The Prince of Wales honored for his architectural patronage
His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales,
accepted The Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame
Patronage Award during a ceremony Jan. 27 at St. James’s Palace in London. (View The Prince of Wales' acceptance speech on YouTube.)
The Prince is a forceful advocate
for the maintenance of traditional building skills and sustainable urban design
and is keenly interested in how the built environment affects the quality of
people’s lives. The
Prince’s Foundation for Building Community, a charity established
personally by His Royal Highness, has led building and planning efforts in more
than 62 communities in the United Kingdom along with the United States, Africa
and Asia.
He received a bronze miniature of
the Tower of the Winds and donated the $150,000 prize to his foundation to
establish an undergraduate diploma course in sustainability and the building arts,
as part of the charity’s building-skill program. “It is an element of education
that I’ve long been desperate for my foundation to reintroduce,” Prince Charles
said at the ceremony, “and I’m thrilled that, thanks to the incredible kindness
of the Driehaus Foundation, it
will be able to do so.”
The Prince of Wales’ efforts to
create more sustainable and liveable communities, with an emphasis on putting
people’s needs at the center of the building and urban design process, dates
back more than two decades. On land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall in southern
England, the Prince established the town of Poundbury in the early 1990s based
on a master plan by architect and inaugural Richard
H. Driehaus Prize laureate Léon Krier. Poundbury is a New Urbanist town
notable for its high-density, mixed-use development, including homes and
businesses built with traditional methods and sustainable local materials,
including the market hall designed by British architect John Simpson.
The Patronage Award is the first of
its kind presented through the Richard
H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame, now in its 10th
year. The Patronage Award is a one-time honor to recognize the Prince’s
tireless commitment to traditional architecture and sustainable urban design.
“Prince Charles has put the ideals
of traditional architecture and urban design into practice around the world,”
saidMichael Lykoudis, the Francis and Kathleen
Rooney Dean of the University of Notre Dame School of
Architecture, who presented the award along with Richard H.
Driehaus. “The inspiring results — from Haiti to the Alder Hey Children’s
Hospital in Liverpool, from China to the Galapagos Islands — illuminate the power
of those ideals to create a more vibrant, beautiful and sustainable built
environment.”
Michael Graves named 2012 Driehaus Prize laureate
Michael Graves, whose celebrated career redefined the architect’s role in society, has been named the recipient of the 2012 Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame. Graves, the tenth Driehaus Prize laureate, will receive $200,000 and a bronze miniature of the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates during a March 24 ceremony in Chicago.
Graves is Founding Principal of the firm Michael Graves & Associates (MGA) and the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus at Princeton University, where he taught for 39 years. At Princeton, Graves reintroduced the principles of traditional and classical composition and also brought a dedication to urbanism to a modernist curriculum. Receiving the Rome Prize in 1960 as a scholar at the American Academy in Rome, where he is now a Trustee, Graves was influenced by “the timeless grammar” of architecture that he has applied to his own work. Members of the Driehaus Prize jury commended his commitment to the traditional city—in its human scale, complexity, and vitality—as emblematic of a time-tested sustainability.
In structures such as the Portland (Oregon) Public Services Building and Humana Corporation headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, Graves’ designs are characterized for their attention to detail and dignity. His concern for the character of his buildings extends to his interior design, the lighting, fixtures, and furniture that he regards as essential to the overall character he aspires to create.
Graves considers himself a “general practitioner.” His influential designs, extending from buildings including the iconic Denver Central Library to everyday objects such as his celebrated Alessi teakettle, reflect the breadth of his interests and the depth of his humanistic instincts. Attention to enhancing the user experience characterizes all his work, from luxury goods to products for Target Stores. The beauty and quality of ordinary objects, Graves believes, have the power to affect the soul.
Graves also views urbanism as a vital part of the built environment. His master plans impart a sense of community and place, while establishing a framework for sustainable, cohesive growth. For more than 12 years, MGA has been the campus master planner for Rice University, resulting in approximately 27 building projects, including three residential colleges for the North Campus.
“Michael Graves has enhanced not just the architecture profession with his talent and scholarship, but everyday life itself through his inspiring attention to beautiful and accessible design,” says Michael Lykoudis, Driehaus Prize Jury Chair and Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. “The quality and scope of his work have enhanced how people work, live, and interact in public and private realms, making a profound impact on American life.”
Established in 2003 through the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, the Richard H. Driehaus Prize honors lifetime contributions to traditional, classical, and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world. The Driehaus Prize represents the most significant recognition for classicism in the contemporary built environment.
In conjunction with the Driehaus Prize, writer and landscape preservationist Elizabeth Barlow Rogers was named the recipient of the 2012 Henry Hope Reed Award, which includes a $50,000 cash prize.
The award is given to an individual working outside the practice of architecture who has supported the cultivation of the traditional city, its architecture and art.
Currently president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, Rogers served as New York City’s first Central Park administrator and founding president of the Central Park Conservatory. She has since worked as a teacher, writer and lecturer. Rogers also will receive her award at the March event in Chicago.
Recipients of both awards are selected by a jury comprised of Adele Chatfield-Taylor (President of the American Academy in Rome), Robert Davis (Developer and Founder of Seaside, Florida), Richard H. Driehaus (Founder and Chairman of Driehaus Capital Management), Paul Goldberger (Architecture Critic for The New Yorker), Léon Krier (Inaugural Driehaus Prize Laureate), Michael Lykoudis (Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture), and Witold Rybczynski (Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and Architecture Critic for Slate).
November 14 and 16, 2011
2011 Driehaus Prize and Reed Award laureates to address architecture of place
The School of Architecture will host two lectures, “Architecture and Our Democratic Values,” by Robert A. Peck, commissioner of public buildings for the General Service Administration on Nov. 14 (Monday); and “Architecture and Place,” by Robert A.M. Stern, founder of Robert A.M. Stern Architects and dean of the Yale School of Architecture on Nov. 16 (Wednesday). Both lectures will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the Bond Hall Auditorium.
Peck is the 2011 winner of the School of Architecture’s $50,000 Henry Hope Reed Award and Stern is the winner of the School of Architecture’s $200,000 Richard H. Driehaus Prize, both administered by Notre Dame. As commissioner of public Buildings, Peck is responsible for 370 million square feet of government-owned and leased space, accommodating one million federal workers. He has also been president of the D.C. Preservation League, an appointee to the District of Columbia’s Board of Education and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. In “Architecture and Our Democratic Values,” Peck will address how federal buildings reflect the aspirations of the American public.
“To paraphrase Jefferson and the capital commissioners of 1791, public buildings should elevate the building arts; they should be elegant and express confidence in the future,” Peck says. “It is not about style. To paraphrase Senator Moynihan, public buildings say something about our politics. Politics in the best sense: politics as expressing our shared values.”
Robert A. M. Stern, whose influential designs have revitalized traditional architecture, will discuss “Architecture and Place.” Stern’s architecture is rooted in the principles, values and ideals of traditional architecture. His Comcast Center, a prismatic glass curtainwall office tower in Philadelphia, carries forward the proportions of the classical obelisk. His acclaimed residential tower 15 Central Park West recaptures the spirit of New York’s great pre-war apartment houses.
His current projects include the design of the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University and the Stayer Center for Business Executive Education at Notre Dame.
The $200,000 Richard H. Driehaus Prize is presented annually to a distinguished architect and represents the most significant recognition for classicism in the contemporary built environment. The Henry Hope Reed Award is given to an individual working outside the practice of architecture who has supported the cultivation of the traditional city, its architecture and art through writing, planning or promotion. It is also presented annually through the Notre Dame School of Architecture.
September 29, 30 and October 1
Architectural conference to address 30 years of Seaside, Fla.
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture will host a three-day conference titled “Seaside at 30: Lessons from the First New Urbanist Community and the Future of Traditional Town Building” Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 (Thursday to Saturday) at Bond Hall on the University’s campus. The event is open to the public and registration is required on the conference website. There is no charge for Notre Dame students and faculty.
The conference will examine the successes and failures of Seaside, Fla., by bringing together the architects, planners and builders who created it. By examining the founding of this seminal work in the history of urban design—the planning, the creation and testing of the code, and early building designs, experts will address the ongoing influence of Seaside today and look to the future of the New Urbanism movement.
Seaside is an unincorporated master-planned community on the Florida panhandle between Panama City Beach and Destin. The town has become the topic of lectures in architectural schools and housing-industry magazines, and is visited by design professionals from all over the world. It was also the setting for the 1998 satirical film “The Truman Show.”
Robert Davis, Seaside founder and developer; Andrés Duany, Seaside’s first architect and town planner; and Léon Krier, architect and master-plan consultant, will deliver keynote addresses at 5 p.m. Thursday in 104 Bond Hall. It will be followed by the launch of the Seaside Research Portal, an online resource for students and enthusiasts of architecture, urban design, planning and real estate that will serve as a digital archive of Seaside featuring maps, plans and images in a variety of media.
Friday’s presenters include Dhiru Thadani, a practicing architect, urban designer, educator and author of “The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary;” Scott Merrill, principal, Merrill, Pastor & Colgan Architects; and Christopher Leinberger, a land-use strategist, developer, researcher and author.
Saturday’s presenters include Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a partner in the firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company and dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture; Daniel Parolek, a 1995 Notre Dame graduate, architect and urbanist committed to creating walkable, sustainable places; and Marianne Cusato, a 1997 Notre Dame graduate well known for her work on the Katrina Cottages and ranked the No. 4 most influential person in the home building industry in Builder magazine’s annual “Power on 50” list.
Friday, June 10 through Sunday, June 11, 2011
Conference to address the legacy of 16th-century architect Andrea Palladio
The University of Notre Dame will host a three-day conference titled “From Vernacular to Classical: The Perpetual Modernity of Palladio” Friday, June 10th through Sunday, June 12th at Bond Hall, home of the School of Architecture and Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art. Registration is required to attend.
The conference will bring together scholars, practitioners, educators, and students from various disciplines, to explore how the Palladian tradition inspires the evolution of classical architecture.
One of the most influential architects in history, 16th-century Italian Andrea Palladio’s impact is evident throughout the United States. Buildings such as the White House, the U. S. Capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the National Gallery of Art bear his imprint. Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home, Monticello, is modeled after Palladio’s famed Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, Italy. Conference participants will reconnect Palladian ideals to the living tradition that has informed these icons of American democracy and continue to shape vital paradigms for sustainable architecture and urbanism.
Two exhibitions, “Palladio and his Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey” at the University of Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art and the “New Palladians,” an exhibition of 50 international classical architects’ work in the Bond Hall Gallery, also will be held in conjunction with the conference.
For more information on how to register, please visit http://architecture.nd.edu/palladio.aspx or call 574-631-2872 .
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
School of Architecture Studios Receive Top Honors at CNU Charter Awards
The School of Architecture received top honors from the 11th annual Congress for the New Urbanism Charter Awards. In the academic competition, Professor Philip Bess urban-design studio "Strategies for Sustainable Skaneateles" in central New York State received the grand prize. The team of six graduate students will receive $1000 from The Oram Foundation Inc./Fund for the Environment and Urban Life. Cindy Michel, a 2010 School of Architecture graduate, received the Academic Award for her graduate thesis project "From Settlement to City: A Masterplan for Cap-Haitien, Haiti," a case study examining urban-design problems in dense, newly built settlements in developing countries.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Thursday, June 2 at the 19th annual Congress for the New Urbanism in Madison, Wisconsin. The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is the leading organization promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhood development, sustainable communities and healthier living conditions. For nearly 20 years, CNU members have used the principles in its charter to promote the hallmarks of New Urbanism, including: livable streets arranged in compact, walkable blocks; a range of housing choices to serve people of diverse ages and income levels; Schools, stores and other nearby destinations reachable by walking, bicycling or transit service; an affirming, human-scaled public realm where appropriately designed buildings define and enliven streets and other public spaces.
For more information about the 2011 Charter Awards and to view images of the award-winning projects, visit www.cnu.org/awards.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Driehaus Prize winner Rafael Manzano Martos to lecture on Mudéjar architecture
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture will host the annual Driehaus Prize Lecture featuring 2010 laureate, Spanish architect Rafael Manzano Martos, on Nov. 17 (Wednesday).
Manzano’s lecture, “Mudéjar Architecture: Balance Between East and West, ” will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Room 104 of Bond Hall. A reception will follow in the Bond Hall Gallery.
Mudéjar architecture blends Muslim and Christian influences used primarily during the 12th century on the Iberian Peninsula. With expertise in this style and a command of Western and Islamic vernaculars, Manzano has designed hotels, commercial buildings, homes and residential complexes throughout Spain and the Middle East. His best-known work includes state homes for Chueca Goitia in Seville and Curro Romero in Marbella (now a Julio Iglesias property). His fluency in Islamic style informs designs for a hotel in Mosul, Iraq, and a hotel resort and shopping district in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Born in Cádiz, Spain, Manzano’s career has included building restoration, urban planning and teaching, in addition to his architectural work. From 1970 to 1991, Manzano served as the director-curator and governor of the Alcázar of Seville, a royal palace. Originally a Moorish fort, the Alcázar is one of the finest enduring examples of Mudéjar architecture.
The Richard H. Driehaus Prize, established in 2003 through the Notre Dame School of Architecture, honors the best practitioners of traditional, classical and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world. The $200,000 prize represents the most significant recognition for classicism in the contemporary built environment.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Colloquium to address durability in construction
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture will host a three-day colloquium, “Durability in Construction,” Tuesday to Thursday (Oct. 26 to 28) at Bond Hall. The event is free and open to the public. Continuing education credits will be offered to architects free of charge.
For millennia, durability was central to the practice of architecture; buildings were made to last as long as possible, with materials and techniques chosen toward that end. Today short-lifespan construction has become the norm. Increasing the lifespan of buildings is crucial to environmental sustainability. This colloquium will focus on the importance of enduring architecture and review traditional methods from which buildings may benefit today.
British architect John Simpson will deliver the keynote address Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in 104 Bond Hall. Simpson’s Carhart Mansion in Manhattan, completed in 2005, is the first building to employ load-bearing masonry in New York since the 1960s.
Wednesday’s presenters include New York architect Richard Sammons, London architect Alireza Sagharchi, and former chair of the School of Architecture Thomas Gordon Smith. Thursday’s presenters include Portuguese architect Jose Cornelio da Silva, and Jorge Hernandez, who recently completed the Coral Gables Museum, a LEED-certified renovation and addition to a National Register building.
For more information, please visit the School of Architecture’s event page.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
School of Architecture sponsors third annual Accessibility Awareness Day
Raising awareness about the challenges faced by people with physical disabilities and increasing architecture students’ awareness of accessible design in the context of daily student life on the University of Notre Dame campus is the purpose of the third annual Accessibility Awareness Day on Friday (Aug. 27).
Sponsored by the Notre Dame School of Architecture, with the support of the Office of the University Architect and Notre Dame Disability Services, the day-long program is a component of the University’s commitment to accessibility.
Senior architecture students will be divided into three groups: one with crutches, one with wheelchairs, and one with blindfolds and canes. They will navigate the campus and participate in various day-to-day activities such as riding the shuttle, attending class, and using public restrooms. The day will conclude with a lecture on designing for compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
“Accessibility Awareness Day is intended is to make architecture students aware of the barriers that people with disabilities can face while distinguishing between Universal Accessible Design and minimum building and accessibility code requirements,” says Doug Marsh, associate vice president and University architect.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Notre Dame architect Duncan Stroik receives Tucker Award for chapel design
Duncan Stroik, associate professor in the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, has received a 2010 Tucker Design Award from the Building Stone Institute.
Stroik received the award for his design of the Chapel of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif.
According to the jurors who selected Stroik’s design for the award, the chapel is “a magnificent building that successfully blends many sources of architectural vocabulary. The detailing and material selections are amazing, particularly in the meticulous choice and use of stone types.”
The biennial Tucker Awards honor the achievement of “excellence in the use of natural stone in concept design and construction.”
Stroik, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1990, has a portfolio which includes numerous civic, residential and collegiate buildings, but his preference is church design. He serves as director of the Institute for Sacred Architecture, a non-profit organization of architects, clergy, educators and lay people interested in contemporary church architecture, and he edits the institute’s Sacred Architecture Journal.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Notre Dame Architecture Students Begin Building Ugandan School
University of Notre Dame School of Architecture students have teamed up with Building Tomorrow, Inc. (BT) to design, fund and build a much-needed school in the Kiboga district of Uganda, Africa. They leave this week to begin construction.
BT is an international social-profit organization that encourages youth philanthropy to build educational infrastructure projects for under-served children in sub-Saharan Africa. BT currently works in Uganda, identifying areas with the greatest number of children with the least access to a primary school.
Notre Dame’s involvement began last year when fifth-year School of Architecture student Elijah Pearce attended a talk by BT president, George Srour, and decided to recruit fellow students to join their efforts. Over the next year Pearce, with the generous funding of Matthew and Joyce Walsh, brought together a group of six Notre Dame Architecture students to build the new school.
“With this project we were acting on two fronts,” Pearce said. “We were trying to fundraise for a school in an underserved area of Uganda, and we were also looking, as architects, to see how we could improve the school’s design.”
The students’ design takes advantage of cross breezes to cool the building naturally. It is also oriented for optimal solar angles, minimizing the need for heating. The school’s roof serves to collect water, and vent details have been added to the walls to enhance the design visually while improving the overall ventilation system. Perhaps most significantly, the students will be making and building with newly-adopted interlocking soil-stabilizing block (ISSB), bricks they will produce on site entirely from local materials that reduce the need for mortar. Local climate and sustainability informs every aspect of the students’ design.
The school, to be named the Academy of Kyeitabya, will be BT’s ninth in Uganda. Once open, the BT Academy of Kyeitabya will join the nearly-completed BT Academy of Sentigi as the second location supported by Notre Dame.
When talking about the project, the students emphasize the unique opportunity to give back through architecture.
“We’ve been given a tremendous educational gift, and can now make a practical application of what we’ve learned here at Notre Dame,” said fifth-year student Mallory Meecham.
Adds fellow student Tim Reidy, “Nobody felt obligated to take part in this project. Nobody needed course credits. But we all felt obligated through our conscience.”
Updates from the students’ time in Kyeitabya are available online at www.buildingtomorrow.org/blog.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Architecture Professor Gives Commencement Address at the American College of the Building Arts
Philip Bess, director of graduate studies at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, delivered the commencement address May 22 (Saturday) at the American College of the Building Arts in Charleston, S.C.
A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 2004, Bess received his master of architecture degree from the University of Virginia in 1981 after receiving a master’s degree in church history from Harvard and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Whittier College.
He has directed the School of Architecture’s graduate program since his arrival at Notre Dame, in addition to teaching graduate courses in urban design and urban theory. In recent years his graduate urban design studio has produced detailed proposals for Lewis University in Romeoville, Ill.; and master plans and town plans for Cooperstown, N.Y.; Northampton, Mass.; and most recently, Ventura, Calif.
Bess also works as a design consultant for municipalities, architects and community development corporations, working through the office of Thursday Associates. From 1987 to 1988 he was the director and principal designer of the Urban Baseball Park Design Project of the Society for American Baseball Research. In August 2000 he directed and coordinated the ultimately successful “Save Fenway Park!” design charrette in Boston.
He lectures widely, and is the author of numerous articles as well as three books: “City Baseball Magic: Plain Talk and Uncommon Sense About Cities and Baseball Parks” (1989); “Inland Architecture: Subterranean Essays on Moral Order and Formal Order in Chicago” (2000); and most recently “Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred” (2007).
Friday, April 23, 2010
Professor Receives Award for Fostering "Humane Values"
Steven Semes, associate professor at the School of Architecture and academic director of its Rome Studies Program, has been named the 2010 recipient of the Clem Labine Award. Sponsored by Restore Media, publisher of Traditional Building and Period Homes magazines, the Labine Award goes to the person who has done the most to “foster humane values in the built environment.”
Semes will be honored Oct. 21 in Chicago at the Restore Media Awards Dinner. The ceremony, which will also honor the 2010 Palladio Award winners, is part of the Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference, which will be held Oct. 20 to 23.
Semes received the award for his work in preservation and sensitive design, as well as his articles, blogs, lectures and his 2009 book, “The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and Historic Preservation,” which argues context matters and that new buildings and additions to old buildings should be harmonious with their neighbors.
“The goal of the award is to honor an individual who, over an extended period of time, has demonstrated a personal commitment to infusing humane values into the creation of public and urban spaces,” says Clem Labine, founder of Traditional Building, Period Homes and Old-House Journal. “The award’s underlying conviction is that the humanist principles of the Classical tradition are essential to creating a civil society.”
Co-chairs of the Award Selection Committee Martha McDonald, editor of Traditional Building magazine, and Will Holloway, editor of Period Homes magazine said Semes’ book is a major development in urban theory, and sets forth new criteria for what is appropriate in the creation of people-friendly civic spaces.
A practicing architect for more than 30 years, Semes has designed a wide variety of projects for preservation and new construction throughout the United States. He is also the author of “The Architecture of the Classical Interior” and a contributor to “The Elements of Classical Architecture.” His essays and reviews have appeared in the National Trust Forum Journal, Traditional Building, Period Homes, and American Arts Quarterly. He is a Fellow Emeritus of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Rafael Manzano Martos to Receive 2010 Richard H. Driehaus Prize
Rafael Manzano Martos, a Spanish architect known for his distinctive use of the Mudéjar style, will receive the 2010 Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture at a ceremony March 27 in Chicago.
The $200,000 Driehaus Prize, presented annually to a distinguished classical architect, represents the largest recognition of classicism in the contemporary built environment. In conjunction with the Driehaus Prize, legendary Yale professor and preservationist Vincent J. Scully will receive the $50,000 Henry Hope Reed Award.
Manzano’s work spans cultures. Mudéjar emerged as a style blending Muslim and Christian influences in the 12th century on the Iberian Peninsula. With expertise in this style and a command of the Western and Islamic vernaculars, Manzano has designed hotels and other commercial buildings, along with homes and residential complexes throughout Spain and the Middle East. His best-known work includes state homes for Chueca Goitia in Seville and Curro Romero in Marbella (now a Julio Iglasias property). His fluency in Islamic style is evident in his designs for a hotel in Mosul, Iraq, and a hotel resort and shopping district in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A manor house for Faisal Hassan Jawal in Bahrain currently is under construction.
Born in Cádiz, Spain, in 1936, Manzano received his doctoral degree from the Architecture School of Madrid in 1963. His career has included building restoration, urban planning and teaching, in addition to his architectural work. From 1970 to 1991, Manzano served as the director-curator and governor of the Alcázar of Seville, a royal palace. Originally a Moorish fort, the Alcázar is one of the best remaining examples of Mudéjar architecture. While in this role, Manzano restored the al-Muwarak Domestic Palace, the residence of al-Mutamid in Seville, on the premises of the Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade). The Casa, which dealt with legal disputes on trade with the Americas, includes a chapel where Christopher Columbus met with Ferdinand and Isabella after his second voyage. Today Manzano teaches at the Seville Superior Technical School of Architecture.
Notre Dame also announces the Henry Hope Reed Award laureate, Vincent J. Scully.
Henry Hope Reed Award laureate Vincent J. Scully enrolled at Yale at age 16, beginning an association that has endured for more than 70 years. Scully, Yale’s Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, has become a university icon. One of its most popular and influential lecturers, Scully is a champion of architectural preservation. Since the “urban renewal” efforts of the 1960s and 70s, he has condemned sprawl and advocated livable and sustainable urban design. The author of more than 20 books, Scully is a trustee emeritus of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor the U.S. bestows on artists and patrons.
Established in 2003 through the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, the Richard H. Driehaus Prize honors the best practitioners of traditional, classical and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world. The Henry Hope Reed Award recognizes achievement in the promotion and preservation of those ideals among people who work outside the architecture field. Together, with the $200,000 Driehaus Prize, the $50,000 Reed Award represents the most significant recognition for classicism in the contemporary built environment.
Recipients were selected by a jury comprised of Richard H. Driehaus, founder and chairman of Driehaus Capital Management; Michael Lykoudis, Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the Notre Dame School of Architecture; Robert Davis, developer and founder of Seaside, Fla.; Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker; David M. Schwarz, principal of David M. Schwarz/Architectural Services, Inc; Adele Chatfield-Taylor, president of the American Academy in Rome; and Léon Krier, inaugural Driehaus Prize Laureate.
December 14, 2009
Architecture students take second place in Brown to Green design competition
A team of six University of Notre Dame School of Architecture graduate students earned second prize in a design competition sponsored by the Ed Bacon Foundation.
The award-winning entry, submitted by Keith Kirley, Cindy Michel, Leon Li, Zeke Balan, Clayton Vance and C.J. Howard, earned the team a $1,500 prize at a ceremony held Dec. 8 at the Center for Architecture in Philadelphia. The students proposed a mixed-use development for an existing brownfield site along the Schuylkill River south of the University of Pennsylvania campus.
“We worked to address several key issues," Kirley said, "including revitalizing the contaminated site and providing multiple points of access to the new riverfront park.”
The Philadelphia-based non-profit Ed Bacon Foundation is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the vision of the city’s renowned planner, Edmund N. Bacon. This year’s competition, “Brown to Green: An Urban Sustainability Design Challenge,” required entrants to develop a sustainable solution for South Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry Crescent industrial brownfield site.
The group produced a master plan, site analyses, a sustainable, walkable mixed-use design strategy, and generated hand-drafted, watercolor perspectives and elevations. The resulting plan included a riverfront park, residential, commercial and retail buildings, an outdoor theater, baseball field, recreational canal, and a large piazza surrounded by public buildings and a colonnaded open market area.
The award-winning submission boards are available for viewing on the Web.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Reception to be Held October 20th to Inaugurate Chicago Studio
A reception for alumni and friends of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Notre Dame’s Santa Building, downtown Chicago. The School recently signed a lease on studio space on the mezzanine level. At the moment, it will be used only for field-trip instruction, but the School plans to be more engaged in the city. The space affords the opportunity to hold design reviews in Chicago with prominent architects and developers from the city.
September 17, 2009
Sustainable architecture: The “Original Green”
Nowadays, it seems like everyone is “going green.” Working toward environmentally-friendly and energy-saving solutions has never been more in style. From an architect’s perspective, however, the idea of sustainability is nothing new. In fact, it’s one of the oldest concepts in the book.
“Originally, before the Industrial Revolution, architects had no choice but to build ‘green,’ ” said Michael Lykoudis, Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture. “They had to go with the energy resources naturally available to heat and cool buildings.”
What was old has become new again, and the School of Architecture – positioning itself as the “Original Green” – is leading the charge back to the future of sustainable building.
Students learn to use design techniques and regional materials that enhance efficiency, Lykoudis explains. And the emphasis goes beyond simple solutions and the invention of more proficient mechanisms, such as bamboo flooring or other products intended to reduce a structure’s impact on the environment.
“That is only a small part of true sustainability,” says Lykoudis, who believes buildings must be made to last hundreds of years, not 20, and that they must take full advantage of natural ventilation and lighting. “We also need more sustainable communities, not just buildings. The carbon footprint of buildings is irrelevant if you have to drive everywhere you go.”
The School of Architecture is known for its commitment to traditional and classical architecture, which go hand-in-hand with sustainability, says Lykoudis.
“They work with a given climate,” he said, “rather than against it, to create more sustainable and comfortable buildings, using local materials and time-tested construction techniques to minimize the need for artificial heating and cooling.”
By drawing on success stories from the distant past, proponents of traditional and classical building and design are combining the best of both worlds – ancient ingenuity and the modern-day desire for sustainability.
“It’s similar to the way classical building methods enhanced acoustics before the advent of speaker systems,” Lykoudis offers as an example. “At the theater of Epidaurus, built around the 3rd century B.C., you could drop a quarter on stage and hear it from each of the 14,000 seats. Maintaining the ingenuity of traditional design in the modern age promotes sustainability, reducing the use of fossil fuels.”
And it isn’t just about individual buildings; the “Original Green” concept also extends to entire cities, where community planning can prevent sprawl by creating towns and neighborhoods where everything is within walking distance so cars, and thereby fossil fuels, are less necessary.
In learning these concepts, Notre Dame students are exposed to a broad range of perspectives through their experience at the School of Architecture.
“Our students interact with accomplished architects, development professionals and community leaders across the nation and abroad, contributing directly to the urban evolution of cities,” Lykoudis says. “That means much more than simply designing a new building.”
Recent student projects have included a four-week studio course this summer where participants established a master plan for a central area along the River Avon in Bath, England, that incorporated the city’s history. A student organization called Students for New Urbanism also recently worked with South Bend’s Near Northwest Neighborhood Association to develop proposals for future zoning and growth in the city.
“Civic responsibility demands respect for traditions that have endured, recognition of how a new building or urban plan will affect the quality of life for people in the community now, and the long-term impact on our posterity,” Lykoudis says. “The curriculum strives to instill those values in our students.”
Monday, September 7, 2009
The Foremost Authority on Islamic Architecture to Lecture on September 14th
Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil, the 2009 recipient of The Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture, will lecture on his life’s work on Monday, September 14th at 4:30 p.m. at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, 104 Bond Hall. Considered the foremost authority on Islamic architecture, El-Wakil has designed mosques, palaces, government buildings and houses, mostly in the Middle East. Selecting an Egyptian architect whose work reflects a non-Western tradition illustrated the variety and cultural fluency of classical architecture. “Classical architecture is the best that a tradition produces,” says Michael Lykoudis, Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the School of Architecture. “Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil has reawakened an awareness of the value of traditional Islamic heritage, which in turn reflects the reach of tradition from every civilized continent.”
El-Wakil’s work — which includes the Halawa House in Agamy, Egypt, for which he won his first Aga Khan Award for Architecture; the residence of Ahmed Sulaiman in Jeddah; and the Quba Mosque in Medina — celebrates the principles of Islamic architecture and culture while reflecting the regional character and locality in which each structure resides. He works with traditional design principles that use indigenous materials and processes, and integrates them with contemporary technology to create familiar, functional and environmentally sustainable structures that are both timeless and for our time.
The prominent King Saud Mosque in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia exemplifies El-Wakil’s traditional craftsmanship. Without use of concrete, El-Wakil created a magnificent indigenous brick dome with a diameter of 20 meters and a peak height of 40 meters. In 1985, at the request of The Prince of Wales, El-Wakil designed the Oxford University Centre for Islamic Studies. Integrating Islamic design concepts with traditional Oxford architecture was central to the project. The resulting complex is one of the only contemporary structures on campus devoid of concrete and steel. El-Wakil is currently working on three projects in Beirut, Lebanon, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as a master planning project in Qatar that integrates the best in contemporary low-energy planning with climate-tempered Islamic built forms.
El-Wakil was awarded the School of Architecture’s seventh annual Richard H. Driehaus Prize on March 28 at the John B. Murphy Memorial Auditorium in Chicago. The $200,000 annual award is endowed by Richard H. Driehaus, the founder and chairman of Driehaus Capital Management in Chicago, to honor an outstanding architect whose work applies the principles of classicism, including sensitivity to the historic continuum, the fostering of community, and consideration of the impact to the built and natural environment.
Wednesday, August 26
School of Architecture Sponsors Second-Annual Accessibility Awareness Day
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, with the support of the Office of the University Architect, Disability Services and LCM Architects will host a day-long program on Wednesday, September 2 to raise awareness about the challenges faced by people with physical disabilities.
The program is designed to increase architecture students’ awareness of the many facets of accessible design in the context of daily student life on the Notre Dame campus. Senior architecture students will be divided into three groups: one with crutches, one with wheelchairs and one with blindfolds and canes. They will navigate the campus and participate in various day-to-day activities such as riding the shuttle, attending class and using public restrooms. Students will follow their regular schedules in the morning, navigate Notre Dame Stadium in the afternoon and conclude the day with a lecture on designing for compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The lecture given by Jack Catlin and Gigi McCabe-Miele of LCM Architects, a Chicago-based firm that consults nationally on ADA compliance, begins at 3:30 p.m. in Room 104 Bond Hall. It is open to the public.
The intention of the program, said Doug Marsh, associate vice president and university architect, is to make architecture students aware of the barriers that people with disabilities can face while distinguishing between Universal Accessible Design and minimum building and accessibility code requirements. Marsh said that this effort is a component of the university’s commitment to accessibility.
Scott Howland, coordinator of Disability Services at Notre Dame’s Sara Bea Learning Center for Students with Disabilities, said the best way to provide an environment that is accessible to all is at the design stage. Howland said it is a good way to make architecture students more aware of the things they can do to incorporate universal design.