architecture's endowed professorships and chairs, which support their holders’ teaching, research and service initiatives, were announced by Jorge Vanegas, dean of the college, at a Sept. 12 reception in the Wright Gallery.

The construction industry must develop a culture of sustainability to meet a moral imperative to preserve the Earth, wrote Texas A&M construction science student Rebecca Curry in an essay earning honorable mention in the University Writing Center's 10th Anniversary Writing Contest.

Last July, the Master of Science in Construction Management program at Texas A&M University became one of the world's first graduate programs to earn accreditation from the American Council for Construction Education.

For centuries, a symbiotic relationship between planning and transportation has existed. “For most of the 20th century, engineers decided what needed to go where. In the 21st century, that’s changing a bit,” said Forster Ndubisi, head of Texas A&M’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning.

Students studying abroad in Italy designed a film school on the outside wall of the medieval town of Castiglion Fiorentino and used their host town as a setting to create video games during their Texas A&M spring 2012 study abroad semester.

Students from all disciplines at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture will design and build a single-family residence during the 2012-13 academic year in a subdivision near downtown Bryan as part of the new collegewide Real Projects initiative.

While exploring themes related to place and sustainability, students in two Texas A&M design studios taught last spring developed intricate scale models for a sustainable living learning center in Georgia and a mixed use residential and business development in College Station.