Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Philip Bess received financial support from the Historical Society of Boston for a two-year project to “re-engage” the 1909 Plan of Chicago, one of the most noted documents in urban-planning history, more familiarly known as the Burnham Plan after its author, Daniel H. Burnham. Funded through the Historical Society of Boston’s Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs Program, Bess’s project proposes to critically employ the Plan of Chicago as both a critique of present-day Chicago and as an authoritative reference point for a new visionary proposal for the city approximately 100 years into the future, which he has tentatively titled Our Lady’s Plan of Chicago 2109. Bess says the 2109 Plan will look at the “Catholic and classical traditions of humanist architecture and urbanism to engage the architectural, urban, environmental and cultural challenges of our time.”
Prof. Aimee Buccellato has received two awards from the Office of Research’s competitive Faculty Research Support Program for her work developing a digital design and analysis tool for sustainable building called The GreenScale. Buccellato’s effort, with Charles Vardeman of Notre Dame’s Center for Research Computing and Prof. Sam Paolucci of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, was adopted last year by the Engineering, Science, Technology, and Entrepreneurship Excellence Masters (ESTEEM) Program through the College of Engineering and the Mendoza College of Business to foster collaboration with the University’s Office of Technology Transfer and bring software to market.
Prof. Krupali Krusche also received a number of grants from the Office of Research, Kellogg Institute, and Center for Undergraduate Scholarship and Research to support the work of Digital Historic Architectural Research and Material Analysis or DHARMA for research on the sacred sites the Roman Forum and the Tombs on the Yamuna River, Agra, India. Krusche has partnered with UNESCO, World Heritage Center, and the ministries for archeological conservation in Italy and India for these projects. A separate grant was awarded to support new research in the field of 3D mapping of imagery in partnership with Dr. Christopher Sweet from Center of Research Computing. The results will be part of an exhibit at the Roman Forum in 2014.