In the News
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Louis Nelson Wins Accolade at Regional SAH Meeting
Associate Professor and Chair of Architectural History Louis Nelson received the "Article of the Year" Award at last week’s annual meeting of the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians. His article, "Sensing the Sacred: Anglican Material Religion in early South Carolina," was published in the "Winterthur Portfolio."Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Remembering Joe Howe
Our faculty, staff, students and alumni fondly remember Joseph Howe, an adjunct construction materials and civil engineering professor of several decades who passed away on November 1st. To submit your remembrance, please email it to sarc-news@virginia.edu
Remembrances are included in the order received.
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"Six Words: Remembering Joe Howe"
Kirk Martini
The passing of Joe Howe has special meaning for me, because Joe and I shared an office for thirteen years. Since Joe was an adjunct, he didn’t spend much time at the office, so we had less contact than most office mates, but when he was there, he did his best to make up for lost time. Joe loved to talk, and anything we talked about would remind him of a story. That story could be about one of the dozens of big construction projects he worked on, his college days at the Citadel, or his time as a soldier in World War II. Whatever the story, something in it would remind him of another, and the stories would link together, end-to-end, until his or my schedule intervened.
A few years ago, I remember hearing from Patty DeCourcy about Joe’s knee surgery. She reported that Joe had a local anesthetic and talked with the doctor during the entire operation. My first thought was Joe probably would have talked to the doctor even with a general anesthetic. There was no stopping Joe once the stories started to roll.
Of the thousands of words I heard from Joe, there were six that I will never forget. It was during my first year in the office in 1993, my second year teaching in the School. We were talking about teaching, and Joe said “anybody can teach a good student.” He didn’t elaborate much on those six words, but in the decade and a half since, I’ve come to understand exactly what he meant. As teachers, it’s tempting to look at the masterful work of our best students and give ourselves a pat on the back for instilling such skill. The truth is, there are so many talented students at U.Va. that anybody could show them a few slides or ask them to read a few books, and those students would produce skillful work. A teacher taking credit for that work is like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise. The real measure of a teacher is the growth and progress of the struggling students, the students with less preparation, and more distractions. If you’re not helping those students, then you’re not a very good teacher. Simple as that. Anybody can teach a good student. Joe Howe taught them all.
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Karen Van Lengen:
I came to know Joe when when he often stopped by the dean’s office to say hello after class.
He always had a memorable story about his students and that would begin a wonderful chat on lots of subjects. He delighted in sharing his daschund stories with me, knowing that I too am a devoted fan of this species. We shall all miss Joe’s generous and kind spirit, his devotion to teaching, his lively and genuine character.
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Patty DeCourcy:
I have been honored to serve as Joe Howe’s office assistant since I came to the school in 1998. We developed a great working relationship and I felt honored to be part of his teaching career as well as part of his family. Mr. Howe always introduced me on the first day of class as part of the teaching team, never just a secretary. During my years with Mr. Howe he took such pleasure in his teaching. There never was a student left behind in any of his classes and he had been teaching since 1977. He made it known to each student that he taught he was available to them whenever they needed help. Mr. Howe taught well known football players like Matt Schaub of the Houston Texans, Heath Miller of the Pittsburg Steelers, and Elton Brown of the Arizona Cardinals just to mention a few. I remember him telling me that he came in on a Sunday afternoon to help students so he could help keep them off academic suspension. His love of teaching showed each day when he came to class. He was always the last to leave the classroom because he would wait to make sure none of his students needed his help. I will always remember Mr. Howe telling his wonderful stories from his past while sipping on a regular Coke through a straw and eating peanut butter crackers in my office while we prepared for the next class meeting.
His two famous quotes that he wrote on the board each semester and pasted at the bottom of the final exams were these: Robert Doyle was a man that Mr. Howe came to know through working construction and Mr. Doyle told this to Mr. Howe one day on the job site to always:
“Give your boss more than he paid for.”
This other quote was from a Colonel he met while in service:
“Be able to say I need help!”
Col. Louis Letellier
I guess you can say that Mr. Howe lived by these two quotes not only in his teaching here at the School of Architecture and the School of Engineering but in life in general. If you knew Mr. Howe like I did you would know that he never met a stranger. He made friends with everyone he came in contact with and he would always have a story to tell them. We sat in the nursing home one day and tried to calculate just how many students’ lives he touched and we figured around 8,000, if not more. God Bless you Mr. Howe. I know you will be greatly missed, but I also know that you are in a place now with no aches and pain and are telling your stories to a whole set of new people we call "our angels." Love you forever.
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Derry Wade:
I didn’t know Joe Howe well, but I vividly remember the first time I met him, which must have been sometime in 2002. I was sitting in my office, frantically trying to meet an important deadline. Mr. Howe said, "You must be new, here!" and promptly came in and sat down. Though taken aback at first, I soon realized what a charming and interesting man he was. Before long I had completely forgotten all about my deadline as I listened to his amazing stories of the Citadel and construction jobs he had done. He told me about his early years at the University and we marveled over how much had changed. After a very long, and fascinating, conversation - I asked him for his name. He seemed surprised I didn’t know it, which now makes sense to me. As many people have said, he never knew a stranger, which was a wonderful gift he shared with all whom he encountered.
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"Shaping the American Landscape" Includes Entries by Faculty and Alumni
by Elizabeth Meyer
A new reference work,"Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project" (University of Virginia Press), includes entries on two beloved figures associated with the early years of the UVa Landscape Architecture program, Professor Benjamin Howland and Lecturer Meade Palmer. This book edited by Charles Birnbaum (UVA Howland Lecturer 1992), Founder and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, is an encyclopedia of biographical entries about significant American landscape architects. It follows an earlier encyclopedia of biographies, "Pioneers of American Landscape Design" (2000), edited by Charles Birnbaum and Robin Karson.
UVa Landscape Architecture faculty Ethan Carr, Elizabeth Meyer and Reuben Rainey as well as alumna Sue Nelson authored bibliographic essays in "Shaping the American Landscape". The subjects of their research include significant leaders in the National Park Service, Conrad Wirth and Benjamin Howland, modernist designers Lawrence Halprin and Robert Royston, and the Virginia’s most-recognized twentieth century landscape architect, Meade Palmer, whose Warrenton-based firm was a training ground for dozens of influential landscape architects from Terence Harkness (Professor, University of Illnois), Hallie Boyce (Principal, Olin Studio) to Warren T. Byrd, Jr. (former UVA Dept Chair and Professor Emeritus).
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Lawrence Halprin Dies - recipient of Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal and Designer of Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall
[from the Washington Post]: Lawrence Halprin, 93, a legendary American landscape architect who designed the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial along the Tidal Basin and San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, marrying ecology and aesthetics in scores of the nation’s urban spaces, died Oct. 25 at his home in Kentfield, Calif. No cause of death was reported.
[for complete article, follow link in headline]
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sustainable and Green Cities Are Focus of Film by Planning Professor Timothy Beatley
{by Jane Ford, UVa News Services] For University of Virginia planning professor Timothy Beatley, cities are not just about buildings, roads and transportation. They are about building and sustaining community. An expert on sustainable and green cities, Beatley is the author of numerous books, including “Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities,” “Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home and Community in a Global Age” and “The Ecology of Place: Planning for Environment, Economy, and Community,” coauthored with Kristy Manning. Beatley recently turned to film to express his work. He collaborated with Boulder, Colo.-based filmmaker Chuck Davis to write and direct “The Nature of Cities,” a one-hour exploration of nature found – and designed – within cities. “The Nature of Cities” will have a Richmond premiere on Oct. 29 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden’s Massie Auditorium. The screening is free and open to the public, and is being shown as part of the symposium “Timeless Design in a Sustainable World: The Charles F. Gillette Forum.” “‘The Nature of Cities’ is about the work of green urbanism,” said Davis, who met Beatley in Sun Valley, Idaho, at a sustainability conference where they both presented their work. Davis had just completed a film about people working to face the challenges of climate change and was looking for a new project. After talking with Beatley, Davis was convinced he wanted to make a film exploring nature in urban spaces through projects that show how the built environment and nature can work together to sustain and rejuvenate life.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Lucia Phinney Launches Website and Blog Discussing Albemarle County Water Supply Issues
Distinguished Lecturer Lucia Phinney has developed a new website, Project Albemarle, to explain, discuss, and plan for the future of the water supply in the county. The site also includes a blog, Infratalk.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Faculty to be Featured in Sustainable World Symposium
TIMELESS DESIGN IN A SUSTAINABLE WORLD – at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, RichmondWed and Thurs, October 28-29.
This two-day symposium will feature our own Thomas Woltz, ASLA, of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architecture Firm, Charlottesville, VA as well as Douglas Reed, FASLA, of Reed Hilderbrand Associates, Watertown, MA.
AND will showcase the Richmond premiere of Prof. Timothy Beatley’s documentary, The Nature of Cities.
The cost for the event is $70 for Wednesday only ($35 for students); $95 for Thursday only ($48 for students); and $130 for both days ($65 for students). The fee includes dinner Wednesday and/or lunch Thursday.
Event description: If one legacy of the 20th century is its architectural prowess, might the 21st century be devoted to developing exquisite green spaces between the buildings where we live, work, and play? All around the world, growing urban populations are seeking communal spaces—parks, squares, plazas, piazzas, greenways and gardens—as essential components of daily life, places of respite and reflection, recreation, and celebration. This symposium will examine timeless principles of design—whether applied to the creation of a residential garden or a public space—that connect us to the natural world and in so doing, fulfill man’s innate desire for association with other living things. The symposium honors the legacy of Charles F. Gillette, a leader in the field of landscape architecture, by engaging the public in a conversation about the importance of landscape design and the value of Gillette’s ideals of elegance, superb craftsmanship, and seamless blending of architecture and garden.
For the itinerary and online registration visit the symposium’s website.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Planning Student Authors Article for New Planner Magazine
Benjamin H. Chrisinger, fourth-year Urban and Environmental Planning student is the author of, "Expanding the Academic Menu - Today’s Planning Students Have an Appetite for Food Systems" published in the American Planning Association’s "The New Planner" online magazine. Access to the magazine is restricted to APA members, but the first paragraph of the article is included below:
"At colleges and universities across the country, students are putting their shovels into soil, laying out beds and rows, sowing seeds, mixing compost, and making statements about food. In Virginia alone, three public institutions started student gardens during the past academic year. Though they differ in size, scope, and style, all student gardens seem to make a point of saying ‘our food doesn’t come from the grocery store.’"
Friday, October 16, 2009
Emily Rogers (MLA’09) Quoted in Post Article on Dumbarton Oaks Vegetable Garden
At Dumbarton Oaks, Veggies Crop Up Once More
By Adrian Higgins [Washington Post, 10/15/09]
The renowned garden at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Georgetown is celebrated as a work of art, the perfect union of landscape design, craftsmanship and horticulture.
I’ve felt for years, though, that the garden was missing one essential element: a vegetable garden. Happily, that has been fixed. A band of volunteers, with the staff gardeners, are reflecting on their first season of raising salad greens, beans, lettuces, tomatoes, okra and more in one of the garden’s most serene spaces, a large terrace anchored by a pair of distinctive clay-tiled pavilions.
[for complete article, follow link in headline]
Thursday, October 15, 2009
4th Annual 100-Mile Thanksgiving
The fourth-annual gathering of some dedicated UVA foodies.
By Andrew Jenner [Edible Blue Ridge Magazine]
To Dana Smith, the meal had all the appearances of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and in most ways, it was just that—turkey, pies, sweet potatoes, and eggnog, spread across several tables. But this Thanksgiving meal satisfied on a deeper level: Nearly everything had been grown, made, brewed, or otherwise concocted within 100 miles of Charlottesville.
Filling a church fellowship hall were dozens of happily chatting students, faculty, friends, and family of the UVA department of urban and environmental planning. As the crowd worked its way down the buffet line, guests read and discussed the recipe cards that sat beside each dish, explaining where the ingredients had come from. Then, while seated to eat in smaller groups, they continued to parse the most adventuresome and tastiest of the 100-mile dishes, each of which was prepared by someone in attendance.
Tim Beatley, a renowned professor of sustainable communities, introduced the 100-mile Thanksgiving idea to his department in 2006, after meeting Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, writers from Vancouver who popularized the concept in their book The 100-mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating.
[for complete article, follow link in headline]
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
U21 Forum on Design of Learning Experiences Expands Perspectives for All
Learning in the 21st century is less about the classroom and more about the experience. But how do you design physical and virtual spaces that convey the experience?
Last week, the University of Virginia hosted the Universitas 21 Learning Environments Design Forum. Representatives from the consortium gathered to learn about ways U.Va. creates informal learning spaces and to explore design opportunities for the Carr’s Hill Arts Grounds. The School of Architecture hosted the forum.
Universitas 21 – or U21 – is the international network of 21 leading research-intensive universities in 13 countries. U.Va. President John T. Casteen III currently serves as its chairman.
The first U21 design forum was held in 2007 at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and the second at the University of Hong Kong. U.Va. architecture professor Peter Waldman, who had attended both, invited the group to the University and expanded the exploration to include student workshops. U.Va. architecture students joined counterparts from Hong Kong and Melbourne for an extensive design charette that ran parallel to the U21 staff members’ workshop.
Architecture School dean Kim Tanzer praised the experience as an opportunity for the students, U21 members and the University community to learn and explore. The Carr’s Hill Arts Grounds is the home to the School of Architecture, the Department of Drama, studio art in Ruffin Hall, art history in Fayerweather Hall, the U.Va. Art Museum and the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library. The Cavalier Marching Band, part of the McIntire Department of Music, will soon join the community when its new rehearsal hall is added.
"The Carr’s Hill Arts Grounds is not quite a collective space yet," Tanzer said. "The U21 forum is an opportunity to help shape that space."
She said the Arts Grounds is similar to Thomas Jefferson’s design for the Lawn, but on a different scale. "The same principles of interaction apply to both," she said.
[for complete article, follow link in headline]
Friday, October 9, 2009
Learning Barge Project Featured in Dominion Power Electricity Bills
The Learning Barge Project, directed by associate professor Phoebe Crisman, is featured in this month’s electricity bills for Dominion Power customers, as well as on Dominion’s website. The company’s charitable giving arm, Dominion Foundation, is a major supporter of the project. To learn more about The Learning Barge, visit www.arch.virginia.edu/learningbargeWednesday, October 7, 2009
ecoMOD4 is On the Move
The award winning modular, sustainable design and affordable housing research project, ecoMOD, will be installing its fourth building this Thursday on Elliott Ave. in Charlottesville.
After a busy summer of construction in the old hangar at the University of Virginia-owned Milton Airfield, the four modules of ecoMOD4 will be hauled by tractor-trailer on Thursday morning, lifted by crane onto the prepared foundation, and assembled on its permanent Elliott Avenue site. The completed building will become a home for a family selected by Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville.
ecoMOD is a research and design / build / evaluate project at the U.Va. that aims to create a series of ecological, modular and affordable house prototypes. A partnership of the U.Va. School of Architecture and School of Engineering and Applied Science, the goal is to demonstrate the environmental and economic potential of prefabrication, and to challenge the modular and manufactured housing industry in the United States to explore this potential.
ecoMOD Project Director: John Quale, U.Va. architecture professor
ecoMOD Engineering Director: Paxton Marshall, U.Va. electrical and computer engineering professor
2009 Woltz Symposium Held This Week
The University of Virginia School of Architecture will host the 2009 John E. Woltz Memorial Symposium, "Adaptation: Urban Infrastructure and Climate Change," Oct. 8-10 at Campbell Hall.
William Hudnut III, senior fellow emeritus at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C. and a former mayor of Indianapolis and of Chevy Chase, Md., will give the keynote address, "What is the Scope of the Infrastructure Challenge that Faces American Cities?," on Oct. 8 at 6 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 153.
The Woltz Symposium was first held in 2001 and has been held periodically "to address interdisciplinary topics related to the city and to foster new visions that explore the interdependence of architecture and landscape architecture," according to the document establishing the fund. The symposia are held in memory of John E. Woltz, a 1947 graduate of U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences and a longtime friend of the Architecture School.
The goal of the 2009 symposium is to produce a set of essays, cases and visionary ideas that address the potential of adaptive infrastructure to meet the challenges of climate change in cities.
A series of discussions initiated by invited panelists will take place on Oct. 9 and 10, and audience members will be encouraged to join panelists on the stage, one or two at a time, to ask questions or offer comments, once the panelists have shared their initial thoughts.
Kristina Hill, associate professor and director of the Program in Landscape Architecture, is the symposium’s organizer. She has identified several key questions she hopes the panelists and attendees will address during the symposium, including:
• Whose health and safety will be most vulnerable in the climate we can expect in 2050 and beyond, and what investments will protect our most vulnerable citizens?
• What multi-functional approaches might allow urban regions to make these investments to produce fundamental benefits to quality of life and a robust urban economy?
• Are there any insights we can gain from these challenges about what it means to be human in our time?
The invited panelists include both national and foreign academics and practitioners in the fields of design, urban history, water conservation and engineering. Among the panelists are: Alex Nickson, City of London ; Piet Dircke, ARCADIS, a leading international engineering and design firm; Martin Prominski, Liebniz University, Germany; Kongjian Yu, Peking University; Anne Sprirn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Jane Wolff, University of Toronto.
Several University of Virginia faculty from the schools of Architecture and Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences will also contribute.
The symposium is free and open to the public.
For more please see the News Archive.
