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UBuffalo architect creates Light/Station installation

(via University of Buffalo News Center)

BUFFALO, N.Y. — During the day, light pours in from two sides through the more than 72,000 holes laser-precision drilled into the stainless steel panels that veil the building’s façade.

At night, an inversion occurs and light glows from within, identifying the structure’s presence in the surrounding neighborhood.

For his newest project, University at Buffalo architect Christopher Romano embarked upon a two-year journey through the manipulation of light and metal as design materials. The result is a signature architectural structure nestled in the shadows of three iconic buildings on Buffalo’s historic East Side.

It’s called Light/Station, and the recently completed project has transformed an abandoned gas mart into a striking 1,545-square-foot design studio, green room and conference facility for Buffalo-based Torn Space, a critically acclaimed, avant-garde theater company.

Light and history were core components of Romano’s design concept from the beginning.

“Light serves as the connective tissue for all the components of the façade. It’s a material. It’s a central element to the multi-layered façade, where the lighting is a layer behind the steel panels, which typically isn’t done because it’s risky,” says Romano, who designed the façade through his firm Studio NORTH Architecture.

Romano is also a research assistant professor in UB’s School of Architecture and Planning. A small team of UB architecture students also worked on the project.

Some of the smaller prototypes were developed and tested using the school’s digital fabrication equipment under the direction of Daniel Vrana, a staff member in the Fabrication Workshop and current employee at Studio NORTH Architecture.

A LOOK AT LIGHT/STATION (PHOTOS BY DOUGLAS LEVERE)

 

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Real World Ready by Creating Real World Design Solutions

University of Arizona’s Bachelor or Architecture students test their designs by building homes for low income Tucsonans

The University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture’s (CAPLA) architecture students are faced with many of the same educational chores that other school of architecture students are faced with: they toil solving many theoretical design problems, they work long hours in their studio spaces looking to their classmates for inspiration and they dream of just how and when they’ll get to see their projects come to life. While theory and research are necessary parts of the curriculum, students at CAPLA also have the unique opportunity to work on real world design solutions through experiential education. One such way is through the Drachman Design-Build Coalition (DDBC), a 501 c3 non-profit housing provider organization.

The DDBC is the product of Professor Mary Hardin’s desire to ensure that her architecture students were able to have an experience that allowed them to see their designs come to life and to help an underserved population of low income Tucsonans achieve home ownership. Recently, the DDBC, through the design-build studios and hard work of 33 students across three semesters, completed its ninth residence, “The Sentinel House.”

“My involvement in DDBC has allowed me to bring the excitement of designing and building real projects into the studio experience with students. I get vicarious pleasure from seeing them enthused about building their own project designs. I also have been touched by how much extra work my students put into these projects, knowing they are building a home for a family who would not otherwise benefit from the talents of architectural designers. Seeing my students put so much into each project has constantly revived my own sense of commitment and enthusiasm,” states Mary.

Mary and her students were fortunate to receive a grant from the UA Office of Student Engagement (OSE) as this project meets the requirements of the UA’s 100% Engagement Initiative. The initiative works to provide students with experiences beyond the classroom, helping to enrich their professional and personal growth. Even with the generous grant from the OSE, the residence has been designed under a very strict budget so that it can be sold to a Tucson family earning below 80% of the Area Median Income.

The home has been built with several sustainability practices to help keep utility bills and lifetime maintenance costs lower for the future homeowners. For example, they’ve used scoria, a thermal mass material, for the exterior walls of the home. This dense material holds onto temperature for a long period of time, meaning it works hard to prevent outdoor heat from traveling indoors. Additionally, they placed a layer of rigid foam in the center of these walls to help hinder the heat transfer.

The team also built two water harvesting cisterns to collect rainwater from the roof for use on the landscaping. The landscaping is xeriscape, low water use desert plants that are located to help shade the home. The A/C system is four mini-splits rather than one central unit so that each room can be programmed for thermal comfort separately from the others. This will allow homeowners to fine tune their use of air conditioning to keep bills down, and the mini-split units are much more efficient (SEER 21) than the typical central unit (SEER 14).

Educational experiences like these help CAPLA students succeed beyond the classroom and well into their professions. They’ve had the opportunity to face real world challenges and then find the most efficient solutions to those problems. “These opportunities simply aren’t found elsewhere,” states Mary.


For more information on University of Arizona’s Architecture Program, visit their profile on StudyArchitecture.

 

 

 

 

Yale Architecture Students Build "Vlock House" for Homeless

(via New Haven Independent)

A homeless family will be able to look out onto Adeline Street while cooking dinner and also find privacy in a rock garden, thanks to the design of the latest house Yale architecture students built in New Haven.

Some 200 people came out Monday night to tour and celebrate the new house, the 28th annual home that Yale School of Architecture students have built as part of the Jim Vlock First Year Building Project. This is the first year that a home was designed specifically for the homeless.

The distinctive, many-windowed, pitched-roof modernist house is at 54 Adeline St. in the Hill.

Into it one homeless family and one individual will move next month, sharing a common modernist building with the adjoining units separated by an elegant breeze-way and fronted by a flower-lined path gracing the narrow street.

“Imagine if you were sleeping on a bench last week, and someone gave you keys to your own place [like this],” said Columbus House Chief Executive Officer Alison Cunningham.

54 Adeline, unveiled Monday night. (Photo credit: Allan Appel Photos)

School of Architecture Dean Deborah Burke said when she arrived she had wanted to “deepen” the Vlock Project. That took the form of a partnership with Columbus House, the city’s lead organization in the struggle to end homelessness.

The Valentine Macri Court houses, 17 units of affordable housing also managed by Columbus House, are adjacent to what was an empty lot, and on which 54 Adeline now rises.

Cunningham interacted with the students, brought them to the neighborhood, had them talk with homeless people, all to inform what they were going to build.

Then 53 students in six teams competed for a winning design. When it was chosen, all 53 learned teamwork by helping to fashion most of the components of the house not on site but as prefabricated elements put together in a warehouse on Yale’s West Campus. That was in June and July.

Read more…


Learn more about the Yale School of architecture, here.

CU Denver Students Build Pop-up Installation at Denver Park

CU Denver’s Maymester class designs and builds entryways for Square on 21st, a collaboration with the City of Denver.

(via CU Denver Today)

CU Denver students got to ditch the classroom in favor of turning soil, pounding nails and solving in-the-field design problems during a Maymester Design Build class. They put their creative stamp on an entire city block, installing archways that grace the entrances to a new City of Denver concept – a summer pop-up park, featuring food trucks, a dog park and music – in the Ballpark neighborhood.

“For me, it’s incredible to have the city say, ‘Yes, we trust you with $10,000,’” said student Genevieve Hampton. That was the budget that students and their instructors – Maria Delgado and Jo VandenBurg from the College of Architecture and Planning (CAP) and Monica Wittig from Inworks – received from the city to design and install the eye-catching entryways.

In late spring, the city closed the one-block section and began covering the pavement with turf, 60 trees, a music stage and the artful, student-designed entrances at Lawrence and Larimer streets. It’s fitting that 21 students enrolled in the Maymester course as the the verdant and shady block is now dubbed “The Square on 21st.”

Architecture student Tyler Ellis said the tangible nature of the project has been rewarding. “We’re mostly focused on the page when we’re in design studio,” he said, “so being able to see it manifested in physical form has been great.”

Maria Delgado, a doctoral Design and Planning student at CU Denver, was so inspired by the new CU in the City marketing campaign that she scoured the internet for design projects that would integrate student learning with downtown’s urban environment. “I was researching possible content for my spring class. I was inspired by Chancellor Horrell and our campus leadership’s whole concept of CU Denver being ‘CU in the City,’” Delgado said. “This project is a result of that movement.” Jo VandenBurg, another instructor in the class, added, “This is what you get when you say ‘CU in the City:’ You get cool stuff in the city.”

Delgado, a doctoral student in the Design and Planning Program in CAP, reached out to the city’s office of Community Planning and Development last winter when she saw the project posted online. Her initial suggestion was for city officials to critique a few student-created renderings. “From that meeting they said, ‘Well, actually we have $10,000 budgeted (for the entryways) and we’d love for your students to design and build something,’” Delgado said.

With a tight deadline approaching – the park opened June 15, with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and other dignitaries in attendance (photo at top) – Delgado wondered how she and her students would be able to get all the work done in time. The solution was a CAP-Inworks cross-listed Maymester course that literally put students in hardhats out on the street.

Hampton said Design Build students are usually limited to creating small-sized models in the studio. “To walk through this design on this scale is something we’re not used to – it’s exciting,” she said. “It’s a design project with real-world constraints that we’ve had to adjust to, like the curve of the street.”

In spring, CAP and Inworks students met several times with city representatives to explain their idea and receive feedback. The designs were nearly ready when the Maymester Design Build class started on May 15.

Although the class runs three weeks, students only had 11 days to complete everything for The Square on 21st project. That’s how quickly they moved from a computer rendering, to figuring out how to build the entrances, to ordering the materials, to cutting the wood sheets, to installing and painting them. “It was crazy,” VandenBurg said of of the process, noting that students worked 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day over that span.

Delgado, a doctoral student in the Design and Planning Program in CAP, reached out to the city’s office of Community Planning and Development last winter when she saw the project posted online. Her initial suggestion was for city officials to critique a few student-created renderings. “From that meeting they said, ‘Well, actually we have $10,000 budgeted (for the entryways) and we’d love for your students to design and build something,’” Delgado said.

With a tight deadline approaching – the park opened June 15, with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and other dignitaries in attendance (photo at top) – Delgado wondered how she and her students would be able to get all the work done in time. The solution was a CAP-Inworks cross-listed Maymester course that literally put students in hardhats out on the street.

Hampton said Design Build students are usually limited to creating small-sized models in the studio. “To walk through this design on this scale is something we’re not used to – it’s exciting,” she said. “It’s a design project with real-world constraints that we’ve had to adjust to, like the curve of the street.”

In spring, CAP and Inworks students met several times with city representatives to explain their idea and receive feedback. The designs were nearly ready when the Maymester Design Build class started on May 15.

Although the class runs three weeks, students only had 11 days to complete everything for The Square on 21st project. That’s how quickly they moved from a computer rendering, to figuring out how to build the entrances, to ordering the materials, to cutting the wood sheets, to installing and painting them. “It was crazy,” VandenBurg said of of the process, noting that students worked 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day over that span.

While CAP graduate students in Design Build have created projects across the state and in the metro area, the Ballpark effort marks the first time a Design Build undergraduate class has installed a local project. “It’s really cool because it’s just a few blocks away from school,” Delgado said. “It’s been a real collaboration for CAP, Inworks and the City to be able to visit the site daily and see the project grow.”

Grand way to make an entrance

The collaboration included access to cutting-edge technology available through both CAP and Inworks. CAP recently acquired a computer numerical control (CNC) router that replicates a machine already available at Inworks. The two CNCs allowed students to cut 83 sheets of plywood for the arches – set in accordion-like fashion at the Larimer entrance, where 14 are installed, and the Lawrence entry (seven more) – in quick and precise fashion.

The pop-up park will host food trucks, summer concerts and serve as a pleasant gathering spot for folks strolling or cycling just east of Coors Field.  The Square on 21st acts as a trial run for a potential permanent “activated block” to be installed in a pocket of town lacking green space, said Delgado, who founded the CU Denver Design Build Institute of America student chapter club.

The entrances play a key role in the park. They guide walking and bicycling visitors into the green space, encouraging them to meander through the park.

For Delgado, the best part of Maymester has been seeing students’ faces light up with pride as the entrances gained dimension and flair. “It’s neat because other people will be able to experience what our students have designed and built,” she said. “They’ve left a mark.”


Check out CU Denver’s Architecture Program!

Tulane's Annual URBANBuild Program

Every year, students of Tulane University’s School of Architecture have the opportunity to take a course called “URBANBuild” where they design and construct a home for a family in New Orleans.

(via Tulane SoA News)

“The house at 1924 Toledano St. in Central City is a striking gray residence with a sharply angled roofline and louvered shutters over the front windows. Inside, every inch of its 975 square feet has been painstakingly pondered, debated and studied.

The house, which recently listed on the market for $220,000 and is now under contract, is the 12th project of the Tulane University School of Architecture’s URBANbuild program.

Fifteen students — a mixture of undergrads and grad students — designed the house in a class last fall, then submitted plans to the city and secured building permits. During the spring semester, they built it from the ground up on a vacant 30-foot-by-70-foot lot owned by Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans, the nonprofit group which partners with Tulane on the program.

For some of the students, it was the first time they’d ever lifted a hammer or fired up a power tool, much less climbed around a roof.

The class operates like a full-time job, with students expected to spend six days a week on the job site, said Tulane architecture professor and URBANbuild director Byron Mouton. Licensed general contractor Anthony Christiana serves as lead contractor.

In the fall, the students create various architectural design schemes for an affordable residence; at midterm, they vote on the one that will be built. “Then they all work together as a group on the development,” Mouton said. Full Article HERE


Learn more about Tulane’s School of Architecture!

USC Students Raise Awareness About Homelessness

From trash to treasure, University of Southern California (USC) students Jayson Champlain and Joseph Chang are transforming forgotten materials into tiny portable houses that could serve as temporary shelter for people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles.

According to LA Times, “Jeremy Carman was driving around Boyle Heights recently when he spotted a rolled-up garage door on the side of the road.

‘That’s it,’ the 25-year-old thought. The garage door would make the perfect roof for the 8-foot-tall house that he and four other USC architecture students were building over the weekend to draw attention to the lack of permanent supportive housing for the homeless in Los Angeles — and to raise money for a solution.”

The students gathered materials from construction trash bins, street corners and alleys in LA then came together to build a small white house with a bright orange door, “complete with a cupola, eaves, and wheels for mobility.”

The students built the house at the Dwell on Design Conference, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

To learn more, read the original post on LA Times entitled “Trash to Treasure: USC Architect Students Build Tiny Portable House to Raise Awareness About Homelessness.” 


Visit USC’s Study Architecture Profile page to learn more about their architecture program!

Disney Imagineering to Coolhaus Ice Cream: Natasha Case

(via LA Times)

The gig: Natasha Case, 33, runs ice cream sandwich company Coolhaus, which she founded with partner Freya Estreller in 2009. The duo’s whimsical, architecture-inspired creations are available in grocery stores — in packaged form — and in bricks-and-mortar Coolhaus stores in Culver City and Pasadena, where customers can pick the cookie and ice cream combinations. The company is staying true to its food-truck roots, with rolling dispensaries in Los Angeles, Dallas and New York.

L.A. start: Case, a third-generation Angeleno, grew up in Sherman Oaks. Her father was an architect; her mother, an animator at Disney. Case moved north to study architecture, Italian and urban planning at UC Berkeley but returned for her master’s in architecture at UCLA.

“Farchitecture”: Case said she had a “lightbulb moment” when one of her Berkeley professors criticized a creation she had made, describing it as a layer cake. “I remember thinking, why is that a bad thing?” she said. Case had been searching for a way to make architecture more accessible to the public, she said, and realized she could do that by combining food and architecture (hence, “farchitecture”). Her creations attracted crowds even back then. “It made me think I was on to something,” she said.

Disney first: After UCLA, Case worked briefly at Disney Imagineering, which designs and builds Disney theme parks, hotels and other entertainment venues. That experience helped lay a foundation for Coolhaus. “Disney is about designing a brand and storytelling, not just architecture,” she said. “That was really good backbone.” As the recession set in, Case started to bring in homemade ice cream sandwiches named after architects — “Mies Vanilla Rohe” and “Frank Behry” were among the originals — to provide a bit of comic relief around the office.

Finding a partner: Around that time, in late 2008, Case was introduced to Freya Estreller, who worked in real estate. Estreller shared Case’s interest in food but brought a business attitude. Estreller and Case began to strategize about how to build a business together. The food-truck craze was just beginning — with Korean taco truck Kogi BBQ having recently made its debut in L.A. — and craft ice cream wasn’t really a thing yet. “We Googled ‘hipster ice cream truck’ and nothing came up,” Case said.

The pair decided they would be the first, putting $2,900 on a credit card for a beat-up postal van that had been repurposed as an ice cream truck. They named the company Coolhaus, a triple pun on the name of architect Rem Koolhaas, the Bauhaus movement and the idea that an ice cream sandwich is like a tiny, cold house.

Coachella bound: In spring 2009, Coolhaus got its first big job as a food vendor at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. “Coachella was such big volume that it instantly forced us to think bigger scale,” Case said. She and Estreller brought in co-packers, companies that work under contract with producers to manufacture food to the producers’ specifications, to make enough ice cream and cookies. Giant freezers kept the products cold and allowed them to “scoop to order” for customers.

The only problem was getting there. The Craigslist ice cream truck had no engine, so Case bought a AAA premier membership, which comes with a free 200-mile tow. Case and Estreller sold their ice cream sandwiches at $3.50 apiece, including an edible wrapper. (Case said they hadn’t yet figured out the true costs of running the business, and the price back then reflected that. These days, a custom ice cream sandwich costs $6 at a Coolhaus shop.) By the end of the festival, Coolhaus was in the black and had gained a cult following on Instagram and Twitter.

Growth spurt: Back home, Case and Estreller set about fixing up the truck. By the time they were up and running in L.A. a few weeks later, “we had a built-in audience,” Case said. The duo focused at first on expanding Coolhaus’ fleet of trucks, taking on New York in 2011. That year they also established a store in Culver City. Eventually they added a second in Pasadena and several more trucks.

Changing flavors: But it took an outsider to make them rethink their strategy. Bobby Margolis, who famously turned clothing company Cherokee Inc. into a licensing company, was a friend of Case’s father and an early investor in Coolhaus. He encouraged her and Estreller to sell the ice cream sandwiches wholesale.

“Shifting the strategy was not something we saw early on,” Case said. With wholesale, one might make half the revenue on a single item, but the item gets sold in bulk in many new markets. “It’s a slow and steady trickle on a big scale,” Case said. “That’s a very different mentality than going out and trying to make a few thousand dollars at lunch on a truck.”

But Case was willing to try. She started by walking into the Whole Foods in Glendale and just asking who she could talk to. Last year, Coolhaus did $7 million in sales, and wholesale made up about 75% of that, Case said. Today, Coolhaus offers pints and prepackaged ice cream sandwiches in about 6,000 stores, including major grocery chains Whole Foods and Safeway.

Advice: Case said her suggestion to would-be entrepreneurs, especially women, is to “think really big. Like, where is this going to take me in five to 10 years? How can this be the next biggest concept out there in my category?”

She also advised entrepreneurs with non-business degrees to think of their obstacles as strengths. “It’s not like I got an MBA,” she said. “You don’t have to have this traditional tool kit to be successful.”

Personal: Case is married to Estreller, who stopped working at Coolhaus in 2013. They live in Mid-City with their newborn son, Remy, and two dogs.

(via LA Times)

2017 Fairy Tales Architecture Competition Winners

(via Archinect)

The Fairy Tales Architecture Competition concluded another successful edition Monday evening with the anticipated reveal of its 2017 winners. The competition had its biggest winners announcement yet in front of a live audience at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.

Like every year, the submissions blur the line between fictional and non-fictional. Narratives are depicted as storybook-friendly illustrations, but refer to themes like real-life current events or evergreen topics like the creative process, mundane everyday activities, and relatable human emotions.

The esteemed jury — which included Marion Weiss, Jing Liu, Stefano Boeri, Michael Maltzan, National Building Museum Executive Director Chase W. Rynd, and Archinect’s very own Alexander Walter, among others — selected three prize winners, an American Institute of Architecture Students winner, and 10 honorable mentions.

1ST PRIZE: “Last Day” by Mykhailo Ponomarenko | Ukraine

Synopsis: “The entry utilizes classical painting techniques to create monumental landscapes with strange scifi megastructures inserted into them. The relatively mundane occurrences in the story make it feel like these wild scenes could in fact be real.”

From the winner: “Landscapes have always inspired me to put something weird, unreal and out of human scale into them. Something not feasible and not practical that contrasts with the natural surroundings, but also exists at the same scale. These satirical interventions lead to new ideas and feelings about nature – they make the viewer more aware about the environment and our harmful impact on it. We are flat surface creatures. Sometimes I feel that we crave it so much that the planet is going to be turned into pavement so cars can go anywhere, and our industries could continue expanding. The “Saturn Rings” in my proposal represent these flat surface desires but in a more poetic, optimistic, and friendly manner.” — Mykhailo Ponomarenko

2ND PRIZE: “City Walkers” by Terrence Hector | Chicago, IL

Synopsis: “‘City Walkers’ or ‘The Possibility of a Forgotten Domestication and Biological Industry’ tells a beautiful story of a sentient species of architecture that moves slower than humans can perceive. That doesn’t stop human beings from harnessing every possible bit of energy from “The Walkers” in addition to spawning settlements in their wake.”

From the winner: “The city in this story was an exploration of civilization and urbanism as humanity’s relationship with natural and biological systems that exist on a vastly longer timescale than the human lifespan. Creating a closer relationship time-wise between human and natural timeframes let me derive a new urban typology, which also acts as a parable of overexploitation. I was trying to work through an inferred genealogy from the USS Monitor to Hayao Miyazaki, working through a tradition of humanizing massive, aggressive machines.” – Terrence Hector

3RD PLACE: “Up Above” by Ariane Merle d’Aubigné & Jean Maleyrat | France

Synopsis: “‘Up Above’ is an imaginative story of refugees in the sky that build shanties on thin stilts, high in the clouds, to escape oppression, regulations, and inequality on the surface of the earth below.”

From the winners: “Revisiting the world of fairy tales by participating in the Blank Space competition was very stimulating. The short narrative takes a look at reality through the marvelous and the fantastic. We have tried to highlight contemporary issues and concerns by letting the supernatural burst into reality. Migration, the accumulation of wealth, overpopulation, the terrorist threat and pollution are some of the issues with which we live every day. We highlighted these concerns and our love of art through this poetic tale. Our generation often aspires to an “elsewhere”, in our “elsewhere” the rules of the game have changed.” — Ariane Merle d’Aubigné & Jean Maleyrat

AIAS Winner: “Playing House by Maria Syed & Adriana Davis – New Jersey Institute of Technology
(AIAS Prize is awarded to the highest scoring entry from an AIAS member)

Synopsis: “Playing House is an exercise in illustrating the destructive power of split-personality. Starting with traditional drawings of a modest dwelling, the drawings, and in turn, the narrative, devolve into a series of accusations, misunderstandings, and multiplicity.

From the winners: “Playing House embodies the idea that architecture can eclipse the personality of its occupants, where the character and style of the architecture dictate the mood of the inhabitants. The loud textures and discordant angles of the home sparked the idea for the story: transitioning from room to room manifests itself in drastic physical and psychological change. The drawings, the genesis of our submission, address architectural conventions of projection drawings, merged with the unconventional appearance of the home to create friction. This act is mirrored in the story, where a typical visit from a neighbor turns peculiar. The two creators of this project worked closely throughout their undergraduate career, creating an inseparable partnership for their first collaboration.” — Maria Syed & Adriana Davis

To read the winning entries in full, click here.


For more information, see Archinect.

Alexis Sablone Earns Three X Games Gold Medals and An Architecture Degree from MIT

Alexis Sablone, a recent graduate from MIT’s M.S. Arch.S. Program and architecture undergrad from Columbia University shares a letter to her 80 year-old self about her path, on and off the skateboard.

Written in January 2017, Alex addresses her future self and tells the tale of her love of skating, since she was 10, when she finally got a skateboard for her birthday. After years of hard work learning to ollie, flip and grind, she went to Camp Woodward, a gymnastic skating camp in Pennsylvania where she (after many dropouts of other girls) became the final female skater at the camp. At age 12, she was sponsored by Element! but swiftly found out that competitions were not her favorite thing.

She writes to herself…

AS:It wasn’t all rosy, though. I’ll bet you still cringe at the memory of Element flying you out to California for a competition when you were 13. You were so nervous that your legs were practically shaking on the board. That’s probably why you botched your first trick and sprained your ankle. God, that was traumatic. Right then and there, you swore you’d never do another competition.

and

AS:You weren’t ready for that, not yet. You wanted to skate on your own terms, back in your garage. You didn’t want the pressure of getting money and free gear and having the sponsors expecting something in return.

So you left them. Just like that. You moved to New York City to attend Columbia University, and left all your sponsors behind.

You studied architecture at Columbia. You worked your ass off, barely slept, and loved every single second of it. Of course you still skated, but you were just doing it for you, without the weight of expectations. A fresh start.

And in 2008, when she graduated, she was presented with a crossroads—to skate professionally or work at a random desk job—which led her to win three X Games Gold Medals. With the winnings, she put herself through graduate school at MIT where she graduated with a Master of Architecture.

In her sign off, she urges her future self to “never stop creating.” Which we now extend to you!

#architecturestories #studyarchitecture

Thank you, Alexis Sablone for sharing your story and allowing us in to hear it. What an inspiration!


Excerpts pulled from the article published in The Players’ Tribune Letter to my Future Self.

 

Building Diversity Within Austin's Architecture Community

(via KUT.org)

When you think of architecture, you probably think about the style and functionality of a building. You may not always think about the people who drew up the plans. But their perspectives can help shape the way our cities look. In Austin, African-American women are hoping to diversify the field of architecture.

A couple weeks ago, Devanne Pena made a surprising discovery.

“I just became a licensed architect,” Pena said. “I found out that I am the second black woman to be licensed in Austin, Texas altogether, which is nuts.”

Pena was keeping her eye on a directory of African-American architects maintained by The University of Cincinnati, but that directory is an unofficial record. We turned to some official record-keepers to see if Pena was really the second black female architect currently working in Austin.

Glenn Garry with the Texas Board Of Architecture Examiners said Pena is set to become the third black woman architect licensed in Austin after some standard administrative procedures, but there could be even more that aren’t accounted for.

“So it looks like Ms. Pena is almost correct,” Garry said. “Our database has a field for whether you’re male or female, for what your race or ethnicity is, stuff like that. Those fields are totally optional though, so we have a lot of people who don’t answer any of that stuff, so we can’t – we don’t know.”

Still, the data does point to an overall lack of diversity in the field. Out of the more than 1,100 licensed architects in Austin, only seven reported their race as African-American.

undefinedYou may be thinking, why does any of this matter? What difference does it makes if the person designing a building is a man, a woman, or a person of color? We posed that question to Donna Carter, the first black woman architect on record to be currently licensed in Austin. “The form can be very, very important to how a community and a culture survives,” Carter said.

Donna Carter, the first practicing black female architect in Austin, says architecture provides an outlet for cultural expression and community-building.

Donna Carter, the first practicing black female architect in Austin, says architecture provides an outlet for cultural expression and community-building.

“The form can be very, very important to how a community and a culture survives,” Carter said.

To Carter, architecture is more than just technical design and planning. It’s a mode of creative expression, a way of defining your community and your idea of home. Read more