Architecture Faculty News: Spring 2018

Associate Professor Esra Akcan's new book, Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship, and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA-1984/8, was published this spring and included in Archinect's 2018 Summer Reading List. In addition to her book, Akcan also published several articles on immigration, pedagogy, housing, and building design in a variety of journals, as well as book reviews in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. She gave the keynote address to the University of British Columbia AHVA Graduate Symposium in Vancouver, Canada; delivered four lectures in Lahore and Islamabad, Pakistan, where she was invited for the Lahore Biennale; and presented her work in a symposium on nationalism at Columbia University in New York City. A proposal by Akcan and Peter Christensen of University of Rochester won a $15,000 grant from the Central New York Humanities Corridor, for the working group, New Approaches to Scholarship and Pedagogy in Ottoman and Turkish Architecture. In her role as director of the Cornell Institute for European Studies (CIES) at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Akcan also organized AAP's Critically Now series and moderated panels on migration.

Mark Cruvellier, the Nathaniel and Margaret Owings Distinguished Alumni Memorial Professor in Architecture, had a role as an advisor in a National Geographic Travel story on iconic bridges. Cruvellier provided suggestions and reasons for the selected sites, which included an Inca rope bridge over the Akpurimac River in Peru; the Edmund Winston Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; and a living root bridge in Nongriat, India.

In June, Assistant Professor Tao DuFour was a visiting researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research (CFS) at the University of Copenhagen, where he worked on his forthcoming book Husserl and Spatiality: Toward a Phenomenological Ethnography of Space. He also met formally with the director and eminent Husserl scholar, Dan Zahavi, and participated in seminars, attended lectures, and was in dialogue with fellow researchers from other disciplines. The CFS carries out research on the self and its relations to others and the world, from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Assistant professors Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic, cofounders of the New York City–based design firm Hannah, showed work created using Cornell-developed 3D-printed concrete technology in two recent exhibitions. Additive Architectural Elements at Pinkcomma Gallery in Boston explored the 3D printer's idiosyncratic architectural tectonics and narratives through prototypical architectural motifs such as floors, columns, doors, windows, walls, and ceilings, as well as strategies for layering concrete for building applications.

Assistant Professor Aleksander Mergold (B.Arch. '00) gave a lecture at Columbia University as part of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation's Preservations Lecture Series in April. Mergold and Austin and Mergold LLC cofounder Jason Austin (B.Arch. '00) were engaged as "master practitioners" at Lawrence Technical University's CritPrax critical practice studio this summer in Detroit, Michigan. They set the agenda and led CritPrax fellows who directed graduate students in the university's College of Architecture and Design. In addition to teaching, the pair showed their work in Ten, One Hundred, and Ten Thousand Years/American Spolia, an exhibition focusing on the emerging possibility of the spoliation of the American 20th century.

Professor Mary N. Woods was awarded the Tau Sigma Delta Silver Medal for distinction in scholarship. Woods received the medal in April at Thomas Jefferson University's spring induction ceremony, where she delivered the keynote address on American artist Gordon Matta-Clark and lessons from urban ruin. Tau Sigma Delta is the national academic honor society for architecture and the allied arts. Additionally, Woods was a contributor and editorial adviser to Brinda Somaya: Works and Continuities (Mapin Publishing, forthcoming in 2018), a monograph surveying the Mumbai architect's more than 45 years of practice, by Somaya's daughter Nandini Somaya Sampat, director at Somaya and Kalappa Consultants in Mumbai, India.