What's the Mission? Where's the Money? Planning in Service of the Mission

Friday, February 11th is the Early-Bird Registration deadline for the Regional Conference, which will be held March 16th-18th at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Register now and pay $50 less than the Regular registration rate.

There isn't much time left to reserve accommodations at discounted conference rates either. The hotel reservation deadline is February 16th so, if you haven't already done so, reserve now. 

Spring Conference Co-Chairs Mina Amundsen of Cornell University, Bob Hicks of Symmes Maini & McKee Associates, and Debi McDonald of Cannon Design, and Local Host Chair Tom Huf of the University of Massachusetts have all been working hard to plan a great conference. Many firms in the region have been helping to make the event possible by providing generous sponsorship support.

Learn about the details and register at the conference homepage. We hope you can attend!

Two SCUP North Atlantic Regional Council members are among four prominent university architects interviewed for the article, How to Win More University Projects, in the January issue of Building Design + Construction magazine. Pamela Palmer Delphenich, FAIA, Director, Campus Planning and Design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Alexandria Carolyn Roe, AIA, Director of University Planning at the University of Connecticut contributed their observations and suggestions. Read the article on the BD+C website.

Thursday, November 4, 2010: 7:30-9:30am

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) New York is sponsoring a panel discussion, which will focus on the ambitious current expansion plans of Columbia, New York University and Fordham, and their role in regional economic development. Scheduled as panelists are: Lori Mazor, Associate Vice President for Planning and Design, New York University; Philip Pitruzzello, Vice President, Manahttanville Construction, Columbia University; and Brian Byrne, Vice President for Lincoln Center, Fordham University.

The event will be held at the office of Shearman & Sterling, LLP at 599 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY.

For more details and registration information, visit the ULI NY event webpage.

From STEM to STEAM - Keeping the Arts in the Instruction of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Troy, New York

Registration is open for the North Atlantic Region's exciting upcoming one-day conference at Rensselaer. Conference Co-Chairs and Regional Council members Bob Joy and Tom Rathbone have assembled a great program. Our sessions will be held in the dramatic Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), designed by the renowned British firm Grimshaw Architects with Davis Brody Bond Aedas. Don't miss out!

For full details including registration, and travel information, visit the Conference Website

Lawrence Biemiller, of The Chronicle, writes about the University of Cincinnati's Aronoff Center for Design and Art, which is about to be renovated - only 14 years after its construction. One big issue: What color will we paint it? Oh, and it's got some water problems, too. 

SCUPer Mary Beth McGrew, the University of Cincinnati's architect is interviewed for this piece, and there is also a photo of her (see below). She is the local hosts committee chair for SCUP's 2010 North Central Regional Conference, 2020 Vision: Planning for the Future, October 25–27, in Cincinnati. This and many other buildings will be featured in various campus tours. The program is outstanding, you can download a PDF of the final program here. Onsite registration for the event will be available.

More from the article:

The problem here is that the building, an icon of architecture's "deconstructionist" movement, is deconstructing itself—literally coming apart at the seams because moisture has penetrated the "exterior insulating finishing system," as it's called, that makes up much of the angled facade. Now its dull, weather-stained wall panels are peeling away from windows and rooflines, and boils and rot mar the edges of some walls in busy locations. Attempts to correct the moisture problem by adding weep holes to drain away water didn't help. Nor did students, some of whom took to tossing rocks at the walls to see if the rocks would stick. 

Other early applications of the same finishing system, which consists of layers of foam insulation and fiberglass mesh beneath a top coat applied in different textures and colors, have caused similar problems for numerous buildings, from houses to office towers, although not every structure that uses the system has had problems. Mary Beth McGrew, Cincinnati's university architect since 2006, says the system was chosen for the Aronoff Center because it was about $2-million cheaper than the colored tiles Mr. Eisenman originally envisioned. But selecting an unproven technology for a structure as complex as this one was not, in retrospect, a good idea, Ms. McGrew says.

 

The University of Oregon is engaging in a big-stakes transformation that challenges assumptions about what is a public and what is a private institution. From this page, you can download an executive summary, or the entire white paper, "Preserving Our Public Mission Through a New Partnership With the State." Selected paragraphs:

Many states across America, including Oregon, are struggling with the current higher education paradox—a broad consensus, fueled by the lessons of our own history, that postsecondary opportunity is critical to our collective prosperity, but challenged to sustain the investments needed in public higher education to support such prosperity. As a result of this paradox, state policies have been adopted across the United States that have fundamentally restructured public higher education systems as states and their public institutions negotiate a new balance of autonomy and accountability ... .

In Oregon, there is growing consensus that the state must move aggressively to enact real reform that supports our collective goal to help more Oregonians earn college degrees—reform that fundamentally changes the state’s role so that each institution is better able to fulfill its public mission through increased autonomy and greater accountability to meet the state’s needs ... .

At the University of Oregon, discussions about how we can better serve the state, and enhance our capacity to meet our public responsibility are well under way and include faculty members, students, staff members, alumni, and other stakeholders. We hold a collective view, joined by the University of Oregon Foundation and the University of Oregon Alumni Association Board of Directors, that the University of Oregon must continue to meet its responsibilities as a public university despite the funding environment that makes it difficult to do so. However, to accomplish this goal we need fundamental change to the governance and funding structure of our public university system. The university’s future is fundamentally predicated on our ability to enhance our capacity to provide greater educational opportunities through increased flexibility, autonomy, and stable funding support from the state ... .

If you find this item to be of interest, then you need to be checking out SCUP's Pacific Region's annual conference next spring: Inspiring Community, March 21–23, 2011 at Seattle University.

Consider the case of Lowell, Mass., located on the banks of the Merrimack and Concord rivers and once coined mill city. Named as one of five “innovative cities” by the Innovative Cities consortium, the City of Lowell’s dramatic reversal of fortune was driven by lean manufacturing and, significantly, a robust appetite for commercial and retail development, cultural diversity, and community engagement. The key ingredient in Lowell was that business and civic leaders united behind a co-development strategy, attracted investment from outside the community and leveraged capital financing for building out town/gown infrastructure, like sports stadiums, residential commons, and state-of-the-art student fitness and recreation centers.

A recent USA Today feature reported on two types of recession-proof economies: the first, state capitals and the second, collegetowns. In these latter cities, higher education institutions created transportation linkages, river walks, bike paths and pedestrian pathways to guide, inform, and enhance the urban life experience. Increasingly, Americans are seeking out these river mill collegetowns as powerful options for retail, hospitality, and ecotourism investment and as wise choices to live, learn, start a business and raise a family. This new wave of urban homesteaders has learned that collegetowns are now lifelong destinations and more than temporary undergraduate residences.

You would expect Yale to do a good job on a sustainability plan. Use the comments box, below, to let you know what you think of this one.

The Yale Sustainability Strategic Plan is a framework of goals and targets designed to advance Yale’s efforts over the next three years (2010-2013). The Plan recognizes the complexity of the University as an organization: the campus serves as a living laboratory, work place, learning environment, home, cultural repository, research enterprise, and more.

This sustainability framework deliberately focuses on campus and administrative systems in an effort to strengthen the foundation of Yale’s sustainability commitment. Our success in this endeavor depends upon leadership at the individual, unit, and institutional levels. We must work together and embrace each of the goals as a community effort, not solely a unit commitment.

We missed this article from the Village Voice when it was published in late July. It's a nice survey of the various campus building projects in New York City, with some introspective commentary. 

But will these schools really need all of this space once it comes online? Ten years from now, will we be downloading courses via Facebook apps onto iPads? Could all that classroom space end up being about as useful as the new home once planned for the New York Stock Exchange? In 2002, the Big Board walked away from a $1.1 billion deal with the city, realizing advances in technology meant it no longer needed a physical trading floor.

It’s easy to understand why New York’s universities are optimistic. Last year, NYU saw a record 38,000 applications for freshman admission, four times what it received 20 years ago. Nationwide, college enrollment is predicted to grow 13 percent by 2018, but the U.S. Department of Education cautions that its forecast doesn’t factor in such potentially disruptive forces as the rising cost of college, the changing economic value of a degree, and “the impact of distance learning due to technological changes.”

"Very little about the American classroom has changed since Laura Ingalls sat in one more than a century ago. In her school, children sat in a rectangular room at rows of desks, a teacher up front. At most American schools, they still do." Slate magazine's got a contest going on until the end of October. It is asking people to describe or design the ideal fifth-grade classroom for today, This article describes the contest and spends some time critizing the failure to markedly change classroom design. "Education has changed even if the room has not, and if you go into most schools, you are likely to see teachers and students chafing against the rectangle."