Cornell AAP Architecture News

Sabin shares in National Science Foundation research grant

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:42:08 +0000

Cornell researchers Jenny Sabin, assistant professor of architecture, and Dan Luo, professor of biological and environmental engineering, are among the lead investigators on a new research project to produce “buildable, bendable, and biological materials” for a wide range of applications.

Sabin and Luo will share in a $2 million, four-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant with University of Pennsylvania researchers Randall Kamien, physics, and Shu Yang, materials science.

The project is intended to bring new ideas, motifs, portability and design to the formation of intricate chemical, biological, and architectural materials.

Based on Kirigami (from the Japanese word kiru, “to cut”), the project “offers a previously unattainable level of design, dynamics, and deployability” to self-folding and unfolding materials from the molecular scale to the architectural level, according to the researchers.

The research will include cutting and joining nano-sized DNA-polymer hybrids, 3D printing, and geometric models on the macroscopic scale.

Researchers also will develop new tools to visualize the folding and optimization of 2D and 3D structures, and generate new hybrid building blocks from the tiny to the large.

The project is intended to illuminate new principles of architecture, materials synthesis, and biological structures, and advance several technologies — including meta-materials, sensors, stealth aircraft, and adaptive and sustainable buildings. A complementary goal is to generate public interest through an enhanced impact on science, art, and engineering.

“Like the opening and closing of flowers, satellites, and even greeting cards, our research will offer a rich and diverse set of intricate surprises, problems, and challenges for students at all levels, and broaden their interest and awareness of emerging science and engineering,” according to the project proposal, “Cutting and Pasting: Kirigami in Architecture, Technology and Science” (KATS).

The Emerging Frontiers in Research Innovation grant from the NSF is in the research category of Origami Design for Integration of Self-assembling Systems for Engineering Innovation.

By Daniel Aloi

B.Arch. bench recognized in Street Seats Design Challenge

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:34:44 +0000

Katie MacDonald (B.Arch. ‘13) and Kyle Schumann (B.Arch. ’13) were selected as semi-finalists in the Design Museum Boston’s Street Seats Design Challenge. The pair received funding to build a full-scale bench, titled Twofold, which is installed along Fort Point Channel in Boston for seven months beginning in April. Winners will be chosen in the fall.

Hospitality, real estate in China set to boom, summit finds

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:05:27 +0000

The future lies in China’s emerging middle class, concluded participants at the Cornell International Summit: Hospitality, Real Estate, and the Built Environment, at the Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund, April 20.

Cornell faculty, international business leaders, Shanghai Vice Mayor Zhao Wen, and other Chinese government officials gathered to examine the state of China's hospitality and commercial real estate markets and discuss current trends, challenges, and opportunities.

“In 10 years’ time, the middle class in China will be twice as large as the middle class in the U.S., and it will have twice the purchasing power,” said Keith Barr ’92, CEO of IHG Greater China, during a panel on service.

This growth is pushing Chinese domestic hotel companies to build brands and is driving international companies to bring brands to China. The emerging middle class is also spurring a dramatic increase in the number of hotel rooms in the country.

“Currently, there are about 2.5 million hotel rooms in China. We will see this number expand beyond the 5 million or so in North America to about 7.5 million in a decade,” said Leland C. Pillsbury ’69, cochairman and CEO of Thayer Lodging Group. “The implications for real estate development around that are enormous.”

Many hotel executives on the program confirmed that China is the fastest growing region for their brands. They also explained how future progress will differ from past development; today, companies are planning significant growth in secondary and tertiary cities and are focusing on three- and four-star properties. Historically, international brands have been successful in China’s luxury segment, while domestic companies have succeeded in the budget sector.

During the panel on urban interconnectedness, moderator Kent Kleinman, AAP Gale and Ira Drukier Dean, noted that more than 50 percent of the world population already lives in cities. A sustainable future will mean fundamental changes in the ways cities and buildings are designed and how density is managed. Michael Manville, assistant professor of city and regional planning, noted that new technologies can fight traffic congestion; and Jenny Sabin, assistant professor of architecture, described her work applying biology and mathematics to the design of material structures.

Teddy Zhang ’97, president and CEO of HUBS1, moderated a panel on the future of the Chinese hotel marketplace and explained: “One of the very successful investments in the lodging industry is the budget sector. This is the first truly domestic hotel group in China that can grow and compete with international brands.”

Half of the 275 summit attendees were Cornell alumni, and 14 faculty, and staff attended from across the university; the conference included 39 speakers.

“The diversity of stakeholders who participated in the summit allowed us to look at China’s development and urbanization from many different angles,” said Michael D. Johnson, dean and E.M. Statler Professor at the School of Hotel Administration (SHA). “Our expert panelists discussed everything from the concerns of international versus domestic companies to how consumer preferences are changing, to the ways technology improvements in transportation, and building design will redefine the cities of the future.”

The summit — which was copresented by the SHA, AAP, and Cornell’s Center for Real Estate and Finance — was held in collaboration with the Cornell Asia-Pacific Leadership Conference and the Cornell Hotel Society Asia Pacific Regional Meeting.

The next Cornell International Hospitality Summit will be held in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2014.

By Ashlee McGandy, staff writer at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration

B.Arch. among student volunteer firefighters who gladly take the heat

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:53:48 +0000

For decades, Cornell students have been volunteering as firefighters at the Cayuga Heights Fire Department. Whether they’re in the library or out on a date, they are on call and ready to serve the community at a moment’s notice.

Under the guidance of Chief George Tamborelle, the students join forces with Ithacans to become New York-state certified firefighters. Tamborelle said the intense training required to become a firefighter “entails a solid commitment.” But the enthusiastic Cornellians who are dedicated to the fire department’s mission have no problem putting in the hours, he said.

The training is “physically taxing and mentally challenging,” said Carolyn Scheinberg ’15, who has been training for her interior certification, which allows a firefighter to enter a burning building, for seven months.

As part of the training, Scheinberg said she and a partner entered a burning building, rescuing dummy victims, with blind shields on their eyes to mimic dense smoke and heat. Scheinberg described the adrenaline-boosting experience of feeling her way around as “stressful and draining.” The practice of finding pseudo victims amid chaos and bringing them to safety “reminds me what serious responsibility I have and the importance of my service.”

“Once they join the department, we look at everybody as a firefighter and stop looking at them as students,” Tamborelle said. Twenty-three Cornell student volunteers currently serve on the squad.

Whether the firefighters are doing classroom preparation or athletic obstacle courses, everyone is growing and working together, Tamborelle said. “I’ve developed some of my closest friendships through working at the fire department,” he added.

Tamara Jamil (B.Arch. ’15), a member of the department for 13 months, agrees: "The people at the fire station have truly become a family to me." She says responding to calls and being a part of a tight-knit team "has taught me discipline and responsibility."

Jamil first became interested in firefighting when she witnessed the devastating effects of fire at a children's burn hospital. She remembers thinking, "If there is anything I could ever do to stop this from happening, I would." When she came to Cornell and heard about the Cayuga Heights Fire Department, she immediately wanted to get involved.

While Jamil is active in many other organizations on campus, she emphasizes how important it is to "make time to give back to the community." Volunteers are required to respond to at least 15 percent of the 600 calls received per year and attend 25 percent of weekly trainings. Jamil notes she spends about 15 hours per week volunteering, but hours vary by student.

“Next year I plan to live in the fire station, in which case I’ll be volunteering about 40 hours per week," Jamil said.

Far from an obligation, Tamborelle said volunteers “just fall in love with firefighting, and for many it becomes a calling." He encourages those with an interest in volunteering to come by the department.

“There are jobs for everyone. … You don’t have to be 6 feet tall and 220 pounds” to be a successful firefighter, he added.

Take Chrissy Walker, ’09, Tamborelle said. She is 5'4" and “was a ferocious firefighter.”

The department recruits twice a year and always needs volunteers.

By Abigail Warren '15, writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.

A fresh wall of sustainability

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:17:50 +0000

To show the potential of design to respond to a burgeoning global population and dwindling arable land, architecture students have created a thought-provoking solution: growing mint, chives, and basil at a bar.

It’s not your father’s wine rack. Using local and recycled materials, the students have created the Hydroponic Bottle Wall at Stella’s restaurant in Collegetown. They mounted 24 wine bottles on a double-sided wall and fitted it with an exposed hydroponic growing system. The red wine bottles, specially cut and cantilevering from the wall, serve as growing containers; clay pellets replace soil.

Grow lights softly illuminate the dimly lit bar. The students generated the wall’s wavy surface pattern with 3D software and had it made in the Rand Hall shops.

Students Peter Gudonis (B.Arch. '14), Carly Dean (B.Arch. '14), and Nicholas Cassab-Gheta (B.Arch. '14) designed and installed the wall.

Dean says the wall is a “microcosm of the growing trend of urban agriculture ... incorporating green space, green roofs, growing facades, hydroponics, aeroponics, and other productive technologies in buildings.”

Student sustainability group wins award for South Africa school project

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:00:50 +0000

Two years after 26 Cornell students spent their summer building an early childhood development center in a new residential community in Johannesburg, South Africa, the project has received an award in an international architecture competition.

The 6,000-square-foot school, designed by second-year architecture students and developed by Cornell University Sustainable Design (CUSD), won the Popular Choice award for the student design-build category in the competition sponsored by Architizer, an international architecture website. Entries from more than 100 countries were submitted for the 2013 competition.

“We have been honored by many humanitarian and educational awards, but this is our first award based on design,” says Karen Chi-Chi Lin (B.Arch. ’13), who traveled to South Africa twice to work on the project. “It's really great to be honored by a design award.”

The center, which relies on passive energy instead of electricity, was selected by judges of the Architizer A+ Awards as one of the top five projects in the student design-build category. Viewers of the Architizer website then were invited to vote on projects in more than 50 categories to select the Popular Choice winners.

Andrew Fu (B.Arch. ’14), whose design for the school was selected by a group of Cornell professors, project partners, and CUSD team members, says the award will help promote the sustainable practices the students used in the project. One of those strategies was insulating the building with sandbags, which cools and heats the structure.

Another key aspect of its sustainability was the construction of a separate wing to train teachers, which will help provide a continuing supply of instructors for the school, located in Cosmo City, a mixed-housing development in Johannesburg. The center accommodates 80 children between the ages of 2 and 9.

CUSD began working on the schoolhouse project after representatives from Education Africa, a nonprofit organization working to reduce poverty through education, visited campus four years ago. Second-year architecture students in a studio class developed designs for the school, and Fu's proposal was selected in a multi-round class competition.

Architecture professor Christian Otto dies

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:21:23 +0000

Professor of architecture Christian F. Otto died of cancer on March 27. He was 72. As an architectural historian, his research included Modernism, 18th-century Central Europe, New York City, and urbanism. Known as a passionate and committed educator, he continued to teach and meet with graduate students during his illness. Otto joined Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning in 1970.

“Chris Otto was a mainstay of the department's longstanding commitment to the teaching of the history of architecture and urban design to all of its students, whether those in B.Arch. and M.Arch. design degree programs or those pursuing advanced research and scholarship in HAUD through the M.A./Ph.D. program,” says Mark Cruvellier, architecture department chair and the Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Professor of Architecture.

Otto wrote, lectured, and taught on a range of time periods and architects. Among his publications are Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture (University of Chicago Press 1991), coauthored with Richard Pommer; and Space Into Light: The Churches of Balthasar Neumann (MIT Press 1979), the first major publication on Neumann in English. Otto was the editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians from 1974 to 1981. He also explored the connections between architecture and music, publishing on Bach and his surroundings and teaching National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars on Mozart's Vienna and on Prague.

“Henry Detweiler, Stephen Jacobs, and Chris Otto were the founding fathers of graduate studies in architectural history at Cornell,” says associate professor of architecture and Asian studies Bonnie MacDougall. “Chris's broad and detailed understanding of Modernism made him a most valued colleague and placed him at the very center of department intellectual life for more than 40 years.”

Among his peers, current students, and alumni, Otto was admired for his teaching skills and dedication to his students. He received Cornell’s Outstanding Educator and Paramount Professor awards during his career and was a faculty fellow with Campus Life Residential Programs.

“To Chris, the university was a family of learners, the most important members of which were students,” says longtime colleague Professor Henry Richardson. “He engaged them well beyond the classroom. His local and foreign study trips, such as ‘Going for Baroque,’ which he guided with great relish, were not only enjoyable but most revelatory. To be around Chris was to share in the richest of learning experiences. We will miss his sense of irony, great wit, and incisive insight.”

For more than two decades, Otto taught the Introduction to Architecture survey course to undergraduates — using it as a platform to help establish the role of history as a significant part of architectural and design discourse.

“Chris had the greatest capacity a teacher can have; he did not see students for what he thought they should be, but he encouraged us to be what we wanted to be,” says Sophie Hochhäusl, a current architectural history Ph.D. candidate. “In his tireless support for each of us he ensured that we had the best possible education to craft our own paths as designers and scholars, to live what occupied our minds and our hearts.”

“As his student, Chris forced you to think beyond the obvious in architecture to the causes latent therein, made all the more compelling by their near-invisibility,” says Richard Becherer (M.A. ’77, Ph.D. ’80 HAUD). “He didn't obsess about what hovered above ground in a city. Rather his attention quickly turned to what was beneath, or behind it. He loved to talk about streets and their grids, neighborhoods, structure, money — and the flow of it — patronage, influence, and power. His writing, his history, his pedagogy, his practices of living set very high standards for his students indeed.”

Cruvellier says, “His presence is already deeply missed by current students and faculty colleagues alike, as well as by a legion of alums whose attestations leave no doubt as to his lasting impact.”

Otto was born in New York City and received degrees from Swarthmore College and Columbia University. He is survived by his wife Roberta Moudry ’81 (M.A. ’90, Ph.D. ’95 HAUD) and four children.

By Aaron Goldweber