A new research initiative founded by Taubman College’s Sheng-Hung Lee, assistant professor of urban technology, will explore how design can shape a longevity society that is healthy, equitable, and multi-generational.

Rooted in Taubman College’s culture of innovation, d-mix lab blends design (d-) with evidence-based research, service innovation, and emerging technologies to reimagine products, environments, and cultures for the 100-year life.

An international collective of designers, researchers, and practitioners, d-mix lab operates across scales — from tangible products and complex services to systemic urban futures. Its mixed-methods approach combines human-centered design and systems thinking, integrating qualitative ethnographic insights with quantitative analysis. Through this synthesis, the lab uncovers new design opportunities to address the complex challenges of aging populations and demographic transformation, turning longevity into an engine for creativity and social innovation.

For more information, visit d-mix lab.

Lead Image: Sheng-Hung Lee, assistant professor of urban technology and director of d-mix lab (photo by Jake Belcher).

Students in Taubman College’s Urban Technology program come from a variety of backgrounds with an equally diverse number of interests. Whether it be product design, real estate, or urban planning, Urban Tech students are applying their skills and design philosophies to complex and novel issues facing today’s cities.

The Taubman College Newsroom recently talked with five students about their summer internships. Click the links below to learn more about their experiences, ranging from designing new evaluations for public utility employees in Seattle to engaging with communities for planned development communities in suburban Detroit.

Jack Bernard, Urban Tech ’27, performance development intern with Seattle City Light, Seattle

Neel Marathe, Urban Tech ’26, geographic information systems intern with Spalding DeDecker, Rochester Hills, Michigan

Aditya Nimbalkar, B.S. Urban Tech ’26, technical program manager intern with Microsoft, Redmond, Washington

Emma Vitet, B.S. Urban Tech ’26, service design intern with Cities Reimagined, Detroit

Kenyatta Washington, Urban Tech ’26, purchasing intern with Toll Brothers construction, Northville, Michigan

Interviews by Joshua Nicholson, B.S. Urban Tech ’26

Kuukuwa Manful, Ph.D., assistant professor of architecture at Taubman College, has been awarded a grant from UCLA’s Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) for her project to digitize architecture archives in Ghana.

Selected out of a record 206 applications, “Digitizing Archives of Architecture in Ghana” aims to digitize endangered architectural material in Ghana, making it openly accessible and available in perpetuity while stirring enthusiasm for using, preserving, and advocating for archives. 

The project is part of the Accra Archive Initiative and builds upon an earlier project, “Building Early Accra: Preserving Historical Building Permits in Ghana,” which was featured on BBC News and successfully digitized a collection of architectural archives created between the 1900s and 1940s, when Ghana was under colonial rule as the Gold Coast. 

The archive to be digitized contains documents dating from the early 1900s to the 2010s. Manful says it is among the oldest and only records of British colonial administration still available in Ghana. It is also the oldest and largest set of documentary evidence of modern-era architecture, urban planning, land and property ownership, and real estate history pertaining to Ghana held anywhere in the world. “The importance and rarity of the material cannot be overstated and yet without this intervention, it is in danger of being lost forever,” she says.

Lead Image: Scanning archival documents. Image by Charles Lawson

Taubman College’s John Marshall was awarded a $500,000 grant by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to transform a decommissioned electrical substation in Detroit. Marshall, professor of architecture, is also a professor of art and design at the Stamps School of Art and Design.

Marshall received the grant through his firm rootoftwo, which he founded with Ford School alumna Cézanne Charles. rootoftwo uses participatory design methods to create innovative and tangible experiences, events, artifacts, spaces, methods, and strategies. Marshall has previously worked with such clients as Midtown Detroit Inc., The Kresge Foundation, and the City of Detroit.

The electrical substation, located in Detroit’s Islandview neighborhood, will be transformed into “The Transformer Building” — a civic studio for participatory governance and design. The project builds on Marshall’s previous work with Michigan Central and Design Core Detroit, creating dynamic hubs for civic tech labs, public workshops, and innovative public space programming. 

The project supports the Knight Foundation’s goals to revitalize public spaces and neighborhoods through civic engagement. The $500,000 award is part of a community celebration that marked the Knight Foundation’s $215 million-plus investment in Detroit over the last 25 years.

Taubman College’s Bryan Boyer recently discussed proptech, the urban technology program, and the future of real estate in an interview with Commercial Observer. Boyer, faculty director of the bachelor of science in urban technology degree, explained how the program prepares students for future careers in real estate and property development.

The urban technology program was established five years ago to educate students in non-traditional ways to think about cities, mainly through technology. In the interview, Boyer said the program meets a growing niche in the urban planning field.

“It’s very early, because we only have that one graduating class, but we feel validated in this belief that people can work with data and code in the context of the built environment, including real estate,” Boyer said. “It’s a growing need and opportunity because of the way the world is moving.”

Boyer is a co-founder of the architecture and strategic design firm Dash Marshall. He has a background in design, technology, and government, previously working with the Helsinki Design Lab, Sidewalk Labs, and a number of urban clients.

Read the full article at the Commercial Observer.

Republished from The University Record article New committee to help connect physical campus, institutional goals (September 22, 2025; by Chris Sebastian).

The university’s campuses are more than just spaces to sit, paths to walk and trees to shade — they are a vital component to achieving strategic success and attracting a talented academic community.

The newly established Design Review Committee, composed of U-M faculty, staff and alumni, will help the university strengthen that campus potential by providing input on the design of new buildings, major additions and landscape projects on all Ann Arbor campuses, including Michigan Medicine.

The committee will lean on design excellence to boost discovery and innovation, recruitment and retention, education and community-building.

“The character of our physical environment, the way it’s organized, planned and developed, is going to accelerate the achievement of institutional goals,” said Jonathan Massey, committee co-chair and dean of the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. “It has a crucial role in achieving our strategic objectives.”

Established through the office of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Geoff Chatas, the committee will have a voice early in the design process for major projects over $10 million and smaller projects with high-impact potential. The committee’s perspectives will connect academic, sustainability and accessibility efforts to principles outlined in U-M’s Look to Michigan vision and Campus Plan 2050.

“As we look ahead to the coming decades, it’s crucial that our physical spaces reflect and support our institutional mission,” Chatas said. “This committee will help us take a campus-wide view that aligns our design decisions with a broader vision. I’m excited to have this work begin.”

As the procurement process for buildings and other projects is decentralized, the new committee elevates the importance of taking a cohesive review of projects and how they fit into the overarching goals of the university.

“The Design Review Committee is an opportunity to expand U-M’s collaborative design process to further enhance design quality through constructive, objective feedback that can challenge the design team to find improved design solutions,” said committee member Deanna Mabry, associate director of design and university architect in Architecture, Engineering and Construction.

From an academic perspective, Massey is excited about the potential to expand how the physical components of U-M benefit the learning potential for students.

“It’s an increasing lateral connection between facilities and operations and the academic side of the university,” he said. “This represents the recognition in the last few years, the crystallizing, of university leadership that recognizes that the campus is a strategic asset.”

The committee makeup sets it up for success.

“One of the benefits of a multi-disciplinary design review committee is engaging in critique of not only individual new buildings and additions with respect to their individual designs but also in how those buildings contribute to the cohesive fabric of campus,” Mabry said.

The committee features faculty and staff from numerous schools and units, each with years of experience and perspectives. Former students, now in the workforce, will add valuable outside perspectives.

“It’s quite exciting that we have practicing alumni joining us,” Massey said. “They have built schools and museums and housing. They will bring that expertise.”

Moving forward, the committee will begin to see projects that are in the schematic design phase.

This is during the study or fact-finding stage, before a project has been given final approval. The committee will consider how the project aligns with university goals, sustainability objectives and other factors. They will then see it again further along in the design development, to consider the execution of the design related to materials, detailing, etc.

Massey said the committee has just started meeting, and the benefits will compound as it and the university develop project-to-project conversations. The committee isn’t just looking at single buildings, but how projects fit into the larger context of campus and organizational objectives.

“One of the main goals is to have the campus better attract people as part of our recruitment of students, faculty and staff,” Massey said. “They will have a better quality of life while at work. Or a connection between buildings. Their participation in the interdisciplinary life of a campus will be better.”

Design Review Committee

Executive Sponsor

• Geoff Chatas, executive vice president and chief financial officer

Co-Chairs

• Jonathan Massey, dean, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
• Marina Roelofs, assistant vice president, Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

Members

• Audrey Bennett, University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design
• Gia Biagi, secretary of transportation, state of Illinois, former principal, urbanism, Studio Gang Architects
• Sue Gott, associate director of planning and communications, AEC
• Lars Graebner, associate professor of practice in architecture, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
• Ron Henry, executive director of facilities, planning, and operation, U-M Health
• Chad Jobin, DRC project manager
• Jaron Lubin, senior partner, Safdie Architects
• Deanna Mabry, associate director of design and university architect, AEC
• Benjamin Morse, director of strategy, Office of Campus Sustainability
• Fadi Musleh, assistant vice provost and chief strategist for Integrated Space, Academic, and Capital Planning
• Lisa Sauvé, assistant professor of practice in architecture, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
• Carla Swickerath, partner, Studio Libeskind

Taubman College’s Lauren Hood will join a panel discussion hosted by Dezeen on adaptive reuse this Friday, Sept. 19. Hood, assistant professor of practice in urban and regional planning and founder of the Institute for AfroUrbanism, will discuss how Detroit can employ adaptive reuse to position itself as a global leader in sustainable urban transformation.

Part of Detroit Month of Design, the event will bring together diverse voices in planning to discuss how Detroit can turn underutilized spaces into vibrant and inclusive environments. The talk will be moderated by Ben Dreith, U.S. editor for London-based architecture and design magazine Dezeen. Hood will be joined by Melissa Ditmer, Head of Place at Michigan Central, and Simon David, principal at Office of Strategy and Design.

The event will be held at the Siren Hotel in Detroit from 9:30-11 a.m.. RSVP at the month of design’s website.

When it comes to social class in Africa, the architectures of education — both tangible and intangible — play a significant role, argues Kuukuwa Manful, assistant professor of architecture, in a new article published in African Studies Review Journal.

Based on four years of research and a paper that won the 2023 ASA Graduate Student Paper prize, “Building Classes: Secondary Schools and Sociopolitical Stratification in Ghana” establishes and investigates connections between the architecture of school buildings and social class in Ghana.

Although it is widely accepted that social class in Africa is defined not just by economic metrics but also by social perceptions and individual identifications, Manful notes not much research has been conducted into the mechanisms through which Africans form class perceptions and identifications. Focusing on secondary schools in Ghana, Manful makes an argument about how people make sense of their sociopolitical positioning.

The article is part of a larger book project, The Architecture of Education in Ghana, which uses a multidisciplinary approach that straddles politics, architecture, and history to examine the sociopolitical causes and consequences of secondary school buildings in Ghana.

Read the article at African Studies Review Journal.

Taubman College’s Studio Reassembled was shortlisted for a THE PLAN award in the education category by THE PLAN magazine. The influential publication annually recognizes architecture and urban design projects from around the world.

Built in advance of the Fall 2024 semester, Studio Reassembled is an open studio space that bridges spatial, technological, and natural environments. With a focus on active learning, the space encourages dynamic peer exchange, experimental projects, and flexible instruction. It also provides on-floor access to expertise in environmental science and climate engineering, visualization technology, and library science, encouraging interdisciplinary work. 

Every year, THE PLAN releases its awards acknowledging excellence in architecture, interior design, and urban planning. With 20 categories and over 1,000 applicants, the awards represent the best-of-the-best in architecture and urban design.

Studio Reassembled was joined on the shortlist by world renowned firms, including Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and Chain + Siman. The award is juried by a panel of 21 international practitioners from around the world, including China, Italy, the United States, and Spain. The final winners will be announced in the coming months.

Read more about Studio Reassembled on THE PLAN’s website.

Mania Aghaei Meibodi, Ph.D., assistant professor of architecture at Taubman College, has received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation for her research proposal “CAREER: Data‑Driven Extrusion‑Based Robotic Three‑Dimensional Printing of Reinforced Concrete.” The five-year NSF grant will support the development of intelligent, non-planar slicing models and data-driven, robotic 3D printing methods to create materially efficient structural building elements, enabling the rapid construction of multi-story buildings and helping to address urgent housing shortages. This grant will also support Aghaei Meibodi in integrating education and outreach with her research through courses in robotic 3D printing, computational geometry, data modeling, and machine learning, as well as community engagement to broaden participation in STEM.

The NSF’s CAREER Program is the agency’s premier investment in rising scholars and teachers. Designed for early‑career faculty who marry pioneering research with transformative pedagogy, a CAREER  Award celebrates work that simultaneously advances fundamental knowledge and broadens learning, shaping the future of the field. Expectations exceed those of standard NSF grants: Investigators are challenged to open new intellectual frontiers while crafting education and outreach plans that elevate the next generation and extend their discoveries well beyond the laboratory.

Aghaei Meibodi leads the DART Laboratory, developing intelligent computational design and robotic construction methods for high-performance building components. Leveraging rich sensing data from both fabrication and in-service operation, the team’s learning-based generative models suggest new geometries in the design space and simultaneously set the parameters for robotic 3D printing and assembly, fully closing the loop between design, making, and real-world performance. Her lab develops next‑generation algorithms, models, and hardware to advance the field of computation and robotics in architecture and construction, creating intelligent systems that address urgent societal needs, uncover design and fabrication opportunities once thought unimaginable, and give rise to architecture that is efficient, elegant, and curiosity‑inspiring.

Follow DART Laboratory’s Instagram for news.

A 3DCP material‑optimized wall (left) and a data‑driven model for automated non‑planar slicing. Copyright DART Laboratory.

Taubman College welcomes eight faculty members and two fellows for the 2025-2026 academic year. The new hires expand the college’s urban technology program, real estate offerings, and urban and regional planning program.

New Faculty

Wonyoung So, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of urban technology. He works at the intersection of urban planning, critical data studies, and data visualization to study how access to resources and opportunities — over space and place — is mediated by data and technology, with a focus on housing and translating scholarly research into public impact that promotes democratic participation by marginalized residents. He has been published in leading journals and proceedings across urban planning and computer science fields: Housing Policy Debate; Journal of Urban Affairs; Housing Studies; Geoforum: Big Data & Society; and the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. His creative work has been recognized by the Information is Beautiful Awards, MIT Museum, IEEE, Fast Co. Design, The Atlantic, CNN, The Guardian, Seoul Museum of Art, Wired, and more. So holds a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning and a master’s in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.F.A. in visual communication design from Kookmin University in South Korea. At MIT, he was a research fellow at the Senseable City Lab and a Presidential Fellow, and worked as a research assistant and technical lead at the Data + Feminism Lab. In South Korea, he co-curated the Seoul Libré Maps public mapping program created for the inaugural Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in 2017 and co-founded Tumblbug, the nation’s largest crowdfunding platform for creative projects.

Sheng-Hung Lee, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of urban technology. He integrates design, technology, and systems thinking to tackle complex societal challenges, such as how individuals and systems co-navigate life transitions, like aging, across services. At Taubman College, he will focus on urban systems, service innovation, and design for longevity. Lee is a leader in the global design community, who has served as a board director for the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) since 2020 and joined the World Design Organization (WDO) Education Committee in 2023. His work has been recognized with many international honors — IDEA Gold, iF Gold, Braun Prize, Red Dot Best of the Best, and more — and exhibited globally at Dubai Design Week, Venice Design Week, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum. Lee has also held visiting and adjunct teaching positions in Hungary, Germany, China, and Taiwan, advancing service and system design education. Lee holds a Ph.D. in human behavior and service design, M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering and engineering management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and B.S. degrees in industrial design and electrical engineering from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. At MIT, he worked with the AgeLab and Ideation Lab; co-taught courses including Global Aging & the Built Environment; and contributed to MIT xPRO, the MIT Office of Sustainability, and the MIT Governance Lab as a strategist and curriculum designer. (Lee will start at Taubman College in Winter 2026).

Ron Bronson is an assistant professor of practice in urban technology. His work aligns service design with organizational complexity, focusing on making complex things work better and ensuring technology serves people, especially in high-stakes environments. His work spans product management, agile delivery, and digital transformation. For two decades, he has led user experience (UX) strategy, service design, content strategy, and AI-driven experiences across government, enterprise, and civic tech sectors. Bronson has spoken at design and tech events around the world, including DrupalCon, An Event Apart, UX Research Toronto, Confab, and Rosenfeld Media events about UX and service design, interaction architecture, and the real-world challenges of building systems that impact people. In winter 2024, Bronson developed and taught a service design course as an intermittent lecturer of urban technology at Taubman College. Over the semester, students conducted research, analyzed service contexts, and developed design and technology concepts to address urban needs. Partnering with Michigan’s chief growth officer and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, students worked on a real-world consulting project aimed at welcoming new residents to Michigan communities.

Violet Whitney is an adjunct assistant professor of practice in urban technology. Her work explores and advances human-computer interaction beyond computer monitors and mobile devices, leveraging bodily, social, and physical realities. She co-leads Spatial Pixel, a research and design studio with a mission “to empower people with digital and spatial agency” by giving everyone more control over our relationships with technology, turning our attentions away from screens, and enhancing our real-world, tangible experiences. Previously, she has been a director of product and an associate director of design at Sidewalk Labs, the Google initiative focused on building future cities, where she applied her background in building technologies on Delve, an AI product she created for neighborhood development — now part of Google Maps — developed computer vision applications for pedestrian tracking, and worked with teams on leveraging large language models for urban-scale problems. Whitney has taught tangible and spatial computing courses at Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and U-M, where she served as an intermittent lecturer of urban technology at Taubman College in 2023-2024. At Columbia, she helped launch the master’s program in computational design practices. Outside of academia, she co-leads the Architechie meetup network for urban tech.

Andy Farbman is an adjunct practice instructor in urban and regional planning at Taubman College and the chief executive officer of Farbman Group. Farbman is recognized as an industry leader in capital markets activity in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Columbus, leveraging deep local knowledge and proven expertise in commercial real estate. He specializes in underwriting all property types and classes, conducting property-level due diligence for prospective acquisitions and developments, negotiating partnerships, and arranging both equity and debt financing. Since joining Farbman Group, he has been responsible for purchasing, repositioning, and developing over $1 billion in real estate. Andrew is the past chairman of NAI Global Leadership Board and a founding board member and shareholder of Carbon TV and HealthRise, LLC. He is also an active member of the YPO Chicago Chapter. Before joining Farbman Group, he worked in Blackstone’s private equity real estate group in New York. His experience also includes Lazard Frères & Co., LLC, in its New York Real Estate Investment Banking Division. Farbman graduated from U-M with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor of Science in Social Science.

Jill Ferrari is an adjunct practice instructor of urban and regional planning with 30 years of experience in private real estate development, legal practice, and consulting. The commercial real estate development company she co-founded, Renovare Development, was named the 2025 “Developer of the Year” by Michigan RE Journals. Renovare is a for-profit developer focused on attainable housing and mixed-use projects that serve a deep community need with more than $100 million in projects currently in development. Ferrari is also a partner at Schenk & Bruetsch, PLC, where she leads the Real Estate & Economic Development practice group. She also co-launched the Elevate practice group within the firm, focused on legal and advisory services for female executives and founders. Ferrari is the 2025 Phoenix Award winner from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for her lifetime of work in brownfield redevelopment.
Other awards and recognitions include being named “Woman of the Year” by the Detroit Women’s Leadership Network in 2023, and a Crain’s Detroit “Notable Executive in Real Estate” in 2021. Ferrari is a member of the National Advisory Board for the Urban Land Institute Terwilliger Center for Housing and a founding board member of the Women’s Sustainable Development Initiative. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Oakland University and a juris doctor degree from Wayne State University. She is a licensed member of the State Bar of Michigan.

Odessa Gonzalez Benson, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the U-M School of Social Work, and of urban and regional planning at Taubman College. Her areas of research include refugee resettlement, state-civil society relations, labor migration, critical policy studies, and epistemic justice and the production of knowledge in social welfare studies and forced migration studies. As part of her Just Futures Action Research Lab, she leads her research team in capacity building and technical assistance for refugee-run community organizations in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her research has been published in Social Services Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, British Journal of Social Work, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Voluntas, and Cities. She draws upon years of engagement with refugee communities, diverse education and work experiences, and her personal path as a 1.5-generation immigrant to inform and motivate her research. Gonzalez Benson earned a Ph.D. in social welfare from the University of Washington, an M.S.W. from Arizona State University, and a B.A. in communications from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Roshanak Mehdipanah, Ph.D., is an associate professor of health behavior & health education in the School of Public Health, and of urban and regional planning at Taubman College, where she teaches classes related to its Healthy Cities certificate program. Her research focuses on urban health, including urban renewal and gentrification and their impacts on health inequities. She is particularly interested in examining the health impacts of housing policies. She specializes in innovative research methods, including realist evaluations and concept mapping to develop conceptual frameworks linking complex interventions to health. Mehdipanah is the co-lead for the Public Health IDEAS for Creating Healthy and Equitable Cities and the director of the Housing Solutions For Health Equity initiative.

New Fellows

Nitzan Farfel is a designer, researcher, and educator whose work interrogates adaptive infrastructure, spatial politics, and the representational tools architecture uses to render systems visible. Selected as an architecture design fellow, her projects operate across deployable design, critical documentation, and visual media — mobilizing architecture to expose the material, ecological, and narrative structures that organize contested territories. Her current project, “Amber Wars,” examines illegal amber mining in Ukraine’s Polesia region as both a territorial operation and a representational void. Farfel has practiced in Paris, Athens, Toronto, and New York, contributing to projects with Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane, Workshop-S, and ACDO. At OMA, she co-produced and co-edited Shohei Shigematsu’s monograph for a+u and contributed to partner lectures, exhibitions, and publications. Her design work spans installations and buildings at multiple scales, including the Citizen Watch installation for Baselworld 2018. As visiting assistant professor at Kansas State University, she taught studios and seminars on speculative ecologies, planetary systems, and spatial storytelling. She is currently leading the development of Kansas’ Riley County Fairgrounds and continuing to document fairgrounds across the United States for her project “Supersites.” Farfel holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Waterloo.

Gus Wendel, Ph.D.,’s research explores urban planning’s role in the formation of sexual space, the intersectional use and design of public space, and alternative spatial research methods grounded in the urban humanities. He joins Taubman College as a Fishman fellow. His peer-reviewed work has been published in The Journal of Urban Affairs, The Journal of Public Space, and Technology | Architecture + Design. His dissertation investigates how municipal incorporation and redevelopment helped establish West Hollywood as the “first gay city,” and its broader implications for diverse gender and sexual minorities. He previously served as associate director of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative, an interdisciplinary teaching and research program within cityLAB-UCLA that brings together the interpretive, historical approaches of the humanities with the material, projective practices of design to address pressing urban and environmental issues. He is also a founding member of the Urban Humanities Network, the Digital Salon, and the (Un)Common Public Space Group. Wendel earned a doctorate and master’s in urban and regional planning from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s in international relations and Italian studies from Brown University.

A major agricultural study conducted across five continents by nearly 60 researchers, including Taubman College’s Lesli Hoey and two other U-M faculty members, has been recognized with a Frontiers Planet Prize from the Frontiers Research Foundation.

Four years in the making, “Joint environmental and social benefits from diversified agriculture” confirmed that diversified farming benefits both people and the environment by improving food security and biodiversity at the same time, and was published in the journal Science in April 2024. Zia Mehrabi, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, led the multidisciplinary study. He and his team will receive $1 million in funding to advance their research as part of the prize. 

Hoey says the co-authors plan to invest the funding to strengthen their network of cross-country research with farmers and community leaders in diverse contexts to support the expansion of diversified food systems.

Other co-authors at U-M include Jennifer Blesh, associate professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability, and Andy Jones, associate professor in the School of Public Health, both frequent collaborators of Hoey’s, who is an associate professor of urban and regional planning and director of doctoral studies at Taubman College. The three have worked together on the Sustainable Food Systems Initiative and co-teach the cross-disciplinary Foundations of Sustainable Food Systems course.

Together, they contributed a longitudinal study of two metropolitan regions in Bolivia, one in the highlands around the city of El Alto and one in the tropical lowlands in Montero, providing data on 484 farming households with a median farm size of 1.2 acres. 

Hoey’s work included leading a food environment scan and survey of diverse types of food vendors; Jones led a survey of more than 3,000 households on diet-related health data, food insecurity, income, and other factors; and Blesh led an agricultural survey for households that managed farms. Blesh was also part of the lead team of authors who worked on coordinating data across 24 studies from 11 countries to make them comparable across agricultural, social, and environmental outcomes.

Taubman College’s Richard Norton was recently quoted in a New York Times article about the conflict between property owners and beachgoers in the face of rising sea levels and “coastal squeeze.” Speaking during a panel discussion at the 2025 Mobility and Resilience conference earlier this summer at Columbia University, the article reports that Norton had asked, “Are you going to save the beach house, or do you want to save the beach?  Because you cannot save them both.”

Norton, professor of urban and regional planning, holds a joint appointment as professor of program in the environment with the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the School for Environment and Sustainability. He researches coastal area management and environmental planning with a focus on managing coastal shoreland along the Great Lakes.

Read the full article on coastal management and beach access at the New York Times’ website. (Registration or a paid subscription may be required for full access.)

Two teams of Taubman College students in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (M.U.R.P.) program have won graduate student awards presented by the Michigan Association of Planning for 2025.

One team supported the efforts of a statewide pilot program to advance renewable energy projects on brownfield sites across Michigan. The other team produced a report for Ann Arbor’s Neighborhood Institute on potential challenges facing the proposed north terminus of a new U-M automated transit system and an alternate location for it.

Announced as part of the association’s annual statewide awards last week, the U-M teams each won Outstanding Graduate Student Planning Project honors for their capstone projects, marking the fourth straight year that Taubman College M.U.R.P. students were recognized with both awards given out in the category.

More info on each project is below:

Developing Solutions for Brownfield Renewable Energy in Michigan

Students: Christian Beswick, James Daye, Rebecca Griswold, Zhongyi He, Annie Lively, Jinren Yuan, Estella Zhang Qiming
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Mills

In November 2023, Michigan enacted ambitious renewable energy legislation. While large-scale renewable projects are crucial to meeting these goals, public support is stronger for siting projects on previously disturbed properties, such as brownfields, rather than farmland or forests. However, developing renewable energy on brownfields presents costs, infrastructure, and site selection challenges. To address these barriers, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy launched a Brownfield Renewable Energy Pilot Program. The University of Michigan graduate student team supported the program by identifying scalable models, tools, and resources to advance brownfield renewable energy across Michigan.

Creating Connections: A Terminus Relocation Proposal

Students: Aisha Al Ali, Calvin Blackburn, Christine Wang, Nikunj Dholay, Charlie Dimitry McCann, Aaron Johnson, Wenjing Zhang, Dmitri Rudakewich, Claire Briglio, Haosheng Xie, Stefan Nielsen
Faculty Advisor: Jonathan Levine

The transit centerpiece of U-M’s 2050 plan is the Campus Connector, an elevated Automated Transit System spanning about 3.5 miles from Central Campus to Ann Arbor’s northeast edge. This project studio examined the location of the system’s northeast terminus and its planned parking structure and proposed alternatives. The client for the report — Ann Arbor’s Neighborhood Institute — intends to use the report to advocate for transportation and land-use solutions that better integrate campus and community planning. The report’s anticipation of implementation hurdles, including regulatory requirements, property easements, and stakeholder interests, will aid in this regard.

Change and an uncertain future were key ideas in a recent sustainability-themed issue of Michigan Alum, which featured interviews with Taubman College faculty member Phil D’Anieri and alumna Beth Gibbons. 

D’Anieri, Ph.D. U.R.P. ’07, is a teaching professor of urban and regional planning who researches the importance of national parks and sustainability. In a Q&A for the magazine’s “Office Hours” feature, D’Anieri talks about how the parks help preserve fragile ecosystems and the ways federal budget cuts would impact these efforts. He points out that, although ecosystems are always changing, national parks play a key role in preserving and guiding that change for the future.

“It’s not a question of a pristine nature versus a damaged one,” D’Anieri said. “It’s a question of what future we want to protect and create in these places.”

While national parks could face new threats with fewer protections in place, the state of Michigan is often labeled a future climate haven. Gibbons, M.U.R.P. ’12, is director of the Washtenaw County Resiliency Office,  and was interviewed for the article “Climate Haven* (*Terms and Conditions Apply),” which looks at ways this label can be a misnomer that obfuscates ongoing sustainability efforts. For example, although Michigan isn’t experiencing sea level rise or extreme weather events, it still suffers from the by-products of wildfire smoke and has challenges with increased rainfall and water management. 

Established in 2024, the Resiliency Office helps Washtenaw County mitigate and recover from challenges caused by climate change and economic shifts while preparing a sustainable future for current and potential residents who may be part of a climate migration.

“Adaptation work — when it’s done well — is not reduced to disaster mitigation,” Gibbons said. “It’s about long-term planning. It’s about what has happened, what will happen, and what are the impacts.”

Read the full interview with D’Anieri and the full article with Gibbons on Michigan Alum’s website.

How can augmented reality improve public engagement in cities is the central question behind an article co-written by Taubman College’s Cyrus Peñarroyo with De Peter Yi, B.S. Arch. ’10, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati. Published in The Architect’s Newspaper, the pair discuss their collaborative project “Holding Pattern,” a game that uses augmented reality to introduce city residents to the process of redeveloping vacant properties.

Presented as a series of workshops with city officials and residents in Cincinnati, players role-play as city agencies, community development corporations, developers, businesses, and other groups that work through the process of redeveloping vacant property, including updating zoning and acquiring finances.

The game board is composed of numerous tiles that represent different vacant buildings in Cincinnati, and it also features a digital component. Using resources from the TVLab Fund for Experimental Inquiry, Peñarroyo and his assistant Xuanshu Lin, M.U.R.P. ’25, developed augmented reality models for each tile that change throughout the game. These models, which can be displayed on a mobile device or large screen, allow players to see how their actions change the buildings over time.

According to the article, a key issue with public engagement is that successful reuse programs operate behind the scenes. An example of this is the Historic Structure Stabilization Program operated by the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, which has directed funding to save and redevelop over 50 structures for reuse. However, the processes affecting the vacant buildings are often hidden and residents aren’t aware of the projects.

Read the full article at the Architect’s Newspaper’s website.

T+E+A+M, an architectural firm founded by four Taubman College faculty, has received an honorable mention from The Architect’s Newspaper (AN) for the publication’s 2025 Best of Practice Awards.

Unlike other awards, which are given for specific projects or exhibitions, AN’s Best of Practice Awards are given for excellence on the business end. Winners and honorable mentions were recognized for employee well-being and their studio’s impact on both the industry at large and local communities. Top firms leveraged scale, expertise, and influence to conduct impactful research, empower future generations, and find solutions to global challenges. 

T+E+A+M was founded by Thom Moran, associate professor of architecture; Ellie Abrons, associate professor of architecture and director of the U-M Digital Studies Institute; Adam Fure, associate professor of architecture; and Meredith Miller, associate professor of architecture and director of the master of architecture program. 

The group began collaborating in 2015 and officially formed in 2016 after presenting their “Detroit Reassembly Plant” project at that year’s Venice Biennale. Since then, they have worked on a variety of speculative and practical adaptive reuse projects, including their largest project to date, “Building in a Building,” a new commercial and community space in Detroit’s East Village neighborhood, which reuses the facade of an existing building.

T+E+A+M received its honorable mention in the Architect-Small Firm (Midwest) category. Read the full list of winners at AN’s website.

Recent T+E+A+M projects include the interior of Social Status Detroit luxury streetwear shop (photo by The Whitaker Group); The Warehouse, a fully configurable performance space at Dartmouth College (photo by Brooke Holm); and the Building in a Building community space in Detroit’s East Village (lead photo; photo by The Whitaker Group).

The 2025 Taubman College Fellows Exhibition invited visitors to step through unfinished thresholds and across uncertain boundaries into spaces that are ever changing. Held in the Liberty Research Annex and Gallery, the exhibit featured work by five recent members of the Taubman College Fellowship Program, concluding with a reception in March that included talks by each of them.

Fellows Ryan Ball, Olaia Chivite Amigo, Angela Cho, Tess Clancy, and Francesca Mavaracchio produced work that explored doors, borders, totems, and vessels that form boundaries. They sought to discover the uneven cuts that shape how we move, see, assemble, and belong.

More than 100 fellows have completed the Taubman College Fellowship Program since it began in 1984. The fellowship program serves as a conduit for innovation and a bellwether of cultural changes in the architectural industry. The influence of this elite network radiates across the U.S. and worldwide. To date, approximately 20 former fellows have remained at Taubman College, where they are now permanent faculty members.

More on the projects from the fellows is below.

Structure, Control, Cladding

Ryan Ball

“Structure, Control, Cladding” explores the tectonic, environmental, and political consequences of the U.S. adoption of the rainscreen. I argue that the rainscreen’s ideological separation of aesthetics and performance has had far reaching consequences beyond just tectonic legibility. It invisibilizes labor, care, repair and maintenance, and among other factors, homogenizes expectations of comfort while promoting consumption, fully isolating users from their natural environment.

In the gallery, the work presents as a spatial mass of three separate nested volumes (circle, square, and diamond) with each corresponding to the layers of the rainscreen (structure, control, and cladding.) Conceptions of interiority and exteriority are problematized, and visitors are called to confront their expectations of comfort, juxtaposing material and formal familiarity with visualizations of an increasingly changing climate.

Borders

Olaia Chivite Amigo

Borders are more than fixed lines — they are dynamic territories shaped by political, economic, and environmental forces. This project explores the U.S.–Canada border as a space of negotiation and transformation rather than a static divide. Focusing on six key regions — Maine/New Brunswick, Niagara Falls, Detroit/Windsor, Boundary Waters/Quetico Park, the Bakken region of Montana and Saskatchewan, and the Columbia River of Washington and British Columbia — it examines how borders are enforced and experienced over time.

Through mapping, territorial analysis, and narrative construction, the work reveals the fluidity of borderlands. From east to west, each site reflects distinctive strategies — regulatory, cooperative, or contested — through which these territories are shaped and reshaped.

In Maine–New Brunswick, land ownership and power are concentrated in a few families, cinching control over labor, production, and land stewardship. Niagara Falls thrives on tourism but is governed by strict regulations controlling water and power on this natural wonder. Detroit and Windsor, home to the busiest land border crossing in North America, are deeply intertwined through trade, industry, and culture. Quetico Park presents a nearly invisible “perforated” border within protected wilderness. The Bakken region is a transboundary oil landscape shaped by extraction, infrastructure, and labor. The Columbia River is managed by treaties that govern water, energy, and Indigenous rights.

The U.S.-Canada border — often perceived as a single demarcated line — is a living, evolving territory shaped by political, economic, and environmental forces. This project reconsiders it as a living system, shaped by movement, conflict, and cooperation. It offers new ways of seeing and understanding these borderlands as layered, evolving, and deeply human territories.

Angela Cho

Cho’s work is highly manual, abundant in plaster and clay, and grapples with philosophies and techniques of memory, preservation, scale, tactility, originality, and experiential sequence.

Documenting Demolition

Tess Clancy

Documenting Demolition examines the impact of Detroit’s demolition program, which began in 2014 with the goal of removing 40,000 blighted properties, many of them single family homes. While the demolition of these homes is often accepted as a necessary step forward, this project questions the true motivation for demolition and reflects on how memories and culture connected to the homes can still be preserved. The exhibition includes the documentation of houses slated for demolition, treating them with historical significance through detailed drawings that honor their architectural value and the stories of their past residents. This preservationist approach shifts the narrative from that of market-driven urban renewal to one that emphasizes the importance of memory and community history. How does one memorialize or monumentalize a home?

The design of object-specific display armatures for elements salvaged from demolition sites raises critical questions about material value and salvage, and the possible future of deconstruction, questioning the necessity for demolition and the potential for diverting demolition material from the landfill. Through lidar imagery, drawings, models, and the display of salvaged elements, Documenting Demolition engages viewers in a dialogue about experimental preservation and memorialization in Detroit’s residential neighborhoods.

Doors

Francesca Mavaracchio

Doors is a project centered on a large door, inspired by classic medieval bronze doors and depicting contemporary iconographies. The work consists of an 11-foot-tall, two-panel door with an aluminum frame and eight gilded wood bas-reliefs. The design reflects the door as both a physical threshold and a symbol of transition and change. The bas-reliefs draw from protest imagery from 2020–2022, building on the idea of constructive interference and exploring how repetition creates significance and meaning in visual language.

Taubman College’s Łukasz Stanek, professor of architecture, was awarded a 2025 individual grant by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for his upcoming book on socialist architecture in the Global South. 

Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation works to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. To achieve this goal, the foundation has awarded $45 million in grants to 5,200 projects to date. This year, the foundation awarded 42 grants out of more than 600 applications.

Stanek, who focuses on global urbanization and the exchange of architecture between the Global North and South, is a prolific writer. He received the grant for his upcoming book The Gift: Spaces of Global Socialism and Their Afterlives (Jovis Publishers, 2026), which features essays from 24 contributing authors about how gift-giving and its geopolitical implications continue to impact urbanism in Africa and Asia.

The book is inspired by a series of exhibitions and lectures on the topic presented by Stanek since 2024. “The Gift: Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture” was a 2024 exhibition at the Architekturmuseum der TUM in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany. Featuring case studies from North Macedonia, Ghana, Mongolia, and California, the exhibition explored the generosity and violence of the gift giving dynamic. Stanek also presented on the topic in a 2025 lecture to the American Association of Geographers.

EXTENTS, a design collaborative led by two Taubman College faculty, will present its work at the 2025 Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall. Founded in 2017 by Cyrus Peñarroyo, assistant professor of architecture, and McLain Clutter, associate professor of architecture, EXTENTS is one of nearly 100 firms, collaborations, and individuals participating in this year’s international exhibit.

EXTENTS represents the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and digital media technologies. Inspired by Peñarroyo’s experience growing up in the Midwest as a queer, Filipino-American and Clutter’s childhood in a small Appalachian town outside of Pittsburgh, their collaborative work focuses on concepts such as otherness at the cultural periphery. 

Past projects include “Holding Pattern,” a workshop using AR technology to visualize neighborhood change; “Lossy/Lossless,” a temporary gallery space designed to reflect a neighborhood during gentrification; and “Image Matters,” a large, occupiable camera that produces tintypes as a way to reflect on the relationship between architecture and images.

Founded in 2014 and first held in 2015, the Chicago Biennial elevates the city’s historical legacy at the forefront of architecture and design. This year’s event, titled Shift: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, will bring together projects from 30 countries to address questions of housing, ecology, and material innovation. 

The Biennial opens on September 19, 2025, and runs through February 2026.

How can we design cities that encourage us to live longer, healthier lives? This is a key question asked in a recent article by the CFA Institute and featuring insights from Taubman College faculty member Upali Nanda.

A nonprofit organization focused on finance education, the institute sought to learn more about what causes members of some communities to live longer on average than others.

According to the article, there are a number of “blue zones” across the world, places where residents disproportionately live to be 100 years old. These are Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California. Although it’s difficult to study the cause behind residents’ longevity, there are a number of common traits that shape daily life in these regions.

Nanda, professor of practice in architecture at Taubman College and global sector director for innovation at the design firm HKS, spoke about the importance of two of those shared traits — walkability and third spaces — when it comes to physical health, especially amongst older citizens.

“Why do people want to take their laptop to a coffee shop to work?” Nanda said. “They love the buzz of knowing that there are people around them. There’s a social fabric that makes them feel like they’re part of a community. Third places are even more vital as we age, and need to be inclusive for physical, sensory and cognitive changes we experience over time.”

Read the full article at the CFA Institute website.

El Hadi Jazairy’s work with research practice DESIGN EARTH exploring missing narratives and ecofeminist fables in the face of climate change and mass extinction are included in this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. 

Jazairy is a professor of architecture at Taubman College and founding partner of DESIGN EARTH with Rania Ghosn. He also directs Taubman College’s Master of Urban Design program. DESIGN EARTH’s work was previously featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, 2018, and 2021.

This year, the practice has contributed the installation and accompanying narrated fable “A World Previous to Ours” to The Perimeter of Architecture: Amid the Elements project led by Princeton University’s Sylvia Lavin, and the “Elephant in the Room TalkBox” installation based on their “Elephant in the Room” animated fable to the The Next Earth exhibition presented by Antikythera in collaboration with MIT Architecture.

The 19th international exhibition, curated by Italian architect and MIT Professor Carlo Ratti, runs through Nov. 23 in Venice.

More on both projects from DESIGN EARTH is below.

A World Previous to Ours

Beginning with the Mastodon tooth drawing, through which Georges Cuvier articulated his theory of extinction, DESIGN EARTH constructs a sectional model of a stratified earth, into which is inserted a series of cavities that bring attention to missing narratives from the historical record. 

Each cavity is a miniature-room that traces the physical displacement of the tooth and other old bones — unearthed from the New World, moved through colonial outposts to presidential, royal, and natural history museum collections. This journey reconstructs a history of speculative accounts through which the fossil form was put to do work in the world — mythological tales of First Americans, Founding Narratives, and political and racial theories that legitimize power to rule over lands, bodies, and lives. This brings us to the present moment of what stories to tell in the midst of another mass extinction on planet Earth. 

Design Earth Project Team: Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy; Ekin Bilal (Design, 3D Model), Monica Hutton (Text), Jabari Canada (Sound), Qilmeg Doudatcz (web interface), Joyce Tullis (prototype). 

Installation Coordinator: A/P Practice.

With Support from:

• Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
• MIT Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Grant
• Princeton School of Architecture

Listen to the fable “A World Previous to Ours,” narrated by Sylvia Lavin, on Design Earth’s site. 

Elephant in the Room TalkBox

The “Elephant in the Room Talkbox” is a climate fable, spoken in the voice of Donna Haraway and dressed in architecture-parlante clothing. The box flattens the initial animation structure of a shot/counter-shot along the mirror-selfie at the back of the box.

The project addresses the elephant in the room — the climate crisis — by telling the story of one African elephant matriarch, from her capture and iconic staging through her ultimate break away from the American Museum of Natural History.

“Elephant in the Room” is the pilot animation in the eponymous DESIGN EARTH ecofeminist climate fables.

DESIGN EARTH Exhibition Team: Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy, Celia Chaussabel (installation), Jabari Canada (sound).

Elephant in the Room: Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy, Anhong Li, Monica Hutton (storyboard, script, animation).

Narrated by Donna Haraway

MIT Architecture Climate Work is curated by Nicholas de Monchaux, Ana Miljacki, Calvin Zhong.

Watch the animated fable on Design Earth’s YouTube channel.

Photo Credit: DESIGN EARTH

An architectural firm led by four Taubman College faculty has been recognized with a Design Vanguard award from Architectural Record. Founded in 2016, T+E+A+M is only the second ever Michigan firm to win this highly regarded award.

T+E+A+M was founded by Thom Moran, associate professor of architecture; Ellie Abrons, associate professor of architecture and director of the U-M Digital Studies Institute; Adam Fure, associate professor of architecture; and Meredith Miller, associate professor of architecture and director of the master of architecture program. 

The group began collaborating in 2015 and officially formed in 2016 after presenting their project “Detroit Reassembly Plant” at that year’s Venice Biennale. Since then, they have worked on a variety of speculative and practical adaptive reuse projects, including their largest project to date, “Building in a Building,” a new commercial and community space in Detroit’s East Village neighborhood which reuses the facade of an existing building.

Selected from across the world, Design Vanguard winners are recognized not only for their practical projects, but for their potential to advance the next generation of architects through innovative and speculative design. T+E+A+M was one of 10 winners for the 2025 program and one of only four firms selected from the United States. 

“We’ve tried to forge a different model of practice, not from a top-down ideological position, but something more emergent,” said Abrons in an interview with Architectural Record.

As part of the award, T+E+A+M was featured in an article by Architectural Record.

Detroit’s East Village neighborhood has a new community hub designed by the architectural firm T+E+A+M. The project, named “Building in a Building,” features four retail spaces, a cafe, and an outdoor basketball court set in the facades of a previous building. With a strong emphasis on adaptive reuse, the project bridges Detroit’s past and future in a community-centered commercial space.

T+E+A+M is a southeast Michigan based architecture firm founded by four Taubman College faculty members: Thom Moran, associate professor of architecture; Ellie Abrons, associate professor of architecture and director of the U-M Digital Studies Institute; Adam Fure, associate professor of architecture; and Meredith Miller, associate professor of architecture and director of the master of architecture program.

Originally tasked with renovating an old building on the corner of Jefferson Avenue, the group ran into multiple difficulties. Because the building had stood vacant for years, it suffered from extensive water damage that weakened the integrity of the roof and steel supports that span the storefront openings. This limited the ability to reuse and adapt certain elements of the existing structure. 

Pollution was also a major concern. One of the previous tenants on the site was a dry-cleaner. Because dry-cleaners typically leave behind chemicals as a byproduct of cleaning, soil remediation — removing chemicals from the soil — was required before the site could host a variety of retail and community uses.

Rather than restore the existing building to its original condition, T+E+A+M suggested a strategy of selective demolition, leaving behind the historic brick facade to frame a courtyard next to a newly built structure.

The project builds on T+E+A+M’s previous work, particularly speculative projects like “Detroit Reassembly Plant” and “Ghostbox,” that foreground the potential of repurposing materials in unexpected ways. For “Building in a Building,” the firm tried not to match the new construction to the old, and instead focused on the contrasts between the site’s history, its new use, and the changing neighborhood.

“It represented a shift from the more speculative and experimental work that we were doing early on that also had an interest in material reuse and adaptive reuse,” Miller said. “This is a project where we were allowed to exercise those ideas in a real-world context. I think there are a lot of direct connections between this client-driven project and the more speculative work we were doing early on in our practice.”

T+E+A+M was contracted by James Whitner, founder of the Whitaker Group, and Anthony Curis, co-founder of Little Village. Based in East Village, Little Village is a cultural corridor and placemaking initiative centering Detroit artists. The initiative prioritizes adaptive reuse and has previously established LANTERN and the Shepherd — the latter being a cultural arts center housed within a 110-year-old church. 

Whitner and the Whitaker Group are owners of the project’s flagship business, Social Status Detroit, a luxury street wear store that occupies the main retail space on the property and also hosts community events as part of the company’s beSocial initiative. T+E+A+M also designed the Social Status Detroit interior, extending the study of contrasts indoors, where a gray palette of shelves and tables allows the colorful products to stand out.

Highlights of the space include a mural by the artist Nina Chanel Abney, an outdoor half-basketball court, a marquis sign meant to emulate the billboards of the streetcorner’s past, mesh screens to increase visibility into the space, reflective glass on the new structure to highlight the reused facade, and original brick and limestone.

“It made sense to be able to introduce new uses and a new relationship to a changing neighborhood,” Miller said. “To design the new building inside the building gave a lot of flexibility to create better spaces and better retail spaces. I think that offers a new kind of space in the neighborhood. We really enjoyed, from a design perspective, the contrast between the old and the new, and a lot of the design decisions were, ‘How do we preserve that?’”

Story by Joshua Nicholson. Photo by The Whitaker Group.

A group of nine female architects and designers from Detroit have joined together to raise awareness about their work and the future of the city. Calling themselves The New School, the group features multiple Taubman College faculty and alumnae: Salam Rida, M.Arch ’17; Laura Marie Peterson, B.S Architecture ’10; Laura Walker; Ujijji Davis Williams, M.U.R.P ’17; and Torri Smith, M.Arch ’21.

The group also includes Kimberly Dokes, principal and owner of Dokes Design Architecture; Elise DeChard, owner of END studio; Mollie Decker; owner of Subject Studio; and Imani Day, principal and founder of RSVN studio.

Representing a wide range of architectural disciplines in Detroit — including architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, and interior design — The New School represents a philosophy that design should transform systems, cities, and culture, not just physical space. Members of the group have worked on projects that democratize the urban design process, prioritize community building, and advocate for marginalized communities. 

“We’re not just designing buildings,” Smith said in an interview with Metropolis magazine, “We’re co-authoring new futures — placing care and community at the center.”

The group was interviewed and profiled in Hour Detroit and Metropolis.

Photo Credit: John D’Angelo

Taubman College faculty member Lars Junghans’ work with Belgian architect Steven Schenk to produce a low-carbon system for controlling building humidity is included in this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale as part of the Belgian Pavilion’s Building Biospheres exhibit.

Built from bio-based hempcrete — a porous mixture of hemp and lime — Junghans and Schenk’s device reduces a room’s humidity by absorbing it through capillary condensation and drying by high air velocity produced via solar chimney; as solar radiation is absorbed by the chimney’s darkened, external surface at the top of the duct, it creates an updraft that increases air velocity. This drying effect on the surface then causes moisture in the capillaries of the hemp to move from the room-facing surface to the backside of the porous wall.

“This principle is causing an ongoing dehumidification effect for the room if the air velocity and/or solar radiation is high,” Junghans says.

The idea is to provide an alternative to traditional methods of dehumidifying buildings, which typically require large amounts of energy used to power air conditioners or chillers.

Junghans, who is an associate professor of architecture at Taubman College, and his team developed the basis for the device while studying the moisture absorption of different materials for their 22/26 Midwest research project. Others involved in developing the passive dehumidification device were Lisa Mandelartz Schenk, Hai Jie Tan, and Tijs Vangenechten, of Shenk.zone, and U-M students Srihitha Nimmagadda and Pranavi Gudi.

Test walls were built in Belgium and at the Liberty Research Annex in Ann Arbor, and photos and illustrations of the samples are included in the pavilion. 

Commissioned by the Flemish Architecture Institute and curated by Bas Smets and Stefano Mancuso, the Building Biospheres pavilion investigates the impact of plant intelligence on architecture. Featuring more than 200 plants, the pavilion showcases how plants can be used to create comfortable interior environments while reducing dependence on artificial heating and cooling systems.

The Venice Architecture Biennale runs through Nov. 23. For more on Building Biospheres, read this article at Dezeen.

A new endowed scholarship honoring the legacy of alumna Robin Guenther, M.Arch ’78, has been established at Taubman College with support from architecture and design firm Perkins&Will. Guenther, who died of cancer in 2023, led the company’s global health practice and was a tireless architect and environmental health advocate who designed green, sustainable health care facilities and co-wrote a guide to building them.

The Robin Guenther Memorial Scholarship provides multi-year, need-based financial support to graduate architecture students pursuing a Master of Architecture degree from Taubman College.

Tamar Ayalew, M.Arch ’26, is the first student to be named a Robin Guenther Memorial Scholar. Originally from Alexandria, Virginia, Ayalew earned her bachelor’s at the University of Virginia. She is passionate about architecture as a force for social and environmental good and especially drawn to health, housing, and community design. At Taubman College, she hopes to deepen her understanding of both design and the business side of architecture, with aspirations to one day start her own practice.

“I want to express my deep gratitude to Perkins&Will for their generous support,” Ayalew said. “Because of their kindness, I can devote more time and energy to my studies at Taubman College without the worry of finances. It’s a privilege to be a scholarship recipient, and I hope to one day extend the same opportunity to future students. Their belief in my potential means the world to me, and I’m incredibly grateful.”

Guenther’s work focused on the intersection of sustainability policy and health design, directing design strategies for numerous health care projects in the U.S. and abroad with an emphasis on regeneration and resilience. Some of her notable projects include the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford — the second children’s hospital in the world to earn a LEED Platinum certification — in Palo Alto, California; Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital — which was designed to operate during catastrophic flooding — in Charlestown, Massachusetts; and Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth Ambulatory Care Center — a 1980s office building repurposed using biophilic design — in Middletown, New Jersey.

In 2005, Guenther received the Center for Health Design’s Changemaker award for her leadership and innovation in the design of healing environments. In 2010, Healthcare Design magazine named her the “#1 Most Influential Designer in Healthcare.” In 2012, Fast Company included her as one of the “100 most creative people in business.” She appeared as a TEDMED speaker in 2014. And in 2018, she was honored with “Women in Design” awards from Healthcare Design and Contract magazines.

“Robin believed that architecture could heal — physically, socially, and environmentally,” said Phil Harrison, CEO of Perkins&Will. “Her impact is evident across the industry and in the values she instilled in colleagues, clients, and students.”

Photo: Robin Guenther, M.Arch ’78 (left) and Tamar Ayalew, M.Arch ’26 (right).

Taubman College’s Kuukuwa Manful was recently interviewed by Madame Architect as part of a day-in-the-life series with practicing architects. Manful, assistant professor of architecture, broke down her daily routine and approach to teaching, and also provided a glimpse into working life for architects within academia.

Madame Architect is a digital magazine and media startup dedicated to female professionals in the world of cities and design. The magazine promotes and interviews professionals from a variety of occupations, including architects, engineers, designers, and policy makers. 

A trained architect, researcher, and writer, Manful has built a career creating, researching, and documenting architecture in Africa. She runs Accra Archive, which preserves endangered architectural archives; curates adanisem — a Ghanaian architecture documentation collective; runs sociarchi — an architecture non-profit; and is president of the Accra, Ghana, chapter of Docomomo.

Manful is currently working on a book about the architecture of education in Ghana and a study on architecture in West Africa using an archive that she recently digitized. In the interview, she also emphasized her strong commitment to work-life balance.

To learn more about Manful’s daily routine, read the full interview at Madame Architect.

Photo by Augustine Owusu-Ansah.

The first cohort of students in Taubman College’s Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology graduated this May. The first-of-its-kind major provides a “future-focused” curriculum, combining instruction in technology, design, and city planning to prepare students for the modern challenges faced by cities.

The Taubman College Newsroom sat down with a few students from the cohort to learn more about the urban technology experience from the students who lived it.

Why did you choose to enroll in this brand-new program?

“I honestly liked urban planning better than I did, let’s say architecture, and I think urban technology was unique because the interdisciplinary nature allowed for me to explore options, not just in, let’s say, a public sector space, but also private sector space,” said Aakash Narayan, Urban Technology ’25. “I think the innovative mindset behind it was appealing to me. I think I’ve always liked being the first to do something, and so that part didn’t really scare me as much as excited me.”

“I knew I kind of had a gut feeling I wanted to go into planning, and I just rated the programs I got into and what my net experience would be, and Michigan kind of lined up,” said Theo Berry, Urban Technology ’25. “I’m being really frank, I learned about the program by an email from my college counselor two days before the deadline while camping in Joshua Tree. I wrote my essay on a hot spot from the car and submitted it the night beforehand, just in the middle of the desert. I knew nothing about Michigan; I didn’t even know the difference between Michigan and Michigan State before coming here.”

How did enrolling in the program turn out for you?

“I don’t consider myself a risk taker, but I would say that one of, like, the first big risks I’ve taken was choosing this major,” said Audrey Tang, Urban Technology ’25. “Right off the bat, I do not regret it.”

“I don’t know really what this program would be like without being a part of this cohort,” said Odiso Obiora, Urban Technology ’25. “And the people in it have taught me so much just from being in the room with people. There’s a range of interests, and so people are really good at really different things, and so getting to witness all of that separately has been so cool to see.”

“I’ve learned that I actually have a lot more interest in the policy side of the built environment,” said Urja Kaushik, Urban Technology ’25. “So that’s something that now I know is something that I’m good at, or something that I’m interested in. So that’s what I’m looking forward to doing, versus if I had gone into just a computer science or a computer engineering program, I wouldn’t have figured that out, and I would be in a very different place right now.”

What are some of the most impactful parts of the program?

“Talking to friends who are in other schools, no one has the relationship that we have been able to build with our program director, advisors, professors, instructors,” said Devin Vowels, Urban Technology ’25. “So I think that is something that’s extremely valuable. I don’t know how different younger cohorts’ experiences are with that, but I do feel like we’ve been able to build that relationship that most don’t get, most aren’t able to build.”

“Once we got into studio classes, understanding the kind of user research process was super helpful in helping me understand that, in the end, it’s people who make the places, and you’re engineering or manufacturing a place to allow people to live, work, play,” Narayan said. “And so I think that perspective, the human-centered perspective throughout the program, was reiterated and I was really happy to get to hone in on that.”

“We were kind of making the program, giving our thoughts and our opinions on everything,” said Enzo Mignano, Urban Technology ’25. “I think being able to have that space to share maybe ‘This didn’t work’ or ‘I really like this’ and having the opportunity to say ‘Hey, I hated this class, let’s not do it again.’ Like, I love having that opportunity.”

“I feel like many doors have opened,” Obiora said. “And most excitingly, I think I’ve seen the intersections of things I didn’t see before. So for example, how a community organization can affect energy policy. It feels so different when I was coming into the program, but you realize that there are actually a lot more dots to connect, both systemically and then also just in career fields and paths.”

How have you been able to use this program to further your interests?

Many students have had the opportunity to engage in internships, competitions, and travel through the Urban Technology program. A key part of the major is the Cities Intensive sequence, which takes students to cities across the Midwest to learn from the activists and planners on the ground. Students have interned far and wide to put their urban technology education into practice.

“One thing that I find a lot of success when networking and doing interviews, and is what kind of got me my last internship at Autodesk, is that we’re coming in with a very unique perspective,” Mignano said. “We’re in a very unique curriculum where we’re not working a lot in the theoretical, we’re working very much with real people and doing real projects. A lot of bachelor programs don’t have that.”

“A lot of people in real estate come from a business background or a finance background, and they don’t necessarily have the know-how to, you know, write code for X, Y, Z, or how to create certain processes that can streamline a lot of development processes,” Narayan said. “And so I think, to be honest, a lot of me getting jobs, in my opinion, was me getting out of my comfort zone and talking to people about urban technology.”

Students also excel on campus. Berry, who is heavily involved in the U-M Urbanism Club, was nominated by program director Bryan Boyer to participate in the UNESCO International Street Design Competition, a 48-hour competition in which students worked to improve a randomly assigned street. As the only undergraduate and urban technology student on his team, Berry initially felt out of place, but his expertise played a key role in the success of his team.

“It kind of came up that I knew the most about urbanism of the group, and I was the only person with 2D graphic design skills and video editing skills and the general skills that worked really, really well in the matter,” Berry said. “And so the fact is, I was kind of the one doing most of the project. It was over a 48-hour window, and so I basically had to pull two all-nighters for it. But it came together, and we got a nice honorable mention. We were the only placing team from the United States.”

19 of 20 total members of the first cohort of Urban Technology students walked the stage on May 4, 2025.

– Story by Joshua Nicholson, May 5, 2025

Taubman College researchers are developing passive cooling solutions for self-built housing to improve residents’ health and well-being.

Two years ago, Ana Paula Pimentel Walker, associate professor of Urban and Regional Planning, began knocking on the doors of crudely built shacks in the favelas, or slums, of São Paulo, Brazil, and Bucaramanga, Colombia. 

Most of the homes lacked electricity, running water, sanitation, insulation, and heating or cooling systems. In interviews with the residents, she learned about their housing issues and heat-related health concerns.

At each dwelling, Pimentel Walker measured the size of the living space and the roof height. Then she identified the scrap materials ― such as metal, plywood, and cloth ― and local techniques used to build, repair, and expand the structure. She also recorded the ambient temperature inside and outside the house.

It was hot, hazardous fieldwork. But completing this technography of construction practices marked an important first step in Pimentel Walker’s multidisciplinary research project to co-develop passive cooling solutions for self-built housing in low-income communities. 

“People living in informal and precarious settlements in sprawling cities or in resource-deprived rural villages of the Global South are adversely affected by increasing extreme weather and temperatures,” Pimentel Walker says. “Indoor heat can exacerbate heat stress and heat-related illnesses. Houses can become heat traps.”

Without timely interventions, more people in self-built housing will experience the ill health effects of extreme heat in coming years, she explains.

A Global Climate Catastrophe

Increasingly, heat and health have garnered global attention.

The World Meteorological Organization reported in November that 2024 was on track to be the warmest year and 2015 to 2024 the warmest decade on record. At COP29 in Azerbaijan, the WMO State of the Climate 2024 Update issued a Red Alert at the “sheer pace of climate change in a single generation.” 

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared: “Climate catastrophe is hammering health, widening inequalities, harming sustainable development, and rocking the foundations of peace. The vulnerable are hardest hit.”

The COP29 Special Report on Climate Change and Health warned that “climate change poses a fundamental threat to human health and survival” and urged governments, policy-makers, and other sectors to place health at the heart of climate solutions.

Modeling Passive Cooling

Pimentel Walker is putting that mandate into action through her passive cooling research project in Brazil and Colombia. 

Funding from the University of Michigan’s “Boost” program, Taubman College’s Pressing Matters grant program, and the U-M Center for Global Health Equity, among others, enabled her to engage global partners and put boots on the ground in São Paulo and Bucaramanga. 

Pimentel Walker collaborated with Architecture Professor Lars Junghans, who analyzed temperature data and utilized a thermal comfort model to evaluate 22 different passive cooling intervention candidates. Passive cooling uses design elements and materials to control the temperature and improve the thermal comfort inside a home during hot weather with little or no energy consumption.  

These options included coating the walls and roofs of shacks with white reflective paint, covering the roofs with grass or mud, adding insulation and filling gaps, creating a cavity wall, installing a second roof over an existing one, and creating a roof overhang to provide sun and rain protection.

“Our modeling showed that painting a corrugated-metal roof with white reflective paint would lower the temperature inside a São Paulo shack in January by 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) at 3 p.m. in the afternoon,” Pimentel Walker reports. 

Other modeling results, particularly the use of multiple cooling methods in a dwelling, were equally promising. Encouraged by these findings, her research team began co-designing implementable interventions to make them affordable, culturally suitable, and appealing.

Pimentel Walker returned to São Paulo and Bucaramanga, where she held daylong workshops with the favela residents, dwellers’ associations, and their partners to gather additional feedback.

“I shared information on why they may face higher mortality rates than other communities due in part to heat exposure and how increasing the thermal comfort inside their homes has positive health outcomes,” she says. 

Pimentel Walker passed out surveys and asked residents to choose their favorite passive cooling options. Then they discussed why certain interventions would work better in practice than others.

The project’s initial research phase concluded in June 2024.

“Now our team is seeking funding to implement these passive cooling techniques,” Pimentel Walker says.

Taking the Next Steps

Pimentel Walker shared the results of her team’s passive cooling research with her global partners in Brazil and Colombia as well as with the international community during her appearance at the Group of 20 Social Summit in Rio de Janeiro in November.

Currently, she is working with government officials, nongovernmental organizations, and private industry to implement changes in policies and practices that will improve the housing conditions and reduce the burden of heat stress in informal settlements.

“Eventually, we would like to see international organizations and governments include the point of view of self-built and precarious homes in their heat-adaptation plans and give these settlements top priority since the residents are the most exposed to extreme heat and have fewer resources to combat dangerous heat waves,” Pimentel Walker concludes. 

The interdisciplinary research team working on passive cooling can be found at: https://coolcasa.blot.im/people.

— Cladia Capos

A Summer Discovery Program on Campus Hooked Efrie Escott, M.Arch ’14, on Architecture, and Taubman College Set her on the Path for Success

Most Taubman College students and graduates are probably familiar with Tally, a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool that enables architects to calculate the environmental impacts of building material selections while they are designing structures using Revit software.

What many may not realize, however, is that one of their former classmates, Efrie Escott, M.Arch ’14, was instrumental in the development and rollout of this best-in-class LCA product created by KieranTimberlake, a Philadelphia-based architecture, planning, and research firm.

As a graduate student at Taubman College, Escott landed a summer internship at KieranTimberlake with some help from one of her professors, the late-Douglas Kelbaugh, who was Professor of Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning and dean of the College.

“Professor Kelbaugh said the company would be a good fit for me and offered to reach out and make the connection,” Escott recalls. “I was part of the five-person core team that developed Tally.”

Escott worked on building the environmental database for Tally during her research internship with the company. After completing her graduate work in 2014, she was hired as a full-time researcher and continued to support the development of the tool. Escott also oversaw user education and workflow integration of Tally at other firms worldwide.

In 2017, she volunteered to go to Kigali, Rwanda, where she taught the employees of the nonprofit MASS Design Group the nuts and bolts of utilizing Tally and Revit software to evaluate the environmental impacts of their building designs. The three-week overseas experience opened her eyes to other global opportunities.

“We worked in MASS’s headquarters in Kigali, but on weekends, company officials took us to see other parts of the country,” Escott recalls. “It was gorgeous.”

During her nine-year stint with KieranTimberlake, she presented hundreds of talks on integrating life-cycle thinking into design, published multiple peer-reviewed articles, and represented the company at major conferences, including as keynote at the 2020 International Living Future Institute’s Zero Carbon Conference.

Escott’s outstanding contributions won her successive promotions at KieranTimberlake, which named her associate in 2019 and principal in 2022.

In 2023, she started a new chapter in her professional career. On January 1, Escott joined Schneider Electric, a French multinational corporation specializing in digital automation and energy management. Later in the year, she received the 2023 Young Architects Award from AIA in recognition of her thought leadership on new groundbreaking methods and her commitment to environmental-impact transparency.

 In Escott’s new position as decarbonization technical program leader at Schneider Electric, she continues to support innovations in architecture, industrial ecology, and construction that advance the sustainability of the built environment.

“My current job is to help buildings globally meet the performance target requirements for carbon reduction in accordance with science-based targets of climate change,” she explains.

Escott’s keen desire to merge her passions for design and environmental advocacy in her pursuit of architecture was nurtured during her four years of graduate study at Taubman College, which shaped the trajectory of her professional career.

Embracing Architecture Early On

Reflecting on her early embrace of architecture, Escott exclaims: “This is an awesome U-M story.”

As a high school student in Milwaukee, she enrolled in U-M’s “Summer Discovery.” The highly popular, pre-college, academic enrichment program brings prospective students to campus where they can take a variety of courses taught by university instructors across multiple disciplines.  

When the art class Escott signed up for turned out to be full, she took an architecture course instead. It proved to be one of the best decisions in her life.

“I loved architecture from day one!” Escott recalls. “I fell in love with the design process and the way architecture encourages you to think about space and light. From that point on, I planned on studying architecture in college.”

Escott took a slight detour to Yale University to earn an undergraduate degree in Architecture and a master’s degree in Urban Ecology before circling back to U-M in 2011 to pursue her master’s degree in Architecture at Taubman College.

“Several things attracted me to the college,” Escott explains. “Its strength in research. Its foundation in making things. And its emphasis on openness to interdisciplinary collaboration.”

The university’s worldwide reputation as a leading research institution and the prominence of its top-ranked School for Environment and Sustainability also factored heavily in Escott’s decision to do her graduate studies on the Ann Arbor campus. 

“I had a lot of phenomenal professors, probably 15 or 20 of them,” she recalls. “Lars Gräbner, Associate Professor of Practice in Architecture, encouraged me to bring the lenses of ecology and environmental sciences into the design studio and integrate them into my work. That was foundational in terms of starting to merge these areas of interest and expertise I had been developing over time into a single point.”

The Research Through Making program taught by Steven Mankouche, Professor of Architecture, resonated with Escott’s affinity for constructing things in a very physical way. In the ecology-based architecture course led by Jen Maigret, Professor of Architecture, Escott learned systems-based thinking, which provided a helpful framework for integrating the two fields of architecture and environmental science into one. 

“I was a graduate student instructor for Professor Kelbaugh for three years, and he set me on the path to teaching,” says Escott, who now teaches a course at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is an adjunct professor. 

Despite the demands of work and family life, Escott makes time to return to the Ann Arbor campus, where she gives guest lectures and mentors students. In 2024, she received Taubman College’s Outstanding Recent Graduate Award.

“My best advice to today’s students is to pursue what you are passionate about,” Escott concludes.

— Claudia Capos

A father and son establish an endowed scholarship to ensure their support for Taubman College and its students continues in perpetuity.

Supporting Taubman College’s educational mission and mentoring architecture students have been long-standing traditions for Thomas Mathison, B.S. Arch ’73, M.Arch ’75, and his son, Evan Mathison, B.S. Arch ’01. 

The two Michigan natives are the co-founding principals of award-winning Mathison | Mathison Architects (MMA) in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

In 1997, Tom started the Michigan Mentoring Network at U-M while working full-time at TowerPinkster in Grand Rapids. The innovative networking program linked architecture students with licensed architects in a mentoring relationship. 

It was an instant success and later expanded to all of the state’s accredited architecture schools.

“Mentoring was very important to me,” says Tom, who ran the program for 15 years before handing it off to AIA Michigan. “Good relationships between students and professionals developed, and some have continued for over 20 years.”

Evan, who was a freshman at U-M the same year his dad launched the network, saw value in the program and signed up to be paired with an architect-mentor. 

“Networking gave me permission to ask more experienced people in the field important questions about design decisions, team building, and business management,” Evan says. “This mentality has persisted throughout my entire career.”

Over the past three decades, the two Mathisons have maintained close ties with Taubman College. In 2020, Evan joined the Alumni Council and connected with current students through speed-networking events, portfolio reviews, and career fairs.

“This high level of involvement with Taubman College, its students, and its alumni community has given me great insight into what the school is doing and how it is innovating in the field,” he says.

Recently, Tom and Evan established and endowed the Mathison Family Architecture Scholarship, which will provide scholarships for West Michigan students seeking to study architecture at Taubman College.

“We thought this would be a way to ensure that our legacy of mentoring students and supporting architecture education lives on through both of our careers and beyond,” Evan explains. “We anticipate the first scholarships will be awarded in 2027.”

A Few Twists and Turns 

Tom’s multiple interests in the arts, math, and science, coupled with his father’s construction-industry work, steered him toward architecture. Deciding where to go to college was simple. 

“In 1969, U-M was the only public university in the state with an accredited architecture school, so that’s where I applied,” Tom recalls. “Fortunately, I was accepted.”

His goal was to establish his own architecture firm someday and to specialize in health-care design, which he studied in graduate school. His plans took a few twists and turns, however, once he entered the job market.

“Fairly early in my career, I began designing educational facilities,” Tom says. “So, my career took a permanent swing in that direction, and I’ve been involved with higher-education and K-12 design ever since.”

One professional-practice course at U-M helped to shape Tom’s career.

“It focused on something new called ‘marketing,’ which was then an up-and-coming part of architecture practice,” explains Tom, who interned at a Philadelphia firm specializing in marketing for architects and engineers. “That course set a pattern for my career, and I moved into a role that revolved around marketing, business development, and management, as well as architectural design.”

Igniting a Passion for Architecture

Evan’s experiences at U-M were slightly different from those of his father. 

He was attracted to Michigan by its prestige and overall excellence and spent his first two years exploring various disciplines, including kinesiology, business, and pre-med. 

“When I took a drawing course with Melissa Harris, who became one of my favorite architecture professors, it really changed my whole outlook on architecture,” Evan recalls. “It showed me I care about this field, and I’m pretty good at it. I took another drawing course, and it ignited my passion for architecture and design.”

In an instant, everything Evan had experienced while growing up in a design-oriented, well-traveled family came together, and he decided to pursue an undergraduate degree in architecture at Taubman College. 

One of his studio instructors, Maryann Thompson, a visiting faculty member, later offered him a job at her architecture firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He accepted her offer after finishing his master’s degree at Harvard University and spent the next eight years in Boston.

“The firm did the architectural design of public amenities in major parks on the East Coast and also handled private work,” Evans says. “This gave me a strong balance of public projects that impacted many people and private projects with a high level of design that impacted smaller numbers of people.”

Building Synergy Across Generations

In 2013, Tom and Evan began talking about starting their own architecture firm. Evan and his family moved back to Grand Rapids, so he could set up an architecture practice with his dad. 

Mathison | Mathison Architects opened in October 2013, fulfilling Tom’s long-held dream to start his own firm.

“Evan brought his heightened sense of design from his project work in Boston and New York, and I brought my contacts, name recognition, and awareness of West Michigan,” Tom explains. “We put those strengths together in a complementary way and built on each other’s capability.”

Tom focused on business management, client acquisition, community engagement, and team building. Evan oversaw concept design, project development, and project management of client work in West Michigan and New England.

“We didn’t always see eye-to-eye on things, and we were from different generations,” Evan observes. “What made us so successful is that we came to appreciate each other’s perspectives and contributed to the firm’s growth in different ways.”

After Tom retired in 2023, Evan assumed much of his father’s business-development role and brought on two new partners to help lead the firm.

“Things have come full circle in a way,” Evan says. “We still have many good years ahead of us.”

— Claudia Capos

Sonia Hirt, M.U.P. ’95, Ph.D. ’03, has traveled across continents and around the U.S. to fulfill her scholarly aspirations.

If Sonia Hirt, M.U.P. ’95, Ph.D. ’03, had not spotted an advertisement for a six-month scholarship in America that appeared in a local newspaper in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1992, her life story would be quite different.

She might not have left Sofia, her hometown, and come to the U.S., where she went on to earn two graduate degrees at Taubman College; launch her college teaching, research, and writing career; serve as a dean at two major universities; and receive a coveted Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Fortunately, Hirt, who earned an architecture diploma at the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering in Sophia in 1991, decided to take a chance and respond to the scholarship ad placed by the Open Society Foundation. To her delight, her application was accepted and she focused her sights on America.

“At the time, I thought I’d end up in New York or Los Angeles, because those were the only two U.S. cities I knew of,” Hirt recalls. “Instead, the foundation sent me a letter and said I was going to Toledo, Ohio. I called them and said that to my knowledge, the city of Toledo is in Spain.”

During her six-month scholarship, Hirt worked with a Toledo nonprofit that was renovating Victorian houses in the inner city and converting them to affordable housing units. Although the city of Toledo lacked the cachet of New York and L.A., its proximity to Ann Arbor enabled Hirt to visit the University of Michigan campus and explore its many educational offerings.

“I met with the late-Professor Mitchell Rycus at Taubman College, who explained to me the Urban Planning graduate program,” she recalls. “In 1993, I started work on my master’s degree. In the meantime, I met another student, Oliver Hirt, M.U.P. ’95, who also went through the master’s program, and we got married ― and we are still together. It was a great love story.”

Hirt says she is grateful for her experiences at Michigan and Taubman College.

“I loved all my classes and professors,” she says. “I have maintained close personal and academic relationships with three of my favorite Urban Planning professors and advisors ― Jonathan Levine, Scott Campbell, and Robert Fishman ― for more than 20 years.”

Hirt’s long-standing ambition was to pursue a Ph.D. and become a college professor. However, her growing family responsibilities, with the arrival of two additional children, delayed the start of her doctoral studies in urban planning at Taubman College until 2000. 

Embarking on a Whirlwind Academic Career

Hirt’s whirlwind academic career started before she even completed her Ph.D. at Michigan. The University of Toledo approached her and offered her a position as an assistant professor of geography and planning. She didn’t hesitate for a moment and took the job. 

A year and a half later, in 2005, Hirt accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor in urban affairs and planning at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. During her 12 years at Virginia Tech, she took a one-year sabbatical to serve as a visiting associate professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Hirt’s next move took her to College Park, Maryland, where, in 2016, she became dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland. It was a proud moment in her life.

“This was a big breakthrough in my career, to become a dean at a relatively young age, especially being a woman and someone who came from urban planning, a relatively small discipline,” Hirt says. 

“At the time, there were very few women who were deans,” she explains. “It was also very unusual for an urban planner to become a dean, because 90 percent of the time, deans came from the architecture field, a much larger discipline.”

Hirt’s stay in Terrapin territory was a short one.

Halfway through her five-year term at Maryland, she received an offer she couldn’t turn down from the University of Georgia. In 2018, Hirt moved her family to Athens, Georgia, where she became dean of the College of Environment + Design and Hughes Professor in Landscape Architecture and Planning, a position she still holds today.

Fulfilling a Dream

Another of Hirt’s lifelong aspirations was to become a widely published, oft-cited scholar in the field of urban planning.

“I have fulfilled my dream, and I’m currently working on my sixth book,” she says. 

In 2023, Hirt was awarded an esteemed Guggenheim Fellowship to support that work. It was another milestone in her career, during which she has authored, co-authored, or edited more than 90 scholarly and professional publications with nearly 5,000 citations.

Hirt served for six years as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board at Taubman College under the leadership of former Dean Monica Ponce de Leon and briefly under current Dean Jonathan Massey.

“Being on the Dean’s Advisory Board helped me see from another angle exactly what deans do,” she observes. “While my Ph.D. helped me become a successful scholar, it did not teach me administrative skills. Once I became a dean, I had to learn those skills on the job.” 

After Hirt retires from the University of Georgia, she hopes to set up a Hirt family scholarship, teaching fellowship, or professorship at the University of Michigan.

“I loved my time as a student, because it was a time to explore,” she says. “I didn’t really want to graduate. That’s why I became a professor, so I can always remain a student, as well.” 

— Claudia Capos

Through an endowed scholarship, Jessica (Betel) Loovis, B.S. Arch ’05, seeks to make a Taubman College education more accessible.

There was never any doubt about which university Jessica (Betel) Loovis, B.S. Arch ’05, would attend after high school. 

Her mother, two older sisters, aunt, uncle, cousins, and friends in West Bloomfield, Michigan, all headed to the Ann Arbor campus when they reached college age.

“We were born and bred to go to Michigan,” Jessica says. “It was a foregone conclusion in my family. The minute one of us graduated from the university in the spring, another one of us started classes the following fall. My family attended football games in the Big House for 12 straight years. We were baked-in Wolverines.”

Those maize-and-blue credentials and connections have proven invaluable to Jessica throughout her personal life and professional career. The strong educational underpinnings she acquired at Taubman College have given her the knowledge, tools, and confidence to think big and act boldly.

Jessica’s strong ties to Michigan also have prompted her to give back to the university by establishing a new endowed scholarship at Taubman College that honors one of her former classmates.

Gaining a Broader Perspective

Today, as principal and vice president at Atlanta-based design firm ASD | SKY, Jessica is well-positioned to reflect on the major inflection points in her career and how Taubman College prepared her to take on new challenges.

“Initially, I was attracted to architecture by the confluence of art and design with math,” she explains. “I felt it was a practical way to blend those two interests.” 

At the time Jessica matriculated through Taubman College, architecture was a junior-level program, which translated to spending the first two years in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts. 

“I had a more traditional undergraduate experience,” she explains. “It afforded me the opportunity to engage and interact with Michigan’s diverse community and exposed me to a more extensive non-architecture curriculum.”

A critical component of the architectural curriculum is regularly presenting and defending project work. Her classmates consistently produced more curated and creative work; however, Jessica recognized she had an ability to convey her ideas in an effective, compelling manner that resulted in successful reviews. 

“In retrospect, I realize my ability to articulate complex design ideas to a diverse audience sets me up well for business development,” she observes.

After Jessica graduated from Michigan in 2005, she landed her first job in Atlanta at the architectural firm Cooper Carry. 

In 2008, she enrolled in graduate school at the Georgia Institute of Technology to earn a Master of Architecture degree. Two years later, a friend connected her to ASD | SKY, where she was hired as an architect on the design side.

An Unplanned Pivot

In 2011, the CEO of ASD | SKY approached Jessica and offered her an opportunity to lead the firm’s business development.

“I was 28 years old, and I had no idea what that actually meant,” she says. “But I decided to go for it. As it turned out, making the transition from traditional design to business development was the best decision I ever made.”

Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

“My background in architecture gave me an understanding of the profession and the process,” Jessica says. “I can speak intelligently, and I have both the credibility as a registered architect and the capability to communicate design concepts effectively to our clients.”

In 2018, Jessica was promoted to principal and vice president with responsibility for leading business development and cultivating client relationships for the company’s 13 offices nationwide. 

“I love being part of a profession that is shaping our built environment and designing the places people choose to go,” she says. “We have a direct relationship with people and the ways in which they experience the world.”

Reconnecting with Taubman College

Jessica began reconnecting with Taubman College in 2020 and joined the Alumni Council the following fall. 

“As a council member, I’ve gotten to meet great people and peek behind the curtain, so to speak,” she says. “I feel I have a much deeper connection to the college now than I did when I was in school, partly because of Dean Jonathan Massey’s leadership. The alumni community is amazing and holds such stature all around the country.”

 Jessica began thinking about various ways to support scholarships for students. She teamed up with her good friend, Whitney Kraus, B.S. Arch ’05, to endow a memorial scholarship that pays tribute to their former classmate, Aggie Drelich, who had passed away.

“I have such positive feelings toward the University of Michigan and my Taubman College education, and I recognize how integral this background is to my professional and personal development,” Jessica remarks. 

“I love the idea of making that background more accessible to others, especially as higher education costs rise, because Michigan opens so many doors,” she adds. “The beauty of Michigan is that no matter where you go or what you do, Michigan matters.”

— Claudia Capos

“The journey I’ve had, ever since ninth grade, has been because of architecture,” notes Kevin Gonzalez Ramirez. A B.S. Arch ‘28 student from San Diego, Gonzalez Ramirez started taking community college courses in Revit and other design programs before high school, when his middle school computer teacher noticed his interest in learning to design a room of his own. “I dreamed of designing a space that I didn’t have at that moment: my own bedroom,” he says.

That dream slowly enlarged, as Gonzalez Ramirez took online architecture courses during the pandemic, started a summer internship with a local design firm, and sought design classes not available at his high school.

In the fall of 10th grade, he was offered a full scholarship to attend a private boarding school with a strong architecture program in Massachusetts. The summer before he moved across the country, Gonzalez Ramirez traveled to the Dominican Republic with a community organization. In 10 days, he and a team of other students helped build a house out of concrete blocks, working alongside the family who would soon inhabit the home. That experience sparked his future career passion: to create affordable housing. “It changed my life forever,” he says.

What drives his motivation? “Wanting to learn more and more,” says Gonzalez Ramirez, who plans to pursue a Real Estate Certificate as well as an M.Arch degree. “And knowing that my mentors and scholarship donors have believed in me, offered this support, it encouraged me to come here. Otherwise, Michigan would have been out of the question as an out-of-state student.” Gonzalez Ramirez is the recipient of the Mitchell Ketai Family Scholarship and the Leonard D. and Jean Kersey Endowed Scholarship.

“I’m truly excited to see what comes next here at Taubman College, especially in the Architecture program,” he says. “It is becoming more technologically integrated, so I’m excited to see how it will be in the next five or 10 years. I plan to work with other organizations and partnerships to bring designs on paper to life.”

— Lisa Powers

This year’s George G. Booth Traveling Fellowship recipients will investigate how cities and villages across Europe are adapting, whether through repurposed urban infrastructure or strategically resourced rural zones.

Taylor Korslin, M.Arch ’19, and Charles Weak, M.Arch ’18, are the recipients of the 2025 Fellowship, which began in 1924 and provides recent Taubman College graduates with a $13,000 stipend toward architectural research that requires international travel.

Korslin’s project, “Urban Transformations: Repurposing Infrastructure Sites for Neighborhoods,” will explore recent land-use transformations across Europe to reimagine how the built environment could change over time in the United States. He will visit sites in London, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Utrecht, Venice, Barcelona, Madrid, and Bilbao to immersively examine how each has been integrated into the city to address distinct challenges, from a ‘90s port transformation to more current projects to redevelop a power station and remove an elevated highway.

“Each site is master planned to address unique characteristics and challenges, including environmental adaptations and resilience, sustainability, adaptive reuse, historic character, public space and parks, community and public health, housing (demand, affordability, displacement, gentrification, inclusivity), mobility (walkability, multimodal, transit, car infrastructure), and city identity (cultural landmarks, tourism),” notes Korslin in his abstract. “Each site is thoughtfully designed with respect to the built context and city-life in which they are embedded within.”

The Alumni Council Committee, which selected the fellowship winners, praised Korslin’s holistic approach to research, rooted in Jane Jacobs’ urban ecology framework. They noted that the Taubman College community will benefit from the in-depth study of these diverse locations as “examples that we can relate to where we all live and practice.”

For his “Smart Rural Futures: Mapping Successful Resiliency Strategies In Rural Europe” project, Weak will spend close to two months documenting a dozen small towns in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden to examine the successes and failures of the European Union’s Smart Villages program.

“European rural zones suffer from the same problems that pervade rural areas in America: depopulation, lack of essential services and economic opportunities, energy crisis, and lack of connectivity,” notes Weak in his abstract. “However, the European Union has organized initiatives at an international level to combat the death of small villages across Europe.”

Notable sites include a carbon-neutral island of 22 small villages working toward independence from fossil fuels, a town of less than 1,000 residents that boasts nearly 300,000 tourists, and a Swedish town of 115 looking to expand to 300 in the next decade with help from local resource sharing and regional tourism.

The Alumni Council applauded Weak’s interest in architectural opportunity in often overlooked communities as compelling and his effort as especially significant to the Taubman College community, given Ann Arbor’s proximity to Midwestern rural areas. 

Korslin is a project architect with Deep River Partners in Milwaukee, where he is also actively involved in the community as a board member of the Downtown Neighbors Association and a volunteer with the Rethink 794 initiative to transform an underutilized freeway, his renderings for which have been featured in many local and national publications.

Weak is a project coordinator with BVH Architecture in Omaha, Nebraska. Previously, he was an architectural designer with ZGF Architects in New York and adjunct professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is also a contributor to Architects Newspaper, New York Review of Architecture, and Untapped.

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The George G. Booth Traveling Fellowship provides the opportunity for recent alumni/ae to research a special aspect of architecture that requires international travel. Each year, one recent M.Arch graduate is awarded the fellowship; however, in 2025, two awards were given, as a result of not having awarded the Booth Fellowship during 2021. Congratulations to Taylor Korslin, M.Arch ’19, and Charles Weak, M.Arch ’18.

A new outdoor alcove designed by Taubman College Architecture faculty and featuring a light-inhabiting glass installation will take shape this spring and summer at the University of Michigan Nichols Arboretum. 

Professor of Architecture Catie Newell and Alli Hoag, head of glass and associate professor of glass at Bowling Green State University, are constructing “Inhabiting Light” this spring for testing before final installation in the arboretum’s Magnolia Glade. The structure will provide a space that promotes healing for those who are grieving.

The interactive installation will be built with Light Forms — specially crafted, press-formed, prismatic glass blocks that allow visitors to experience nature with privacy. The reflective, transparent surface also offers continually changing views and tessellations for meditation.

The 10-sided, hollow glass blocks work like stackable masonry units and offer a creative solution for allowing passive light into built spaces. Newell and Hoag are producing 2,000 of them, with plans to scale up production with partners in the future; the installation also serves as proof of concept for Light Forms to be used more broadly in architecture.

Newell and Hoag developed the project with Upali Nanda, professor of practice in architecture at Taubman College, who is working with her HealthByDesign teams and classes to study the relationship between light and health.

“Inhabiting Light” received funding from the U-M Office of the Vice President for Research and the U-M Arts Initiative’s Arts Research: Incubation & Acceleration grant program last year.

Read more about the latest on the project in the University Record.

Taubman College recognized four undergraduate architecture students with 2025 Wallenberg Studio Awards during a May 2nd symposium at the college’s Liberty Annex: Ranya Liu, B.S. Arch ’25; Ella Pelican, B.S. Arch ’25; Malak Atwi, B.S. Arch ’25; and Elana Ho, B.S. Arch ’25. Selected by a guest jury, the awards were presented for exceptional work during the students’ final semester studio.

Each year, senior undergraduate students in the Taubman College architecture program complete the Wallenberg studio, named after renowned alumnus Raoul Wallenberg. As the final studio required for completion of the B.S Architecture degree, students build on their past skills and experiences to explore the transformative power of architecture through a focus on broad humanitarian concerns.

At the end of the semester, the top students are awarded the Wallenberg Studio Award. Funded by the Raoul Wallenberg Endowment, awards are offered as a stipend for international travel to a country of the student’s choosing. Building on Wallenberg’s legacy, the stipend encourages students to engage with the people, architecture, and culture of the country they visit and return with a broadened understanding of the world.

The guest jury consisted of four visiting architects from across the country: Bradford Grant, professor of architecture at Howard University; Caroline O’Donnell, Edgar A. Tafel professor of architecture at Cornell University; Isaac Alejandro Mangual-Martinez, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Virginia; and Neeraj Bhatia, associate professor of architecture at the California College of Art.

Here are more details about the winners and their projects:

First Place

Ranya Liu and Ella Pelican
COAL (1748-2025)

Instructor: Gina Reichert
Studio: Above & Beyond: Time Travel in the Here & Now

Second Place

Malak Atwi
BETWEEN US: ROOTED ASSEMBLIES

Instructor: Zain AbuSeir
Studio: Narratives of Displacement

Third Place

Elana Ho 
In Memory

Instructor: Zain AbuSeir
Studio: Narratives of Displacement

Taubman College’s Sarah Mills, Ph.D. U.R.P ’15, was interviewed as part of a faculty spotlight by the U-M Sustainable Food Systems Initiative. Mills, a professor of practice in urban and regional planning and director of the Center for EmPowering Communities at the U-M Graham Sustainability Institute, researches how renewable energy development impacts rural communities, the reactions of rural landowners to wind and solar projects, and how state and local policies facilitate or hinder renewable energy development.

The Sustainable Food Systems Initiative is a cross-campus collaboration of students, faculty, and community leaders from around the world to build successful and sustainable food systems. According to the initiative’s website, their main goal is to “offer a vision of a foundation regarding the development of sustainable and equitable ways to produce and deliver nutritious food to improve people’s health and livelihoods, with minimal environmental damage and lasting economic security.”

Mills talked about her initial interest in rural planning, her ongoing research, and her advice for prospective students in urban and regional planning. 

“Yes, it is ‘urban and regional planning’, but there is a whole lot of change that is coming to rural America, and we do not have enough rural planners,” Mills said. “I think that the opportunities are wide if you think beyond just an urban environment and begin studying and understanding connections between urban and rural environments.”

Read the full interview.

Taubman College awarded prizes to six graduate and undergraduate architecture students as part of the 2025 Leonard B. Willeke Portfolio Competition, the oldest and most prestigious award recognizing student architectural work at the college. 

Named after the late Detroit architect Leonard B. Willeke and funded by the Willeke endowment fund, the competition recognizes students’ design excellence and innovation through their portfolio work. This year’s student portfolios were judged by the architecture alumni members of the Taubman College Alumni Council.

Illustrating distinctive and impactful conceptual structures set around the world, the winning portfolios include a pedestrian-friendly post office, a sports field house designed for donkeys, and a public space in Dhaka, Bangladesh, designed to increase social connections.

Here are the winners, links to their portfolios, and their monetary awards:

Undergraduate Winners

• 1st Place – Pearl Thianthai, B.S. Arch ’25, ($10,000)
• 2nd Place – Ethan Bierlein, B.S Arch ’25, ($7,000)
• 3rd Place – Prisha Guha B.S. Arch ’25, ($3,000)

Graduate Winners

• 1st Place – Roy Khoury, M.Arch ’25, ($10,000)
• 2nd Place – Raymón Richardson, M.Arch ’25, ($7,000)
• 3rd Place – MD Ehsan Alam, M.U.D. ’24, ($3,000)

Taubman College conferred degrees on more than 250 graduate and undergraduate students over the weekend of May 2nd, 2025, and presented awards for excellence to students and faculty. The event took place at University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium.

This year, Taubman College welcomed the first graduating cohort of students in the Urban Technology Program and awarded the first-ever UT Award for Academic Excellence. Graduating students join the college’s global alumni network, which is more than 10,000 strong.

Here’s a list of the awards:

Doctoral Studies

• Doctoral Student Award in Urban Planning: Taru
• Distinguished Dissertation Award in Urban Planning: Taru

Master of Urban and Regional Planning (M.U.R.P.)

• Service to Taubman College and the Urban and Regional Planning Program: Sukhmony Brar
• Eric Dueweke Service to the Community Award: jøn kent 
• Academic Achievement Award: Audrey Dombro
• American Planning Association Award Outstanding Student Award: Lawson Schultz

Master of Urban Design (M.U.D.)

• M.U.D. Award: Ehsan Alam

Master of Architecture (M.Arch)

• AIA Medal for Academic Excellence: Rachel Kuepers
• Alpha Rho Chi Bronze Medal: Tala Dababna
• ARCC King Student Medal: Brianna Kucharski
• Architecture Program Distinction Award: Martin Rodriguez

M.Arch Thesis Awards

• Burton L. Kampner Memorial Award for Best Thesis Project: Jonathan Bam Davis
• Generational Voice Award: Shannon Sumner
• Award for Environmental Impact: Shane Herb, Megan Kortenhof, and John Spraberry
• Award for Theory/History/Framing: Martin Rodriguez
• Award for Materials/Tectonic/Modeling: Jisashu Sun
• Award for Representation/New Media: Martin Rodriguez

Bachelor of Science in Architecture

• Architecture Program Distinction Award: Ayesha Jeddy and Elana Ho
• Wallenberg Studio Awards: Ranya Liu and Ella Pelican (First Place); Malak Atwi (Second Place); Elana Ho (Third Place)

Bachelor of Science in Urban Technology

• Urban Technology Award for Academic Excellence: Enzo Mignano

Faculty Awards

• Salzer Award for Teaching Excellence (M.U.R.P.): Xiaofan Liang
• Salzer Award for Teaching Excellence (M.Arch): Olaia Chivite-Amigo
• Salzer Award for Teaching Excellence (Undergraduate Architecture): Melissa Harris
• Salzer Award for Teaching Excellence (Urban Technology): Matthew Wizinsky

Photos from the event can be found at Taubman College’s Flickr Page. 

Taubman College recognized seven graduating students in the master of architecture program for their final thesis proposals this spring. In addition to an overall award and student voice award, awards were presented in various categories, including representation/new media, materials/tectonics/modeling, theory/history/framing, and environmental impact.

Following is a list of finalists, winners, as well as an excerpt from each winning thesis:

BURTON L. KAMPNER AWARD FOR BEST THESIS

Winner

Jonathan Bam Davis, “Disaporic Observatory of Critical Vodou Studies”
(Studio: “Constructed Actors.” Anya Sirota)

“This thesis draws from Theaster Gates’ Stony Island Arts Bank, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, and speculative preservation practices to argue that architecture cannot be neutral; it is a tool for rewriting, assembling, and actively producing knowledge. Through an exploration of zombi, vodou, digital remnants, and speculative artifacts, this project challenges architecture’s traditional role, constructing spaces that do not merely house memory but perform its reconstruction.”

GENERATIONAL VOICE AWARD (Student Vote)

Winner

Shannon Sumner, “Structures of Power, Spaces of Resistance”
(Studio: “MASA: Mexico Architecture Studio Alliance. Filthy, Sprawling, Dangerous.” Dawn Gilpin with Robert Adams)

“My thesis began as an effort to design accessible spaces beyond ADA compliance, but through deeper research into the history of disability and its architectural manifestations, I uncovered a fundamental truth: exclusion is not an oversight—it is an intentional feature embedded within architectural traditions. The built environment has been systematically designed to serve a narrow range of bodies while marginalizing others. This reality demands a reckoning. If architecture is to serve all people, it must be dismantled and reimagined—not as an extension of entrenched biases, but as a site of collective accountability, adaptation, and inclusion.”

REPRESENTATION/NEW MEDIA

Winner

Martin Rodriguez, “Digital Primitivism”
(Studio: “Constructed Actors.” Anya Sirota)

“Digital Primitivism challenges both modernist essentialism and the algorithmic reduction of identity. It does not seek nostalgia, but refusal. Laugier, Semper, and Viollet-le-Duc saw the primitive hut as a foundational form, a statement of necessity. Modernism transformed it into a universal system, in which shelter became function and function became control. But architecture is no longer about dwelling—it is about storage, classification, and surveillance. Digital Primitivism does not recover origins; it exposes their contradictions. It resists the drive to categorize, amplifying absence, turning function into paradox.”

Finalists

• Alexa Chiroussout, “Blind Spots”
• Holly Chu, “Spirit, Script, and Shelter”
• Jonathan Bam Davis, “Disaporic Observatory of Critical Vodou Studies”
• Michael Katsimakas, “Outposts of Autonomy”
• Roy Khoury, “Woah, Degrow!”
• Matthew Mansour, “Geologic Mechanisms”
• Patrick Wilton, “Architectures of Indulgence”
• Judy Zhang, “The Ordinary Utopia (Kids Version!)”

MATERIALS/TECTONICS/MODELING

Winner

Jiashu Sun, “Integrative Tectonics”
(Studio: “Tectonic Arguments.” Jose Sanchez)

“This thesis explores how architectural tectonics, by incorporating natural systems, can contribute to the physical and spiritual health of its inhabitants. By proposing the design of a hospice center, the study interrogates the emotional link that patients can develop with the building through care-oriented design tactics. Traditionally, architecture has been predominantly perceived as a tool for functional efficiency, often overlooking the emotional connections between individuals and their surroundings. However, when architectural space transcends mere structural support and aesthetic form, and instead is attuned to elements such as light, airflow, views, and materiality, it fosters a holistic mind–body experience conducive to healing. The strategic integration of natural elements not only creates serene environments and auditory experiences but also maintains privacy and safety while nurturing a profound connection to the external natural world.”

Finalists

• Kenda Blanks, “West Side Yucca”
• Hargun Chawla, “Edifice Tellurian”
• Marianna Godfrey, “Chinampas and Abastos”
• Srinjayee Saha, “INTERLOCK”
• John Spraberry, “Cadaretta Transition Cookbook”
• Youzhu Tao, “Loading Space”

THEORY/HISTORY/FRAMING

Winner

Martin Rodriguez, “Digital Primitivism”
(Studio: “Constructed Actors.” Anya Sirota)

Finalists

• Trevor Hibbs, “Place vs. Space”
• Brian Kim, “Unearthing Tradition”
• Kenneth Lowery II, “Beyond the Surface: The Power of Symbolism”
• Nahj Marium, “Ecological para-site”

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Winners

Shane Herb, “An Architecture of Residuals”
(Studio: “Constructed Actors.” Anya Sirota)

“Sustainable architecture remains tethered to a paradigm of mitigation—deploying “green” technologies to minimize carbon footprints while neglecting the material and spatial implications of its own interventions. What if architecture engaged directly with the detritus of renewable energy, embedding its byproducts within domestic space? Could this reposition sustainability as a condition of flux rather than a reductive metric of efficiency?”

Megan Kortenhof, “Architectures of Accompaniment”
(Studio: “Constructed Actors.” Anya Sirota)

“Through a lens of critical ethnography, the thesis interrogates how architecture might facilitate not just the logistical realities of retreat, but also the social and affective dimensions of forced migration. How might architecture accompany displacement in

ways that recognize grief, continuity, and adaptation as essential to spatial design? Can impermanence itself be formalized as a condition of cultural conservation, not through static preservation but through the design of transition? By reconsidering architecture’s relationship to mobility, contingency, and embedded cultural memory, this thesis speculates on alternative modes of practice—ones that do not simply mitigate loss, but actively shape the spatial and temporal experience of leaving.”

John Spraberry, “Cadaretta Transition Cookbook”
(Studio: “Degrowth, Low-tech, and Alternative Hedonism.” McLain Clutter and Mireille Roddier)

“This thesis depicts transitions to post-growth futures for the land practices, social

organizations, and physical infrastructures of Cadaretta, a prototypical rural community in Mississippi. It suggests agricultural and settlement pattern transitions at multiple scales, from the regional to the architectural, and between value systems, shifting between prioritizing capital accumulation to fostering regional sufficiency.”

Finalists

• Julia Bohlen, “Agents, Actors, and Augmentation of the [Sens]ible City”
• Sakshi Doshi, “Out of Si(gh)te”
• Tyler Jensen, “SAGINAutonomy”
• Jinyu Li, “AgriReach”
• Varun Vashi, “Hydrofutures South Nevada”

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This year’s M.Arch Thesis Coordinator was Thom Moran. Thesis faculty for 2024-2025 were McLain Clutter + Mireille Roddier, Adam Fure + Thom Moran, Dawn Gilpin with Robert Adams, Perry Kulper, Steven Mankouche, Jose Sanchez, Anya Sirota, and Kathy Velikov.

This year’s Thesis reviews took place on April 30 – May 1, 2025, with Visiting Critics:

• Xavi Aguirre
• Carlo Berizzi
• Assia Crawford
• Dora Epstein Jones
• Lior Galili
• Deborah Garcia
• José Ibarra
• Daniel Koehler
• Felipe Orensanz
• David Salomon
• Lola Sheppard
• Mark Stanley
• Lee Vinsel
• Mason White

The University of Michigan Board of Regents recently approved promotions for Taubman College faculty members McLain Clutter, El Hadi Jazairy, Wes McGee, Anya Sirota, Cyrus Peñarroyo, and Jonathan Rule. Please join us in congratulating them, as well as Stamps School of Art & Design faculty member John Marshall, who holds a dry appointment in Taubman College’s architecture program.

McLain Clutter

Promotion to Professor of Architecture, with Tenure

Professor Clutter addresses the nexus of contemporary urbanism and digital culture authoritatively and creatively in scholarship and professional practice. As co-founder of the design practice EXTENTS (with Cyrus Peñarroyo), Clutter investigates architecture’s impact on the world and identifies the systemic and often circuitous trajectories through which architecture finds agency across scales and mediums. 

Clutter’s work has been disseminated nationally and internationally in venues that include the Architecture League of New York, Architect’s Newspaper, the Journal of Architectural Education, Grey Room, Thresholds, MONU, The Avery Review, DISC, and the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture in Shenzhen. His co-published book, Shaped Places of Carroll County, New Hampshire (Oro Editions, 2021), earned the distinguished Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Award and The Architect’s Newspaper Editors’ Pick, Best of Design Award for Representation. With upcoming installations in Bologna and Madrid as part of a European Union–backed initiative, his work continues to push boundaries at the intersection of architecture, media, and cultural critique.

Clutter holds a master of environmental design from the Yale School of Architecture and a bachelor of architecture from Syracuse University. He is a Registered Architect in the state of Michigan. He served as chair of the Architecture Program from 2019 – 2024 and as the interim associate dean of academic affairs from 2017 – 2019. He also served on the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Education, being instrumental in the growth of its reputation and reach. He holds a dry appointment with the Digital Studies Institute.

El Hadi Jazairy

Promotion to Professor of Architecture, with Tenure

Professor Jazairy works at the intersection of architecture, design, and climate crisis discourse. He is the co-founder of the influential research studio DESIGN EARTH, which critiques conventional architectural responses to environmental issues. His approach reframes the climate crisis as a condition that requires negotiation, urging a shift from anthropocentric to anthropocene design. His practice is widely regarded as the founding voice in architectural engagement with climate change, consistently pushing the boundaries of the field with thought-provoking, interdisciplinary projects that invite difficult but necessary questions. 

Jazairy is co-author of the seminal works Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment and Geographies of Trash. His recent writings have been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Avery Review, Harvard Design Magazine, and MONU. The work of DESIGN EARTH has been exhibited at prestigious venues including the US Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale, the Onassis Foundation in Athens, Greece, the MUDAC, LABORAL, the Sharjah Biennial, the Times Museum in Guangzhou, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, and collected by the Museum of Modern Art. The practice has been awarded prizes nationally and internationally, including the Architectural League of New York’s Prize for Young Architects + Designers, the Jacques Rougerie Foundation’s First Prize, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Awards.

Jazairy holds a doctorate of design from Harvard University, a master of architecture from Cornell University, and a bachelor of architecture from La Cambre in Brussels. He has served as the director of the Master of Urban Design degree since 2021. 

Wes McGee

Promotion to Professor of Architecture, with Tenure               

Professor McGee is a leader in the field of computational design and robotic fabrication for architecture. His research revolves around the interrogation of the means and methods of material production in architecture, focusing on developing new connections between design, engineering, materials, and manufacturing processes as they relate to the built environment. His pioneering approach, encapsulated in the “file-to-fabrication” workflow, has advanced academic research but also had a transformative impact on real-world applications. He is a co-founder of the award-winning firm, Matter Design, a research practice that explores the intersection of innovative fabrication techniques and ancient craft knowledge. The practice engages diverse collaboration involving industrial partners, visual artists, musicians, and historians of technology to innovate on a global scale. 

Professor McGee’s work has been widely disseminated and recognized through a combination of peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, and significant awards including the American Institute of Architects Small Project Award, the R+D Merit Award from Architect, the American Society of Civil Engineers John O. Bickel Award, and the Community Award from the Association for Robots in Architecture, Art, and Design. Professor McGee and his collaborators hold four patents. Under his leadership as director, the college’s Digital Fabrication and Robotics Lab (FabLab) is now recognized as one of the top digital fabrication labs worldwide and has served as the incubator for numerous groundbreaking projects, collaborations, publications, and patents. 

Professor McGee received a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering and a master of industrial design, both from Georgia Tech. He holds a dry appointment in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.

Anya Sirota

Promotion to Professor of Architecture, with Tenure                                               

Professor Sirota is a designer, fabricator, social producer, institutional strategist, and researcher. She is a founding principal of the award-winning firm Akoaki. Her research and creative practice are at the intersection of architecture and urban design, exploring how a distinct synthesis of aesthetics, social enterprise, and cultural programming can offer contemporary and multi-disciplinary strategies for urban transformation. Her work emphasizes themes of participatory design, cultural mediation, sustainable architecture, adaptive reuse, and cost-effective construction. She leads projects that engage communities, artists, and experts to create lasting social and ecological change. She has served as the associate dean for academic initiatives since 2019, exhibiting dynamic leadership and academic innovation. 

Sirota’s work has earned global recognition, including exhibitions at prestigious venues such as the Vitra Design Museum (Germany), Grenoble Biennale (France), V&A Museum (Scotland), and multiple awards for creative practice, including the Architecture League Prize (New York). Sirota has also authored numerous publications and lectured at global institutions, underscoring her impact on both architectural practice and community engagement. Her notable collaborative project, The Detroit Cultivator, on the city’s historic North End, resulted in Detroit’s first community land trust. Another collaborative project, Cultural Center Planning Initiative, received the Bilbao Metropoli 30 “Partners in Progress” Award. 

Sirota holds a master of architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she was awarded the Araldo Cossutta Prize for Design Excellence. She also holds a bachelor of arts in modern culture and media from Brown University.

Cyrus Peñarroyo

Promotion to Associate Professor of Architecture, with Tenure

Peñarroyo is an architectural designer and researcher whose work explores the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and digital media. He is a co-founder of the design practice EXTENTS (with McLain Clutter). His work encompasses three themes: “media materiality,” “other urbanisms,” and “hybrid engagement.” His projects critically examine the impact of the internet and digital media on architecture, advocating for spatial justice and highlighting inequities in infrastructure. Peñarroyo’s work takes many forms, including speculative digital representations, multi-media installations, and designed objects, which have been exhibited at prominent international venues and biennials.

Penarroyo’s individual and collaborative work has been widely disseminated nationally and internationally in venues including the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture, World Congress of Architects, Ardeth, The Architect’s Newspaper, and the DISC Journal. His collaborative work at EXTENTS  earned an honorable mention for an ACSA Faculty Design Award and recognition at major exhibitions, including those at Washington University and Yale University. His co-published book, Shaped Places of Carroll County, New Hampshire won the ACSA Faculty Design Award and was the editor’s pick by The Architect’s Newspaper for Best of Design Award for Representation.

Peñarroyo is the recipient of the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers from The Architectural League of New York. He received a bachelor of science in architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a master of architecture from Princeton University.

Jonathan Rule

Promotion to Associate Professor of Practice in Architecture

Rule is an architect partner in the award-winning design firm Morcillo Pallares + Rule (MPR, with Ana Morcillo Pallares), whose research and practice focus on construction, material experimentation, adaptive reuse, and the integration of virtual reality into both practice and pedagogy. His ability to bridge professional practice with academic inquiry positions him as an emerging leader in architectural discourse.

The work of MPR has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Murcia, the Technical University of Cartagena in Spain, and The State University of New York at Buffalo. The practice (with PLY+ and IDS) was recognized by an AIA Building Michigan Design Honor Award and an AIA Detroit Honor Award, as well as a National Honor Award and an NY Chapter Award of Excellence from the Society of American Registered Architects. Their work has been published in magazines such as Detail, Dezeen, and The Architects Newspaper. MPR also received the National ASCA Faculty Design Award for MPR’s MUDEM, the archeological museum and historic archive in Molina de Segura, Spain. His research writing has been recognized with an Outstanding Paper/Design Work Award by the 26th UIA World Architects Congress, an award from the Spanish Ministry of Infrastructure at the XIV Spanish Architecture and Urbanism Biennial, and a WOJR/Civitella Ranieri Architecture Prize nomination. 

Rule holds a master of architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He received a bachelor of science in architecture, from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

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In addition, John Marshall was promoted to professor of architecture, without tenure, in conjunction with a promotion to professor of art and design, with tenure.

John Marshall

Promotion to Professor of Art and Design, with Tenure, and Professor of Architecture, without Tenure

Professor Marshall is a designer, educator, and creative technologist. His research focuses on design methods, digital fabrication, tangible interaction, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and problem-based learning. He is the founding director of the master of design in integrative design at Stamps. Professor Marshall co-directs the practice rootoftwo, LLC (with Cézanne Charles). Their work blends lab, studio, and think-tank models to develop innovative environments and approaches. Their public realm works engage civic future-making and have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Australia, Brazil, China, and across Europe. Their projects have been featured in Wired, FastCompany, Dezeen, and The Guardian. The practice represented Detroit UNESCO City of Design at the 11th Annual Meeting of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in France. He also co-directs r+d LAB, LLC, a research-driven collaboration with Karl Daubmann (DAUB) and Cézanne Charles. r+d LAB projects have won the AIA Michigan Award, AIA Small Project Practitioners Award, and Architect Magazine’s R+D Award. Professor Marshall holds a dry appointment in Taubman College’s architecture program.

Creating video games as a tool for reimagining urban futures is one goal of Detroit at Play, a participatory design series co-led by Taubman College faculty in partnership with Diversity in Design Collaborative and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan. Organized around a sequence of game design workshops with local students, the project culminated in an exhibition at Newlab Detroit on April 12th and 13th, 2025.

The project is funded by the Arts Research Incubation and Acceleration program. It is led by Jose Sanchez, associate professor of architecture; Ishan Pal Singh, lecturer and director of the Taubman Visualization Lab; Torri Smith, M.Arch ’21, lecturer and designer; and Salam Rida, M.Arch ’17, lecturer and designer.

Detroit at Play hosted a series of collaborative game design workshops at the Boys and Girls Club, which facilitated access for local high school students in the city. Students used an open-source framework for video game design that was taught and utilized to develop video game installations themed around students’ interests, focusing on the city of Detroit as a setting.

By working with Taubman faculty, students were able to develop games that prioritized executing complex tasks as a team. The games, developed in two months, are intended to be a first prototype that students can develop further. By mixing hand-drawn elements with AI-generated images, students were able to quickly prototype and offer a playable version of their game for the exhibition at Newlab.

Detroit youth play video games they designed at the exhibition, hosted at Newlab Detroit © Nick Hagen

The architectural design of the exhibition aims to define a new social playground for community encounters. Visitors were invited to play four games live, which were designed as collaborative multiplayer experiences, and work together to achieve a range of goals.

“This exhibition space was never meant to just display games — it was designed as a platform, quite literally, for participation,” said Singh. “Play becomes a form of spatial ritual, and in that act, architecture becomes less about form and more about dialogue.”

The exhibition also featured a documentary filmed by Stephen Ewing, which captures the students’ creative journey and workshop process over two months.

Students design video games during the workshop series, with support from faculty and graduate student instructors © Stephen Ewing

With an emphasis on solidarity, resilience, and care, each of the games is themed around the culture and identity of Detroit, and students were encouraged to design simulations influenced by their own experiences.

“Detroit at Play is about reclaiming authorship,” said Rida. “Too often, Detroit youth are spoken about, not listened to. These students are translating their experiences of growing up in the city into digital worlds that reflect resilience, joy, struggle, and imagination. This project illustrates how we create more meaningful, more impactful design by centering local narratives.”

The games developed by students are:

• “Art Alley” – develop urban murals to grow the sense of identity in your neighborhood.
• Team: Emanuel Henry, Decarla Mitchell, Tyler Payne 
• “Junkyard Mayhem” – utilize material salvage to repair neighborhood homes.
• Team: Devaughn Washington, Devin Cook, Kareem Schick
• “Let’s Dance” – build a crowd by staying on the beat, inspired by the Hip-Hop and Jazz scene of Detroit.
• Team: Isyss Christerfield, Journie Taylor, Jamar Leftwich 
• “Detroit Custom Prize” – repair cars and manage a system to effectively stay ahead of the community’s needs.
• Team: Spring Porter, Jada Blanks, Tyson Seay, Lauren Singleton

Taubman College faculty Lisa Sauvé, M.Arch ’11, and Adam Smith, M.Arch ’11, were given a special mention by Architizer for their project Gamma MKE. Sauvé, assistant professor of practice, and Smith, a lecturer, are co-founders of the architecture firm SYNECDOCHE, which designed the Milwaukee retail space in 2024. 

The project was given a special mention in the commercial retail category. Architizer’s A+ awards and special mentions are given to the best buildings, projects, and spaces worldwide and are typically selected by a jury and public vote. 

Designed for two piercing artists returning to Milwaukee, the interior architecture of Gamma MKE connects the piercing experience with personal ritual. According to the project’s description, “Each piercing becomes part of a unique narrative of self-care and expression, while the space itself defines a ritualistic journey, offering opportunities to document and celebrate personal moments.” The building also makes use of prefabricated walls to increase sustainability and customizability for future users of the space.

Architizer is an architecture platform that works to empower architects by highlighting projects and connecting architects with both each other and industry tools. The platform’s digital library has over 3 million images across 163 thousand projects and its annual awards program routinely receives over 3,000 entries. 

Taubman College’s Studio Reassembled was selected as a finalist for an Architizer’s 2025 A+ award in the Architecture +Learning category. The A+ awards are given to the best buildings, projects, and spaces worldwide and are ultimately selected by a jury and public vote. Studio Reassembled is one of five projects worldwide nominated for a public choice award in the Architecture +Learning category.

Built in advance of the Fall 2024 semester, Studio Reassembled is an open studio space that bridges spatial, technological, and natural environments. With a focus on active learning, the space encourages dynamic peer exchange, experimental projects, and flexible instruction. Studio Reassembled provides on-floor access to expertise in environmental science and climate engineering, visualization technology, and library science, encouraging interdisciplinary work. 

Architizer is an architecture platform that works to empower architects by highlighting projects and connecting architects with both each other and industry tools. The platform’s digital library has over 3 million images across 163 thousand projects and its annual awards program routinely receives over 3,000 entries. 

Public voting is now open and will close at midnight on May 16th. Vote on the Architizer A+Awards website for Studio Reassembled to win an Architizer A+ award. A free Architizer account is required to vote and winners will be announced in June.

Three Taubman College Students have been named to the 2025 Metropolis Future100, a list that recognizes the country’s top graduate and undergraduate students in architecture and interior design. 

Marianna Godfrey, M.Arch ’25, Martin Rodriguez Jr., M.Arch ’25, and Orli Schwartz, M.Arch ’25, were nominated for the Future100 by their professors for their academic excellence and attention to detail during studio courses. Godfrey was nominated by Jonathan Rule, assistant professor of practice; Rodriguez was nominated by Neal Robinson, assistant professor of practice in architecture; and Schwartz was nominated by lecturer Gina Reichart. 

Schwartz has presented research on mass timber and adaptive reuse through an internship with Boston firm Annum Architects and won Student Show awards in 2024 for “Aggregate Aggregated,” an archive to demonstrate the amount of natural aggregates used in southeast Michigan, and in 2025 for “re:focus,” a proposal for exclusion zones along the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn.

“Orli brings a clarity of ideas to studio and works thoughtfully through iterations,” said Reichart. “She digs into research topics with an analytical mind and synthesizes engaging insights. She designs holistically: materials, systems, engagement with the ground and context, form, light.”

A Taubman scholar and recipient of the AECOM scholarship, Rodriguez received a 2024 architecture student research grant for his work on “So Fetch!”, a digital system that translates slang into visual art and ornamentation. He also won Student Show awards in 2024 for “TURN INTO CANDY!”, a movie theater model designed out of gummy bears. 

“Martin is one of the rare students who is ‘all-in’ in all directions of his education,” said Robinson. “He lives it. He shares it. He champions it. His expertise and attitude will lead the discipline toward more humane and resilient built environments.”

Godfrey was featured in the 2023 Student Show for “Motion Museum Ann Arbor,” a museum designed to inspire motion with elements inspired by the movie “Up”.

“Marianna has proven to be a very talented student and stood out among the rest of her colleagues by demonstrating her capacity to be critical about design, while at the same time being precise, rigorous, and showing an accomplished level of technical competency,” said Rule.

Launched in 2021, the annual Future100 program is sponsored by architecture and design firms interested in recruiting a talented, diverse pool of candidates. The winning students’ information is shared with recruiters from architecture and design firms across the country.

Two Taubman College students combined their architectural expertise with public health and were selected as finalists for the 2025 Michigan Health Equity Challenge. As finalists, the two received stipends and eight weeks of policy and program mentorship to further their project’s proposal and development.

Lauren Pettinga, M.U.D. ’25, and Irene Wei, M.Arch ’25, were one of 14 teams selected as finalists out of 59 proposals. The two suggested creating a digital resource guide for traumatic brain injury patients and caregivers. 

Established in 2023, the Michigan Health Equity Challenge is supported by Molina Healthcare of Michigan and pairs U-M graduate students with community-based organizations to develop solutions for health disparities in Michigan. 

“We are so inspired by all of the finalists, who have combined their energy, creativity and innovative thinking to devise solutions to health equity challenges in a variety of communities,” said Cathy Killaly, adjunct lecturer in health management and policy and executive director of the Griffith Leadership Center at the School of Public Health.

More about this year’s winners can be read here: https://record.umich.edu/articles/michigan-health-equity-challenge-winners-announced/

Taubman College Alumna Akima Brackeen, M.Arch ’22, was awarded a 2025-2026 Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome. With a distinguished career in architecture, Brackeen was one of 35 artists and scholars selected for this prestigious fellowship. Rome Prize winners are selected annually by juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a national competition. This year’s competition received 990 applications.

Founded in 1911, the American Academy in Rome is an interdisciplinary community of scholars and artists inspired by the history, art, and architecture of the city. A key component of the academy is the Rome Prize Fellowship, which annually supports around 30 scholars and artists in the arts and humanities to live and create in collaboration. Fellows eat meals together and socialize between dedicated time for learning and peer mentorship. 

Brackeen was awarded the Lily Auchincloss Rome Prize to pursue her project “Sonic Impressions.” Since graduating from Taubman College, Brackeen has been a Longo International Intern with MASS Design Group and was awarded a Jeanne and John Rowe Fellowship at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is currently an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Five Taubman College students have been recognized in the annual Saarinen Swanson Essay Contest. Their essays explored the themes of justice, power, and repair, and how the concepts influence architecture or urban planning.

This year, there were three winners and two honorable mentions. Malak Atwi, B.S. Architecture ’25, David Vega II, M.Arch ’25, and Misbah Shahid, B.S. Architecture ’26, were awarded $3,000 in prizes. Lauren Chew, Ph.D. Arch, and Sophia Hoffacker, Ph.D. Arch, each received $2,000 as honorable mentions.

Established in 1994, the contest encourages the use of writing to generate and disseminate ideas about architecture and planning. It is open to all students at Taubman College, at any level, in any program. The competition seeks 1,000- to 1,500-word essays addressing contemporary issues in architecture, planning, and related topics. The essay can be a new text or work produced for a course.

Here are the titles and an excerpt from each of their essays:

Atwi for “Dear Architecture: A Letter of Reckoning”

Excerpt: “I want to work with land as kin, not commodity. To understand materials not just for their color palette, but for the histories they carry. I want to build in a way that considers the cost of construction- the environmental effect, the human labor, the sociopolitical implications. But more than anything, I want to use you to protect, not to dominate.”

Vega II for “Pa’lante: A Manifesto for Spatial Justice & Erasure”

Excerpt: “In NYC, injustice is written into the cracked sidewalks, the shadows of urban renewal, the infrastructure vacancy, the disintegration of NYC Housing Authority (NYCHA) campuses, and the generations resisting erasure. It lingers in neighborhoods where our Hispanic, Caribbean, and African American communities have built, fought for, and reclaimed space despite policies designed to displace, disinvest, and erase them from the urban fabric.”

Shahid for “Where the Cracks Are: Repairing the Architecture of Care in Pakistan.”

Excerpt: “Sometimes I wonder: what would Pakistan look like if we designed with justice in mind? What if planning departments prioritized flood-resilient housing in Sindh, where climate change has devastated entire communities? What if architects worked with displaced people, rather than for clients in air-conditioned offices? What if our buildings were less about marble and more about mutual aid?”

Chew for “Migration, Power, and Belonging in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia”

Excerpt: “These acts of persistence go beyond mere survival; they are acts of resistance. Every unlicensed food stall, informal settlement, and reclaimed gathering space challenges urban policies that seek to render them invisible. Migrants do not simply exist within the city—they actively shape its rhythms, textures, and identity. Their influence matters because migration is not an incidental aspect of urban life; it is central to its ongoing transformation.”

Hoffacker for “Planning for Health Equity, Planning for a Better Future”

Excerpt: “In this moment, nothing is more important than health, defined as the right to wellbeing. The stakes are high. If we do not meet the demands of this moment, untold numbers of people will suffer physical and mental health consequences, perhaps even the ultimate consequence. Marked by its commitment to both health and justice, I can think of no better benchmark for today’s planners than the relentless pursuit of health equity.”

Submissions for this year’s essay contest were reviewed by the Architecture and Urban Planning Collaboration Committee. Members included Kimberly Kinder, associate professor of urban and regional planning and chair of the committee; María Arquero de Alarcón, associate professor of architecture and urban and regional planning; Scott Campbell, associate professor of urban planning and former director of the doctoral urban planning program; Gabriel Cuellar, assistant professor of architecture; and Jen Maigret, professor of architecture and director of climate futures.