Ph.D. in Architecture / Current Student Research and Awards
Ph.D. Research
Michael Abrahamson
mtabraha@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Claire Zimmerman
Nu Ri Bae
nuri@umich.edu
Specialization: Building Technology
Advisor: Prof. Jong-Jin Kim
Aysu Berk
aysuberk@umich.edu
Specialization: Structures and Materials in Building Technology
Advisor: Prof. Harry Giles
Organic forms, generation of structural forms, material and structural integration
Niloufar Emami
nemami@umich.edu
Specialization: Building Technology
Advisor: Prof. Harry Giles
Sina Esteky
sinaest@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Combined doctoral studies with the Ross School of Business (Ph.D. in Business Administration - Marketing)
Advisors: Prof. Jean Wineman (Architecture), Prof. Aradhna Krishna (Business Administration)
esteky.com
My research interests fall broadly into the category of spatial cognition and spatial judgement in built environments. More specifically, I am interested in studying the cognitive processing and behavioral responses of consumers in complex designed settings such as shopping malls, airports, museums, hospitals and urban environments. My research draws on literature in cognitive and social psychology, marketing and design studies. Motivated by current research across these fields, I study how various spatial and sensory attributes influence consumers' evaluation of spaces, as well as their choices and actions.
Justin Ferguson
justinmf@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Ginda Groat
Dissertation Committee: Lina Groat, Chair; Gavin Shatkin, Cognate; Jean Wineman, and Joongsub Kim (LTU)
Working Title
"Collaborative Practices of Architects & Laypeople: exploring perceptions and outcomes of participatory design"
Research and Professional Interests: Participatory Design, Community Design Centers, Urban Design and Social Housing, Adaptive Reuse, Post Occupancy Evaluation, and the Architect / Suburban Divide
Sam Grabowska
grabowss@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Linda Groat and Prof. Jason De Leon
www.manifolding.com
My research sets out to investigate the material phenomenology of heterotopias (Foucault 1967), the "other spaces" of people who are in transition between here and there in a state of uncertainty. Since the 1990s, Arizona has been the busiest crossing point along the Mexico-US border for both undocumented migrants and marijuana drug mules. Their long walks across the desert are largely a result of strategies implemented by the US, in particular the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Border Patrol. These strategies, known as "the funnel effect" and "lateral deportation," work to push clandestine border crossers away from cities and ports of entry into outlying expanses of unsettled landscape. The result is that migrants and smugglers are displaced while their bodies are put into direct contact with an inhospitable and threatening natural environment which all too often results in death. In response to these strategies, border crossers make places to avoid detection and capture and to survive the brutality of the desert. Using a mixed-method approach, this case study will examine the landscape of power created by US agencies, the informal architectures that are built in the desert, the artifacts of material culture that are left behind by migrants and smugglers, and the narratives and bodily experiences of border crossing.
Recent Work:
- Conference Paper: Unmaking Borders Into Boundaries: Authentic Placemaking in the 21st Century. EDRA 43: Emergent Placemaking, Seattle, Washington. June, 2012.
Erin Hamilton
emham@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Linda Groat
Matthew Heins
mheins@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Robert Fishman
My main fields of interest are urban design and infrastructure. I focus in particular on the role of standards, typologies, regulations, codes, systems and technologies in the built environment. Such factors make a powerful (though often overlooked) impact on the space and character of our cities, landscapes and buildings, and have been crucial to the process of "modernization" in the contemporary era and recent past. My ongoing dissertation is titled "The Shipping Container and the Globalization of American Infrastructure"; it examines how the shipping container, a worldwide standard in terms of its spatial dimensions and physical characteristics, has entered into and altered the American transportation infrastructure. I am also interested in urban growth in developing countries, the character of American sprawl, the history of urban form, and new trends and methodologies in urban design.
Recent Work:
- Conference Paper: "The Quiet Revolution of the Shipping Container," Design/History/Revolution conference, The New School, April 2012
- Conference Paper: "Infrastructure, the Shipping Container, and the Globalization of American Space," Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) conference, Detroit, April 2011
- Conference Paper: "The Shipping Container, Intermodalism, and a More Sustainable Freight Transportation," The Lean Years conference, University of Michigan, March 2011
- Conference Paper: "Local Hub on a Global Network: Chicago and the Shipping Container," Positioning Global Systems graduate student symposium, Yale University School of Architecture, April 2010
- Conference Paper: "The Shipping Container in the Era of Postmodern Globalization," Infrastructure's Domain graduate student conference, Princeton University School of Architecture, October 2009
Deirdre Hennebury
Deirdre@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Robert Fishman
Dissertation Committee: Co-Chairs, Robert Fishman and Claire Zimmerman, Cognate, Ray Silverman, member, Scott Campbell
"Reimaging the Tate Museum: context, container and content"
My research looks at the role of architecture in urban reimaging efforts. It focuses on the use of cultural institutions, such as museums and libraries, to create signature landmarks that act as catalysts for economic growth and social improvement. During the last century, the responsibilities of museums have expanded to include new social and educational roles, such as social inclusion, place marketing and identity building, which have spawned new mission mandates and funding needs. How these changes are manifested in the design and operation of museums is important to cultural historians interested in the intersection of art and society, and to those involved in museum design.
Recent Work:
- Assistant Curator: Building Connections: Architectural Dialogues with the Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum, exhibit at Cranbrook Art Museum, June 4–September 25, 2005
- Conference Paper: "An Exploration of the Spatial and Ideological Character of the Art Museum: A Comparative Study of the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern," Michigan Museum Association, Detroit/Bloomfield Hills/Dearborn, October 2005
Yongha Hwang
yonghah@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Jean Wineman
My research interest is in the interplay of spatial network and social network in organizational level: how space can foster informal communications in organizations and support organizational innovation. Especially, I am interested in the role of culture in the interplay of two networks. A cross-cultural study between Western and Eastern countries about the joint effect of spatial and social network on organization's innovation is my current topic.
Sung Kwon Jung
jskstrm@umich.edu
Specialization: Environmental Technology
Advisor: Prof. Jong-Jin Kim
Optimization methods for building environmental control systems
Tavleen Kaur
tavleen@umich.edu
Advisor: Prof. Will Glover
Area: History Theory
I am interested in researching the built environment of the Punjab region before the arrival of the British. More specifically, I want to look at vernacular architectural form, materials, and building technology of the pre-colonial period, starting from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. As I begin to engage with this topic, region, and time period, I am curious about the degree to which 'Punjabi vernacular architecture' is vernacular. Because of the deep and complex interlacing of socio-political and religious aspects of the region, literal claims to property (and the buildings that stand thereon) are often dependent on social standing, political connections, and above all, on patrimonial inheritance. I am interested in finding out how these factors contribute to a monumentalization of historic buildings and how those buildings are used as tools to represent ownership not only to their phsysical structure, but also to the history of people and events related to them. Issues of memory, commemoration, and memorialization are inherent to my research in that it attempts to show that historic figures and events from their lives take on a secondary significance to the sites that comemmorate them. In this way many buildings become the objects of veneration moreso than the figures they are built for, thereby making a small, unknown shrine, for example, a monumental site.
Elizabeth Keslacy
keslacye@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Amy Kulper
My work is very broadly interested in the history of the concept of style – its emergence from 19th century German art historical discourse and subsequent episodes wherein its definitions are altered, that which properly constitutes style shifts, style as a paradigm of design is eschewed completely, and moments in which style reemerges in other guises such as language. The research is also interested in situating style within the larger discourse of the philosophy of aesthetics, as well as tracing the status or position of architecture therein by examining theorizations of the applied or decorative arts. My research focuses on a series of specific episodes as a way to tell the story of style. Those episodes include: the German style debates of the 1820s-1840s, the rejection of style in favor of functionalism at the turn of the century that occurred both in Europe and America, and the American Postmodern turn of the 1970s-80s. The first episode brings up questions of the agency of style, or what architects believed that style could do. This agency took both cultural and political forms, and illustrates a certain instability or porosity of style. The second episode elucidates the problematics of the symbolic or metaphorical nature of style in the way that it's challenged by new problems of mass production and eventually rejected in favor of functionalism. The Postmodern episode allows questions about the linguistic structure of style and the ways in which Postmodernism effected a return to the issues of style in other guises.
Conrad Kickert
kickert@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisors: Prof. Robert Fishman and Prof. Linda Groat
Urban cores are mainly experienced on foot, as the main user of town centers is the pedestrian, arriving by car, bicycle or public transportation. Therefore, a crucial part of improving the experience of a town centre, is improving its pedestrian experience. A core component of this process is the measurement of the existing quality of the pedestrian environment.
A humanly scaled, diverse and active environment makes for an exciting and positive pedestrian experience. A walk becomes much more interesting if the pedestrian is surrounded by activity. The majority of activity in public space relates closely to the buildings that line it. Public spaces become more exciting if people can look at and interact with building fronts, doors and windows. This interaction has been under threat in recent decades as large scale buildings geared towards the automobile have been constructed in the urban core, or have replaced its function elsewhere. My PhD research aims to study the relationship between buildings and public space from four different perspectives: time, place, effect and response. It aims to link façade activity with spatial attractiveness.
Joss Kiely
jossk@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Claire Zimmerman
My research encompasses alternative trajectories of becoming modern, with a specific focus on the rise of the aerial view that surfaces in Italian Futurism and has a critical impact on architectural design and representation though the Metabolist movement in 1960s Japan. In addition to examining the desire for a technical utopia, my research seeks to uncover lesser-examined micro histories that deal directly with oft overlooked issues of gender and sexuality in twentieth century architectural discourses. The approach is manifold and considers the effects that architectural representation, historical texts, and bio-politics have on the discipline, broadly defined.
Conference Papers
- "Towards an Aerial Modernism: Italian Aerofuturism and the Visions of Le Corbusier, 1911-1933", ACLA Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 2013
- "Disbelief, Suspended: Architectures of the Sky and the Transgressive Territorializations of Air." States of Suspension, The University of Chicago, November 2012.
- "The Gendering of Architectonic Dance: Futurism, Choreography, and the Body in Space, 1914-29." Arts in Society, John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom, July 2012.
Michael McCulloch
mccullmp@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Robert Fishman
Working Title
Building the Working City: Designs on Home and Life in Boomtown Detroit, 1910-1929
The modern worker's home made Detroit's Fordist industrialization possible. My research examines Detroit's working class housing expansion of the 1910's and 1920's as a case study, to uncover the process by which industrialists, real estate developers and workers shaped the city's residential cultures and space, constructing a society of and for boomtown economic growth. Paradoxically, security was its fundamental ideal. The home was, and still is, framed as a bulwark against the uncertainties of urban life. Its ownership was associated with the nuclear family's health, independence, and Americanism. Its ownership promised safekeeping of a lifetime's wealth and some protection from the threats of illness, loss of work, and aging in the early 20th century. Yet from its origins this security has proven elusive, threatened by the mobility of industrial capital and the volatility of urban real estate values. Initially celebrated by industrialists and developers, these speculative projects came under harsh criticism and strain shortly thereafter. The city's worker's housing ideal went on to participate in a century of urban conflict; in racial violence, economic depression and a mid-century "Urban Crisis." Then and now, foreclosure and abandonment reveal its unsustainability. Detroit's modern worker's housing, analyzed historically, will shed new light on these fundamental social predicaments of the past and present.
Publications
- (Forthcoming) Review of Lost Detroit, by Dan Austin and Sean Doerr, Reimagining Detroit, by John Gallagher and Detroit Dissasembled, by Andrew Moore. Preservation Education and Research, Vol. 5. 2012.
- "Aesthetic of Care and the Empty City." Dimensions 25 (2012): 54-56.
- Fishman, Robert, Michael McCulloch and Julia Reyes Taubman. "A Guide to the Photographs." Julia Reyes Taubman. Detroit: 138 Square Miles. Detroit: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and Distributed Art Publishers, 2012. 455-483.
- "Inside Ford's Garden City: Social and Spatial Logics of a Hybrid Suburbanity," Where do you Stand? Proceedings of the 99th Annual Meeting of the ACSA, 2011.
- "Michigan Central Station: Reframing the Narrative of Detroit's Grand Past," Dimensions 24 (2011):109-114.
Conference Papers
- "Buying into Fordism: Autoworkers' Homes in Detroit 1910-1920." Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting, Detroit, MI. 2012.
- "Faith in Community: St. Joseph's Industrial Neighborhood Center, Detroit, 1889." 7th Savannah Symposium: The Spirituality of Place. Savannah, GA. 2011.
- "Building the Working City: Designs on Home and Life in Boomtown Detroit." Graduate Student Lightning Talks, Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA. 2011.
- "Transitional Modernism: the Automobile in Burnham's Plan of Chicago," Southeast Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference, Jackson, MS, 2009.
Fellowships
- Rackham Centennial Spring/Summer Fellowship Award, 2012.
Faiza Moatasim
moatasim@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Will Glover
Project Title
Making Exceptions: The Politics of Place in the Planned Modernist City of Islamabad
Abstract
Unanticipated phenomena or "exceptions" in newly planned modernist cities of the twentieth century have been mostly conceptualized as contradictions to the ideal "plan." However, an examination of the functioning and everyday life of these planned places reveals that rather than being marginal dysfunctional phenomena, exceptions play critical roles in the way abstract plans are operationalized and planned cities are experienced. Moreover, spatial practices in planned modernist cities show the association of both marginalized and affluent communities with exceptions to gain access to certain rights and privileges within planned contexts. By focusing on the spatial exceptions found in Islamabad, the modernist capital of Pakistan planned in 1959 by Greek architect-planner C. A. Doxiadis, I thus ask: What is the relationship between the plan and the exception in a planned city? What are the similarities and differences found in the approaches of different socio-economic groups engaged in creating exceptions? To answer the first question, I will investigate the proliferation of exceptions in the planned sectors in Islamabad to highlight the role of exceptions as drivers of a planned city. To address the second question, I will present exceptions as a unit of analysis across socio-economic extremes by focusing on the histories of a squatter settlement and an illegal elite-housing neighborhood in Islamabad. This research project will explain the politics of creating a modernist space in Pakistan evident in place-making practices of different socio-economic groups external to the official planning discourses yet critical to the functioning and organization of a city.
Accepted Papers
- "Topologies of 'exceptions' in the planned modernist city of Islamabad," at the "Annual Conference on South Asia 2011," University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
- "Mapping spatial 'exceptions' in planned environments: The case of Islamabad" at the "VI International PhD Seminar, Urbanism and Urbanization 2011," IUAV School of Doctorate Studies, Venice, Italy
- "Making Exceptions: The Politics of Place in Islamabad," Graduate Student Lightning Talks, Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting 2012, Detroit, USA
Presented Papers
- "The Origins of Unplanned Urbanism in Planned Modernism," at the "Texas Asia Conference 2011," University of Austin, USA
- "Paradoxical Symbol: A study of the formal and informal housing scenario of the under-privileged residents of Islamabad," at the "Housing and Shelter: Looking into the Future" conference organized in 2009 by the Institute of Architects Pakistan – Rawalpindi/Islamabad chapter
Jennifer Darby Morris
jendarby@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Linda Groat
Kush Patel
kshpatel@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Dissertation Committee: Chair, Linda Groat, Cognate, Scott Campbell, members, Claire Zimmerman, Daniel Herwitz, Fernando Lara
sitemaker.umich.edu/kush.patel
Working Title:
"Practicing Lefebvre: How ideas of social space are realized in the works of Lucien Kroll and Bernard Tschumi."
My dissertation examines the connections between spatial writings of French sociologist Henri Lefebvre and two significant post-1968 modes of architectural practice in Europe: the works of Belgian architect-writer Lucien Kroll and Swiss-French architect-theorist Bernard Tschumi. Broadly, the study juxtaposes the social views of space that emerged during 1960s and 70s with the critique of society within postwar modernism and the concurrent project of social agency and community participation in environmental design studies. Specifically, the research investigates Lucien Kroll's Medical Student Housing complex in Brussels and Bernard Tschumi's Parc de la Villette in Paris, and evaluates their distinct approaches to engaging wider social meanings against Lefebvre's spatial framework. Through literary analysis, the project frames the complexity of linking social value of space to built works. Through fieldwork, the research provides an empirical basis to a broad philosophical discourse on social space.
Papers, Presentations and Publications:
- Patel, Kush, ed. Pedagogical Experiments in Urban Design, Series 1: Social Space, Spatial Practice. Proceedings of Graduate Student Reading Seminar. Ahmedabad: CEPT University Press, 2012.
- Symposium Chair and Presenter: "Hard Space, Soft Space, and Architectures of Appropriation," EDRA 43, Seattle, June 2012.
- Symposium Chair and Presenter: "Space, Everyday Life, and Architectures of Control," EDRA 42, Chicago, May 2011.
- Conference Paper and Panel Presentation: "Beyond Binaries," 2010 Space and Flows: An International Conference on Urban and Extra-Urban Studies, UCLA, December 2010.
- Conference Paper: Design as lived and experienced - An inquiry into the relationship between space of abstraction and space of everyday lived experience. EDRA 41, Washington D.C. June, 2010.
- Workshop Participant: "Examining the 'Sharp-End': Evidence-Based Knowledge and Design Decision Making." EDRA 41, Washington D.C. June, 2010.
- Conference Paper: What happens to architecture? Examining the relationship between architectural space and social agency. Michigan Social Theory Conference, Ann Arbor, Winter 2010.
- Patel, Kush. Drawings. In Architecture and Narrative: The structure of space and cultural meaning in buildings by Sophia Psarra, Figures 1.0, 2.0, 5.0, 7.0, 7.2, 8.0. London: Routledge, 2009.
- Conference Paper: Ecology as lived: An inquiry into the role and meaning of lived-space in architectural design. Theory Forum 09 - School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, November 2009.
- Conference Paper: Between Ideal and Real: An inquiry into definitions of space in the works of architect-theorist, Bernard Tschumi, social-theorist, Henri Lefebvre and spatial-theorist, Bill Hillier. 5th Annual Research Student Symposium - Architectural Humanities Research Association (UK), Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University, December 2008.
- Conference Poster: An Inquiry into the Definitions of "Space": Discussing the works of spatial theorists, Bernard Tschumi, Henri Lefebvre and Bill Hillier. Oxford Conference 2008: Resetting the Agenda for Architectural Education, Oxford University, UK, July 2008.
- Conference Poster: Spatio-Functional Analysis of an Indian Colonial Imprint, Calcutta: "Core" and "Center." ACSA 96th Annual Meeting: Seeking the City: Visionaries on the Margins, Houston, Texas, March 2008.
Johnathan Puff
jspuff@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Claire Zimmerman
Rudai Shan
rdshan@umich.edu
Specializaiton: Building Technology
Advisor: Prof. Lars Junghans
My research interests focus on sustainable design strategies that could lower energy consumption – especially electricity consumption for lighting in commercial and government office buildings. Also includes daylight analysis, building performance simulation, and life-cycle cost analysis. I also join the University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Collaboration on Renewable Energy Science and Technology: Large panel integrated light transmitting and solar energy harvesting façade systems for net zero energy efficient buildings.
Wiltrud Simbuerger
wiltrud@umich.edu
Specializaiton: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Amy Kulper
Research interests: Architectural approaches to designing air, climate and environment
So far, traces of air in architecture have been faint. Architects on their mission of spatially differentiating the world operate under the assumption that space is empty. Air as content of space is deemed negligible. Nonetheless, horror vacui also looms amongst architects, and thus the imagined material emptiness of space gets replaced with non-material fillers. Meanings like program, context, performance, experience, affect, atmosphere – depending on one's ideological place within the discourse – are poured into the empty vessel.
In my research work I would like to advocate for a return to a more literal reading of content and introduce the notion of air (back, as some may argue) into the architectural discourse. A plentiful and versatile resource, air can serve as underlying matter for highly diverse approaches in architecture, be it in technological, experiential, political or cultural terms. Hence, what at first sight may seem like an act of deprivation by "literalness" can in fact provide an enriching shot of adrenaline to the discipline.
Benjamin Smith
bnsmth@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisors: Prof. John McMorrough (Architecture) and Prof. Daniel Herwitz (Philosophy)
sitemaker.umich.edu/benjaminsmith
Research Focus:
SCI-Arc and the LA School architects 1972-1992.
Architectural representation and formats of production.
Pedagogy and practice.
Installation aesthetics and architecture.
Laura Smith
laurbria@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Combined doctoral studies with the School of Natural Resources & Environment
Committee: Jean Wineman (Architecture co-chair), Raymond De Young (SNRE co-chair), Robert M. Marans (Architecture), and Michaela Zint (SNRE)
The working title of my dissertation propoosal is "The Green School as Third Teacher: Contributions of Enagement, Socialization and Built Form." As the green school movement builds momentum, there is increasing consideration of the learning environment as "third teacher" – that is, a third channel of information to students that sits in concert with information absorbed from educators and peers. Influential thinkers have written about the potential for green schools to promote environmentalism. There are, however, few empirical studies that have investigated the influence of the current trends in green school buildings on outcomes specifically for environmental education, or the cultivation of environmentally literate citizens who are poised to take action. This dissertation will seek to better understand the experience of the green school user, how this person engages with the building and constructs knowledge and meaning as a result of this engagement.
I additionally have pet interests that do not explicitly emerge in my dissertation work, and these include: design process and product in a post-oil economy, how the built environment intersects with principles of localization, and the role of designed environments as coping mechanisms for a culture in transition.
Recent Work
- Smith, Laura. (2009, May). The Green Interior as Environmental Educator. Presentation at the annual conference for the Environmental Design Research Association, Kansas City, MO.
- Smith, Laura. (2009, May). Sustainability in the Art & Architecture Building. Presentation at the annual conference for the Environmental Design Research Association, Kansas City, MO.
- Smith, Laura. (2008). Writing a Building and Reading a Room: The Power of Design to Tell Environmental Stories. Paper accepted for the Communication by Design Conference, Brussels, Belgium.
Lori Smithey
smithelo@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. Amy Kulper
Maria Taylor
marianoh@umich.edu
Specialization: History and Theory
Advisor: Prof. A. Herscher
My research interests center on the trajectory of utopian and normative urban design ideologies traced over time and place. I am particularly interested in the way that culturally-constructed notions of "nature" and "urbanity" affect professional design decisions regarding neighborhood design, urban growth/shrinkage, and site redevelopment. In my dissertation I intend to focus on late- and post-Soviet urban design practices in provincial Russian cities, examining the adaptation and resilience of design 'norms' within a changing cultural, economic, and political context. This theme is also relevant to the current evolution of "ecologically sustainable" urban design practices in the U.S. and globally.
Recent Work
- Conference Paper: "Re-constructing a Profession: Urban Design in post-Soviet Siberia," Association of American Geographers Annual Conference 2010, Washington, D.C.
- Conference Paper: "Nature, Ecology, & Urban Design Narratives in Contemporary Siberia," American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies Annual Conference 2009, Boston, MA
- MLA research thesis: "Local Landscapes, Local Views: Nature, Ecology & Urban Design in Krasnoyarsk, Russia," University of Washington, 2009.
Omid Oliyan Torghabehi
oliyan@umich.edu
Specialization: Building Technology
Advisor: Prof. Peter von Büelow
Research Interests: Computational Form Finding, Integrative Performance Based Design, Structural Optimization
Elizabeth Vandermark
evanderm@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Linda Groat
My research centers on identity construction and its intersection with meaningful architectural work as initially conceptualized in the design studio. Understanding how and what we learn as architects in this particular organizational setting seems a critical step to understanding how professional identity is conceptualized in practice. The ways that novice architects make sense of this environment has bearing on their future competence and confidence in practice with others. Along side the students, practitioners engaged in teaching have their own conceptualization of architectural learning in this environment. I am particularly interested in exploring protocols and teaching strategies that foster an affinity in the practitioner to co-create meaning with clients and colleagues through architectural work. In a world increasingly filled with complexity and ambiguity, the design studio continues to be a rare place to negotiate meaning individually and collectively by making things and exploring process. As an architect and researcher, I continue to be intrigued by the mechanisms by which our capacity for resiliency and resourcefulness in practice is nurtured in this unusual educational environment.
Robert Walsh
rmwarch@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Fernando Lara
As a licensed architect with experience teaching design, I am interested in the connection between design process and design outcome, especially as it relates to the ability of architects to produce poetic value in the built environment. The relationship between designing and making is becoming reconnected in new ways through digital technologies, while approaches to building that integrate design, engineering and construction are also becoming more common. I am interested in harnessing and transforming some of these emerging trends in ways which immerse the architect more directly in the process of making, incorporating experiential design methods implemented concurrently with construction processes. Some of these concerns have already been explored in freestanding houses and larger shed structures, but are more challenging to implement at a larger scale. The application towards which my research is oriented is mid-rise and high-rise urban dwellings, especially those on smaller lots inserted into an existing urban fabric. What distinguishes my research from research in engineering or construction management is the emphasis on poetic value, especially poetic value as a central contribution of the architect that can intensify and develop more fully when the architect is an active participant throughout all stages of a project. In this sense my work relates back to certain approaches that were more common in pre-industrial architecture, while leveraging the advantages in performance that modern materials and methods make available today.
Stacy Williams
stacywms@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Jean Wineman
Health care is a dynamic field and healthcare architecture is, as a result, both rewarding and complex. My interest in healthcare architecture is to create a bridge between the operations of a facility and the design of that facility. Healthcare architecture should not be seen as cookie-cutter design, but rather as an attempt to integrate operations (with ever-changing processes and technologies) together with the facilities that house them. Healthcare architecture should, of course, include healing spaces for patients; however, it should also incorporate design that works with the processes developed by the caregivers. This is made more challenging by the fact that these processes continually develop.
Ying Xu
xuying@umich.edu
Specialization: Design Studies
Advisor: Prof. Linda Groat
Environment and Behavior, Space Syntax methodology, Chinese student's community
