AutoDesSys Excellence International Design Winners

This last weekend at the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture Conference in Chicago, students from the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning were recognized for excellence in digital design.  AutoDesSys held the 17^th Annual Awards Banquet of its Joint Study Program for Excellence in Design, an annual international program sponsored by Form Z digital modeling software.  

Receiving recognition for excellence in design was Antonio Vigil, a graduate student at the School of Architecture and Planning.  He was awarded the prize of distinction (first place) in the urban design category.  His studio design project 35º | 106º [downtown arena] was honored for innovation and creative graphic presentation.  Professors Tim B. Castillo, Karen King and Rana Abu-Dayyeh were faculty advisors for the project.

Also honored at the event in the Digital Fabrication category was the Emerging Mutations studio lead by Professor Tim B. Castillo.  The studio was comprised of the following students: Chad Harris, Christopher Price, Neil Werbelow, Matthew Archuleta, Luis Marquez, Ben Ortega, Jeremy Jerge, Mara Schweikert, Travis Bunch, Owen Kramme, Nick Byers, Hooman Keyhan Haghighi, Kobi Bauer, Elizabeth Suina.  AutoDesSys awarded the studio honorable mention (second place) for its innovation in using recycled materials and computer driven fabrication methods to create a visually pleasing installation.

 Attending the awards banquet were Antonio Vigil, Kobi Bauer, Elizabeth Suina, Mara Schweikert and Owen Kramme.  

Levi Romero Sows Culture Crops

The stories fall from Levi Romero’s lips before I get out of the car and take in the sweet air, niblet-sized corn plants and the long porch inviting visitors in to the house whispering welcome and echoing the sound of children’s running feet through the slamming screen door. A breeze rustles the leaves of a crabapple tree, creating a canopy inviting us to sit down, relax, crunch into some fresh pea pods and share some stories.

This is Dixon, N.M. – Levi’s home.  It was his home as a small child living with abuelos y tíos. It was his home as a lowriding teenager, even when he lived in Albuquerque attending Menaul School.  It was still his home when he studied at UNM, or now, when he teaches there. You can go home again, he’ll say, but it can be a hard road.

Levi earned architecture degrees at UNM – a bachelor’s in 1994 and master’s in 2000.  Funded by UNM Center for Regional Studies, he is now a visiting research scholar in the UNM School of Architecture and Planning.  Designing buildings isn’t much a part of his life any more. He’s more interested in the structure of stories, the building blocks of memory and preserving the cultural landscape through people in New Mexico.

Levi’s family has been in the Embudo River Valley since the 1600s.  “My grandparents never had to wonder about identity. They never asked, ‘Are we Hispanos? Chicanos? Mexicanos?’  Nobody asked them if they were from here. Everyone was from here until the 1960s,” Levi said.

The longstanding families who raised corn, chile, radishes, onions, carrots and peas, soon found a crop of newcomers – trust fund babies who had their eyes on the land.

The etiquette on the narrow road has always been for one car or the other to pull to the side to let the other pass, depending upon which had a better place to pull off.  “Now the young people are in a hurry.  They aren’t polite.  They don’t acknowledge when someone pulls over to let them pass,” he said.  They don’t want just to get by.  They want to get away.

Young people have moved away and fields abandoned. “I always came back to work the land except when I was in grad school. Then the Chinese elms took over the fields. There were never weeds when my grandfather Don Silviares lived here,” he said. Don Silviares was legendary for his trade route and his produce – everything from apples to chile – that he hauled along his route from Embudo to Ratón and Cimarron to Dawson. Levi wrote a story about his grandfather, El Verdolero, the vegetable vendor.

There’s No Place like Home
Levi talks about the two-room adobe and plaster home his grandfather built. “They brought the vigas in from the sierras.  In the ‘40s he pitched the roof with corrugated metal.  It’s the last, continuously inhabited house in the area without plumbing,” Levi said.

The kitchen features a wood burning stove.  “It’s not the original, but it’s similar to the one my grandmother had,” Levi said.  The room also sports a more modern 1950’s stove and refrigerator. The kitchen cabinets are old trasteros; one features a flour bin from which many a tortilla had its start. On the wall is a mirror with the silvering wearing off. “Imagine the many souls reflected in that mirror,” Levi said, asking me to look into it, afterwards adding that mine is now among them.

The walls were crude, Levi said, and the kitchen was pink, and the other room green. “I wondered about a pink kitchen, but then my aunt told me that at one time she had the stove moved from one room to the other, completely changing the function of each room. That’s interesting to me architecturally – how the spaces were used and how their function could be changed so efficiently,” he said.

Levi points to windows that offer up potted geraniums to the sun. “From the windowsills you can see that the walls are 23 inches thick and that the windows have tapered openings to maximize the sunlight streaming in,” he said.  “My grandmother always had geraniums in coffee cans in the window.  I have memories of them. It’s where the story starts.  I reach back and recall family, community and place,” he said.

One room blooms with floral wallpaper.  He thought about taking it off and restoring the walls. “If I take it down, my memories go with it. So many memories – names of people and things that happened – are triggered by looking at those walls,” he said.  Writing in Spanish, he said, helps preserve the memories, too.

He debated with his wife about whether or not to install electricity or plumbing.  Ultimately, they decided to install electricity, but they incurred a much greater cost by running the wiring underground so that electrical lines wouldn’t be visible.

Levi the Poet
Levi’s first collection of poetry, “In the Gathering of Silence,” West End Press, published in 1996 features, “Woodstove of My Childhood,” an epic poem based on personal and communal histories.  His latest collection, “A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works,” with UNM Press in Dec. 2008, sold out within a month of its official publication, which is unheard of in regional Chicano poetry.

Levi drinks from the memory well the house in Dixon serves.  He recalls his grandmother playing harmonica while hummingbirds poked their beaks into hollyhocks.

Although he was always at home in Dixon, he didn’t always live there.  As was common in Northern New Mexico, many families sent their children to Menaul School in Albuquerque.  “The Presbyterians were a big influence in places like Dixon, Mora, Holman.  It was a tradition for many families to send their children to school there, until the school no longer offered a sliding scale for tuition,” Levi said.

Levi was a successful student at Menaul and he was offered a scholarship to any New Mexico college.  “I hated school and told them to give it to someone who wants to go,” he recalled.

“No one modeled college for me.  My cousins hadn’t gone to college – they’d worked trades or in the mines,” he said.  Also, his father died when he was 14 and his mother bedridden with rheumatoid arthritis.  “I felt like I had to stay close to home. I wanted to come back to Dixon,” he said.

He’d seen the trust funders living as artists, sculptors and musicians while raising some crops.  He thought he’d like to become an artist and then live off the land as his grandfather did.  He learned that designer Bryan Waldrip needed some drafting help. Levi had no experience, but Waldrip took him on.

“It took more time to train me than he had time for so he suggested I enroll in the community college drafting program in Española. At the end of the first term I went back to work for him. He was also a painter, an artist. We drew and drafted all day and all night,” Levi said.

Levi’s job was to go into the studio early and fire up the wood stove. “He invited me with him to Taos each week where he attended figure drawing courses, which mostly means drawing naked women.  My lowrider friends thought that was pretty cool, but it really was all about drawing the forms, the same as if I were drawing this bottle,” he said.

He also realized that he had grown through the world of art and architecture, being surrounded by Waldrip’s labor and library.  He told Waldrip he was leaving for San Diego, but since he’d threatened to move many times, Waldrip didn’t believe him.  He learned that Waldrip told others that Levi would be fine because “he could get a job as a draftsman anywhere.”

Building a Future
In 1983, Levi’s plan was to go to Albuquerque and save enough money to go to San Diego.  He laughs. “It’s 2009 and I’m still not there. Nobody goes to Albuquerque to save money.  You make just enough to get by,” he said.

The architectural firms in Albuquerque didn’t have shelves lined with art books, cats in the window and the work wasn’t in beautiful passive solar design as it had been with Waldrip.  A few years later he decided, if he wanted to get back to that, he had to go to college.

The UNM architecture program was difficult and demanding.  Poetry writing, an outlet in his youth, continued to be a passion.  “I’d been writing poetry, but there was no poetry scene yet.  Until Jimmy Santiago Baca came along, poetry by young Chicanos had no audience,” he said.

Poetry and writing, activities that had always been a sideline to architecture, began to grow in prominence in his life.  Soon, following undergraduate school, and a couple of classes short of a minor in Creative Writing, he wasn’t just writing, but teaching workshops for literary organizations, detention centers and youth mentoring programs.”

He’s also taught in the UNM creative writing program in the English Department.  As part of his class, Writers in the Community/Schools, his students have also taken their teaching on the road facilitating semester long workshops at detention centers, charter schools, homeless shelters, senior nursing homes and in the Albuquerque Public Schools.  “I am able to get past the veils and obstacles put up by students who don’t feel comfortable in an academic setting because I used to feel like them,” he said.  He also developed a spoken word class where the students delved into Native American storytelling, cuentos, dichos and slam poetry.

Following his time in the English Department he came home again – to the School of Architecture and Planning – where he is a visiting research scholar.

He also assists in the Design Planning Assistance Center studio and has worked on various New Mexico community studio design projects, including a design for a field studio and community center based in the old Sala Filantropica dancehall in Dixon/Embudo.  This spring, Levi worked with students on a MainStreet project in Deming, N.M.  His role was to elicit the dreams and ideas from the town’s Hispanic community since they were unlikely to attend the charrettes to share their thoughts and memories.  Those stories were then shared with the students who incorporated those ideas in the designs for everything from streetscapes, youth community centers, to skate parks in the town of the legendary Duck Races.

He is currently exploring the histories and stories of the people in northern New Mexico along the high road to Taos and beyond.  He looks at acequias, salas, molinos and gardens, nuestra gente and all that represents the life and people of the region. “I’m doing some cultural cruisin’.  It’s not about kicking back, but about the important work that needs to be done. If we don’t gather these stories now, they will be gone forever. “Places, stories and history will be recognized as invaluable informants to architecture study in the future.  It will, ultimately, become part of the curriculum,” he said.

He’s laying some new groundwork on well-travelled roads.

Story by Carolyn Gonzales

School of Architecture and Planning Dean to Step Down in 2010

In a letter to his faculty, Dean and Professor Roger Schluntz, FAIA, announced his intention to resign as dean of UNM’s School of Architecture and Planning on June 30, 2010. During his past 10 years as dean, Schluntz said he has witnessed “a number of truly remarkable accomplishments as well as many critical incremental transformations” at the School.

Photo: School of Architecture Dean and Professor Roger Schluntz.

Speaking of his dedicated faculty and staff, Schluntz commented, “Working together, I think we all deserve to share a sense of tremendous pride in what we have achieved in moving this School toward national prominence.”

“Roger has shown extraordinary vision and leadership during his years as architecture dean,” said Suzanne Ortega, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “It is UNM’s great fortune that he will continue to contribute as a senior faculty member as well as assist with campus planning issues and new facility design for the University.”

Ortega said a national search will begin this fall and intends for a new dean to be hired when Schluntz steps down.

The funding, design and construction of George Pearl Hall, the new home of the School prominently located at Cornell Mall and Central Avenue, is undoubtedly the most visible accomplishment of Schluntz’ tenure as dean. The School also initiated the professional degree program in Landscape Architecture, now fully accredited and highly respected.

In addition, two new interdisciplinary graduate certificate programs, Historic Preservation & Regionalism and Town Design are fully operational. As dean Schluntz also provides leadership for the fully accredited, graduate professional degree programs in both Architecture and Community & Regional Planning.

Through the School’s multi-faceted service learning and community outreach programs, Schluntz also notes with pride the vital role it contributes toward critical design and planning issues confronting many of New Mexico communities

Currently Schluntz chairs the University’s Design Review Board and was instrumental in the preliminary planning phases for UNM West and the update of the Master Development Plan for the main campus.

Schluntz holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Prior to his UNM appointment he served as dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Miami (Florida), and director of the School of Architecture at Arizona State University, where he also established the ASU/City of Phoenix Joint Urban Design Program.

Schluntz recently completed a three-year appointed term with the National Architecture Accreditation Board. He has served as the Professional Adviser for over 25 national design competitions for major civic and university buildings throughout the United States.

He serves as an appointed member of the National Register of Peer Professionals for the US-General Services Administration in its building and construction program. Recognizing his contributions in architectural education and achievements toward enhancing the quality of design of public buildings, in 1996 Schluntz was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows.

Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu

Anne Taylor Addresses the Future of Education and the Architecture which Houses It

Anne Taylor will deliver a lecture and book signing at the UNM School of Architecture and Planning Gallery on Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 5 p.m. Her ongoing exhibition will be displayed in the Pearl Hall Gallery from Aug. 24 until Sept. 12. Ice cream will be served on the patio during the book signing.

For the past 40 years Taylor has studied how schools, classrooms, playgrounds, homes, museums, and parks affect children and how they learn. As a result she has developed a holistic, sustainable philosophy of learning environment design.

In Linking Architecture and Education: Sustainable Design of Learning Environments (UNM Press) she argues persuasively that architects must integrate their design knowledge with an understanding of the developmental needs of learners, while at the same time educators, parents, and students must broaden their awareness of the built, natural, and cultural environment to maximize the learning experience.

When architects are cognizant of newer models of education and educators view the environment as more than a box in which to teach prescribed lessons, the result is an informed architecture that enables children to discover the power of their own learning.

Linking Architecture and Education presents numerous examples of dynamic designs that are the result of interdisciplinary understanding of place. Taylor includes designer perspectives, forums derived from commentary by outside contributors involved in school planning, and a wealth of photographs of thoughtful and effective solutions to create learning environments from comprehensive design criteria.

Anne Taylor, Ph.D., Hon. AIA, ACSA Distinguished Professor, is Regents Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at UNM, where she was the founder and director, for many years, of the Institute for Environmental Education. She is also president of a non-profit School Zone Institute. She is the author of Southwestern Ornamentation and Design and School Zone: Learning Environments for Children, as well as several Architecture and Children curriculum documents.

The UNM Bookstore is located at 2301 Central Ave. NE at the intersection of Cornell and Central. Parking will be validated in the parking structure for up to one hour with purchase. Please call Lisa Walden at 505-277-7494 for more information.

Landscape Architecture Student Wins Award for Pat Hurley Neighborhood Project

Landscape architecture Yekaterina “Katya” Yushmanova is the recipient of a 2009 JSR Student Award for her project, Changing Perspective: Farming Habitat, that she designed for the Pat Hurley neighborhood in Albuquerque’s West side. The award comes with a $2,000 scholarship. The concept was to design a project that could act as a catalyst for quality of life improvement for residents.

Photo: Katya Yushmanova

Yushmanova’s design came out of a studio assignment for graduate students in UNM Landscape Architecture Studio 3 last fall. Taught by Adjunct Professor and Landscape Architect John Barney, the students worked on visioning projects for the Pat Hurley Neighborhood.

Barney said that the area was selected because of its interesting geography and history. “Pat Hurley, for whom the park is named, is the son of the famous Western artist Wilson Hurley,” he said. The students researched the area and discovered the remnants of agricultural patterns along the ditches and evidence that Atrisco Plaza was an actual plaza at one time.

Yushmanova’s winning design looked at the abandoned canal in the bosque. “It was poorly engineered. It still floods and has created an unintentional habitat, or wildlife corridor,” she said.

Yushmanova wrote, “The Pat Hurley neighborhood is a historically agricultural community on the west bank of the Rio Grande, but in recent years, most agricultural land was sold to developers despite the neighborhood’s proximity to the river – a definite amenity in the desert southwest. The quality of the new developments is low and there is a lack of parks and recreational facilities. The riverside trail along the levee is under-used and poorly maintained. The residents prefer to use well-maintained trails and recreational facilities on the east bank of the river instead.

The land use analysis showed that the under-used area along the northeastern edge of the neighborhood had the greatest potential for overlapping recreational uses and habitat restoration. The context analysis revealed the lack of connectivity and destinations along the riverside trail. The site at the northeastern corner of the neighborhood where the riverside trail and riverside drain and an irrigationa canal dead end was identified as a good location for the intervention, which will become a destination and an activitating element for the trails.

The goal for the design is to create a multi-functional space, which will incorporate a public recreational facility, habitat restoration, and which will help promote environmental awareness among Albuquerque residents.”

Each student in the studio participated in an installation that conveyed an area or aspect of Pat Hurley neighborhood and the processes that shaped it over time. The installation addressed larger issues of landscape architecture and contemporary art so that was mirrored in the site. Her design for the installation featured an earthen wall embedded with seeds. An artificial irrigation system allows her creation to erode over time.

Yushmanova earned her bachelor’s in art history from the University of Culture and Art in St. Petersburg, Russia. “Living in the American Southwest has given her an appreciation for the “stark and fragile beauty of the desert – so different from my native Siberia.”

The JSR Foundation awards scholarships to students who demonstrate a passion for preserving, improving and enhancing public spaces through responsible and innovative land use and design. To be eligible, students must be currently enrolled in an accredited landscape architecture program that will result in a bachelors or masters of landscape architecture. A monetary scholarship is awarded each year to one deserving student. Students are required to submit a design brief for review by the JSR board.

The foundation and scholarship are named in honor of Jane Silverstein Ries, FASLA; the first woman to pursue a career in landscape architecture in Colorado. She graduated from the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture in Groton, Massachusetts in 1932, and by 1934 had already opened her own landscape architecture office in Denver. Ries held the third landscape architecture license in the State of Colorado.

For more information about Yushmanova’s winning design, visit: JSR Foundation.

Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu

Phil Gallegos and a group of students from the spring semester Design Planning Assistance Center studio course are headed to Grants on Thursday, June 4, to begin the build phase of their design/build project – a pavilion for the Fire and Ice Bike Rally, the town’s annual summer event set for July 17-19.

The course is offered through the UNM School of Architecture and Planning and includes students from all disciplines offered in the school: architecture, landscape architecture, and community and regional planning.

“Concrete work has already been done. We are waiting for approvals for equipment and material purchases. The trusses are scheduled for delivery on Wednesday. We’ll be prepping them on site on Thursday,” said Gallegos, trading in his drawing pencil for a hardhat.

One group will be on site in Grants putting a light stain on the heavy timber. “When finished, the wood will resemble that at the bus stop on Yale and Central,” Gallegos said. The other group of five students is working on the roof panels here in Albuquerque. “They will be swung into place next Monday,” he said, adding that the structure includes four separate pavilions totaling some 6,000 square feet.

The original request for the project came from Grants MainStreet to the state. Grants received a $100,000 special appropriations grant from the governor’s office.

“This is DPAC’s first design/build project. The state and Rich Williams, from New Mexico MainStreet are very interested and supportive of this kind of project,” Gallegos said.

For more information, contact Gallegos at pbg@unm.edu or 277-6470.

The School of Architecture and Planning recently honored its first group of Golden Graduates, individuals who matriculated from UNM 50 years ago. Dean Roger Schluntz hosted a luncheon for Lou Weller, Patrick Gates and Donald “Rusty” Shaffer at George Pearl Hall. Other special guests included emeritus professors Ed Norris, Paul Lusk, Edie Cherry, Dick Nordhaus and emeritus dean Don Schlegel.

Photo (l. to r.): Ed Norris, professor emeritus; Geraldine Forbes Isais, director, architecture program; Dick Nordhaus, professor emeritus; Edie Cherry; professor emerita; Lou Weller; Rusty Shaffer; Don Schlegel, dean emeritus; and Roger Schlutz, dean. Also honored Paul Lusk, professor emeritus, and Patrick Gates (not pictured).

Weller, of Weller Architects, was the school’s Distinguished Alumni in 2000 and served as a UNM Foundation Board member. He worked on the Museum for the American Indian in Washington, D.C. and has done a great deal of architectural work in Indian Country, particularly in schools and health care facilities.

Gates worked for Sandia Labs before he even graduated from UNM. Since, he’s been self-employed. During the course of his career he’s had a staff of six or seven and thinks of himself as a nuts and bolts guy. Not too unusual since he also holds a contractor’s license. In addition to architecture and contracting, he holds a real estate license. He worked with the builders of Winrock Center and has developed several Albuquerque subdivisions.

Shaffer was a named partner in Flatow, Moore, Shaffer, McCabe, Inc. - Architects, Engineers, Planners of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for 33 years where served as principal in charge of the Church and Education Studios. After leaving the firm in 1998, Shaffer directed his efforts toward architectural consulting, focusing primarily on church facilities programming, master planning and design and construction. Shaffer participated in planning and design workshops for church facilities across the country since 1975.

Adams teaches prize-winning architecture

Geoffrey Adams, associate professor, School of Architecture and Planning, brings winning ways to his studio classes. Graduate architecture student Mark Paz recently won the third annual design competition sponsored by the American Institute of Architecture Students and Kawneer Company, Inc. The competition challenged students to design a library while learning about building materials, specifically architectural aluminum building products and systems, and was the design project for Adams' graduate architectural history/theory studio this fall.

Photo: Associate Professor Geoffrey Adams, standing, and graduate architecture student Mark Paz.

Last spring, master of architecture student Antonio Vigil designed an Albuquerque-area recycling center within a local market as part of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and Portland Cement Association’s third annual sustainable concrete student design competition.

Vigil’s first place award-winning design was selected from entries from more than 800 students from 33 architecture schools around the world. The competition was part of Adams’ architectural technology studio course.

“The studio itself is a design problem. The question is how to take 15 students through exercises and experiences to allow them to perform at their best,” Adams said.

He stresses all facets of design. “They need to be analytical, work in the digital realm, develop freehand skills – we steal from the painter’s toolbox. It opens up their imagination,” he said.

When asked what he does in the studio to help students become successful in design competitions, he said, “The students we have are willing to rise to the challenge. The graduate students who are successful in competitions have often gone through our undergraduate program. They bring their skills and thoughtfulness with them to the studio.”

Adams earned his undergraduate degree in studio art from the University of California, Davis, in 1982. He came to UNM for his master of architecture degree, which he completed in 1990. He interned in Antoine Predock’s office. “I still draw upon the studio environment when he engenders,” Adams said.

Adams, who has been teaching for last 10 years, maintains an architectural practice which he considers critical to his teaching success.

Several years ago, Adams team taught with Karen King. Their graduate students, Jim Fox, Leslie Ford and Marcus Bushong, won top honors in an affordable house design competition – HOME House Project Competition, sponsored by the Southeast Center for Contemporary Arts. The Smithsonian's National Building Museum featured their design in a 2004 exhibition, "Affordable Housing: Designing an American Asset."

Geraldine Forbes Isais, director of UNM’s architecture program, said, “Faculty who strive to inspire students to design extremely creative solutions to contemporary issues must place themselves on the leading edge of innovation.

For the last two years Prof. Geoffrey Adams has been evolving a series of studio exercises that use painting and collage to allow students to understand the environmental and emotive qualities of the spaces they are designing. Clearly the students have responded to these new teaching techniques.”

Adams said he looks for competitions that are appropriate for the studio. Adams is right for the students and the studio.

Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu