The LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio (CSS), a trans-disciplinary program of the College of Art & Design, College of Engineering, and School of the Coast & Environment, has been awarded the prestigious Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Collaborative Practice Award for 2012-13.

ACSA Board President Donna Robertson presented the award during the ACSA Annual Meeting on March 21-24 in San Francisco to Jeff Carney, CSS Director and Associate Professor of Architecture; Jori Erdman, Director and Professor of Architecture; Bradley Cantrell, Director and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture; and Meredith Sattler, Assistant Professor of Architecture.

The ACSA Collaborative Practice Award recognizes university architecture programs and projects that demonstrate how faculty, students, and community clients can work together to realize common objectives. Participation by colleagues from other academic disciplines is encouraged.

“We are honored to be selected for the highly competitive ACSA Collaborative Practice Award,” said Carney. “This award is a significant measure of the ability for design to speak to a broader audience.”

CSS is unique in the nation in that it brings together disciplines that normally work separately so that it can respond to critical coastal issues in the most comprehensive way. Many previous coastal protection and restoration efforts have been engineering or science based, leaving out the human element. CSS offers a new paradigm, allowing designers such as architects, landscape architects, and city planners to have a voice in the process.

The studio, based in the Design Building, is based around the concept of “design thinking,” and design research projects are the primary focus. All CSS projects include faculty and students from architecture collaborating with other disciplines to address Louisiana’s coastal issues.

Erdman said, “I am very proud of the role the School of Architecture has played with the success of the Coastal Sustainability Studio. Through the CSS, our faculty have participated in research and outreach projects with engineers, photographers, landscape architects, and coastal scientists. The projects and the studio provide an excellent vehicle for the type of interdisciplinary and collaborative work that is celebrated with this award.”

Other CSS board members and faculty who participated but were unable to attend the award ceremony in San Francisco were:

• Robert Twilley – Director, Louisiana Sea Grant
• Lynne Carter – CSS Associate Director and Associate Director, Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program
• Elizabeth Mossop – Professor, Landscape Architecture
• John R. White – Associate Professor, Oceanography and Coastal Sciences
• Kristi Dykema Cheramie – Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture
• Ursula Emery-McClure – Associate Professor, Architecture

The mission of ACSA is to advance architectural education through support of member schools, their faculty, and students.

For more information about the ASCA Collaborative Practice Award visit http://acsa-arch.org/programs-events/awards/2012-13-awards-press-release.

For more information about CSS visit www.css.lsu.edu.

The LSU School of Architecture cordially invites students and faculty to the…

2013 O.J. Baker Awards Ceremony & AIAS Silent Auction Fundraiser

Friday, April 26, 2013, at 4:30pm with awards announced at 5:00pm
LSU Sculpture Garden – Outside Atkinson Hall

The ceremony, which is named after the school’s first administrative head, O.J. Baker, recognizes LSU School of Architecture’s outstanding students with awards and scholarships. This event is presented by the Baton Rouge Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the LSU School of Architecture.

The YMCA Baranco-Clark Pavilion, a collaboration between the LSU School of Architecture and the Center for Planning Excellence, was designed and constructed by AIA member and LSU Associate Professor of Architecture Jim Sullivan and four architecture students: Steven Armstrong, Marc Berard, Megan Harris, and Stacy Palczynski. The pavilion offers shade and a place for gatherings adjacent to a raised playground in a large rear yard that previously offered no respite from the sun. A team from Baton Rouge Community College installed a solar panel on the pavilion that will provide enough energy to run lights and fans around it.

“This project was a great partnership between the School and the community, including the Center for Planning Excellence and the YMCA,” says Director of the School of Architecture Jori Erdman. “It allowed our students and faculty use their design skills in a real world setting that also benefits the community. The project is a simple but elegant reminder that good design and thoughtful construction can have great impact.”

The Rose Awards are given annually by the AIA Baton Rouge to recognize the design achievements of architects and architecture firms in the Baton Rouge area. A jury of outside professionals reviews submitted projects and selects the winners in a variety of categories including commercial projects, residential projects and unrealized projects.

“The Solar Pavilion provides a space the Old South Baton Rouge community can use for decades to come,” said Boo Thomas, CPEX

President and CEO. “From housing the great educational programs of the Baranco Clark YMCA, to serving as a model in the community for sustainable development, the pavilion is sure to have a long-lasting impact.”

For more information, visit the project website at www.ymcadesignbuild.blogspot.com

After the levees breached, the original 1993 building was swamped with two feet of water and the community center connected to it found its foundation in peril. But while Broadmoor faced an uncertain future in terms of rebuilding, its residents organized and pushed forward.

Seven years later, the new library designed by LSU architecture alumni Eskew+Dumez+Ripple (EDR), and the restored community center, with a rain garden in front, serve as a testament to both community resolve and the city’s evolving relationship with water.

LSU Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Wes Michaels, of Spackman Mossop and Michaels (which collaborated with EDR) said, “The client wanted it to be an educational piece about the larger issue of water. We wanted it to be something that people could understand as a feature of the landscape that would be a beautiful garden as well as a piece of infrastructure.”

The article appeared in the July edition of Metropolis. Read the full story at http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20120720/out-of-the-water

Architecture and photography students at work on Fort Proctor

Associate Professor of Architecture Ursula Emery McClure and several of her students were recently awarded the 2012 Charles E. Peterson Prize for their entry “Fort Proctor.” The School of Architecture will receive $2,750 as the result of their efforts, which garnered a tie for first place.

Professor Emery McClure worked with a small group of dedicated students throughout the fall 2011 and spring 2012 semesters to complete the drawings of the Historic Fort Proctor site (see below for details on the fort). The two groups of students involved with winning the Peterson Prize are: (spring 2012) Cody Blanchard, Annette Couvillon, Lindsay Boley, Christopher Peoples, Sarah Kolac, Taylor Alphonso, and (fall 2011) Taylor Alphonso, Ben Buehrle, Audrey Cropp, and Claire Hu. The spring 2012 students will travel to Washington D.C. this fall with Professor Emery McClure to receive the prize.

A student competition of measured drawings, the Peterson Prize is presented jointly by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the National Park Service, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, and the American Institute of Architects. The annual competition, currently in its 29th year, honors Charles E. Peterson, FAIA (1906-2004), founder of the HABS program, and is intended to heighten awareness about historic buildings in the United States and to augment the HABS collection of measured drawings at the Library of Congress.

In addition to generating more than 5,300 sheets of drawings for the collection to date, the competition presents awards totaling $7,500 to the winning student teams. Drawings must be of a building that has not been recorded by HABS through measured drawings, or be an addendum to existing set of HABS drawings that makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of the significance of the building.

The School has a long history of involvement with the Peterson Prize, winning eight prizes when submissions were made from 1989 through 2002 through the efforts of retired professor, William Brockway.

“This is a tremendous accomplishment for our School, our University and our State,” says Director of the School of Architecture Jori Erdman. “It is also a great contribution to preserving the rich heritage of Louisiana. In times of tremendous budget cuts to higher education, this prize shows that our faculty and students continue to be dedicated to the mission of the University, the good of the state, and can compete on a national stage.”

For more information on the prize, visit http://www.cr.nps.gov/hdp/competitions/Peterson_winners.htm#1984.

Fort Proctor

Professor Emery McClure received a grant from the National Park Service (Department of the Interior, through the Louisiana State Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, Office of Cultural Development, Division of Historic Preservation Fund) last year in order to complete the work on Fort Proctor. In a separate but related project, she also worked with an interdisciplinary team on an investigation of the fort for the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio. She received more than $75,000 in grants to work on these projects with her students.

Fort Proctor, located on the shore of Lake Borgne, was built in the 1850s and intended to protect water routes towards New Orleans. The fort, however, became hurricane damaged and was deemed obsolete after post-Civil War improvements in artillery. The fort was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and is now completely surrounded by water.

If the present predictions regarding coastal land loss and global climate change hold true, Fort Proctor is at risk of being further damaged or completely destroyed. This documentation creates a permanent archive of the structure and contributes to the legacy and record of Louisiana’s coastal built environment and the United States’ system of coastal defense fortifications.

CONTACT: RENEE SMITH (225) 772-6296 /rbache2@lsu.edu

The study will take place in northeast Louisiana, focusing on the Lake Providence and Tallulah corridor, including Shelburn, Lake Providence, Transylvania, Alsatia, Sandheimer, Tallulah and Richmond.

Primary investigators for the project are OCDD Director Marsha Cuddeback and School of Architecture Professor Frank M. Bosworth. Research Associates Stacy Palczynski, Christine Leech and Danielle Martin will assist, as will OCDD Graduate Assistant Christopher Peoples. The project will explore new strategic approaches to community design and planning solutions, which address common problems in the physical environment related to community health, education, quality of life, and economic prosperity in rural communities. Hospitals, public safety facilities and schools, among other institutions, will be evaluated to see if their physical condition correlates with performance on health, education and economic measures. Schools will also be evaluated to determine which improvements will advance community based education.

During the pilot study, researchers will meet with community leaders involved in health, education and economic development in Tallulah and Lake Providence to establish a baseline measure of performance on the Human Development Index measures. Researchers will also examine the identified community assets, people and places to determine if collaboration will promote improvement on the Human Development Index measures. This research focuses on expanding existing community capacity by identifying resources that could be shared among communities to build highly productive alliances.

The Office of Community Design and Development is a university-based interdisciplinary community outreach center that connects students with Louisiana’s communities to help improve the quality of the built environment and the lives of citizens across Louisiana and the region. Located in Room 411 of the Design Building, OCDD and the Office of Community Preservation give students a place to build on classroom knowledge, applying the techniques they’ve learned and a chance to gain practical experience. OCDD works with community and government organizations on research, planning, design projects, and public awareness and education. Focus areas include town planning, urban design, architectural program development, site planning and analysis, architectural design, construction management, research, consultation and public education.

Aaron Looney
LSU Media Relations
225-578-3871
alooney@lsu.edu