The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is bestowing a national award on an architecture education program that UB students, alumni and faculty help to run.

Called Architecture + Education, the initiative will receive the 2013 AIA Diversity Recognition Program award for introducing thousands of grade schoolers to architecture over the past 13 years.

Children in the program become tiny architects, blending imagination, art and science in projects that have included designing tree houses, a nature park for snakes and lions, dream bedrooms and a spaghetti tower playground. The goal is to help children develop an appreciation for the built environment, from individual buildings to public parks to whole cities.

Students and faculty from the UB School of Architecture and Planning contribute to the program by working with teachers and local architects to engage kids in learning activities in the Buffalo Public Schools (BPS). The program’s chair is Linsey Graff, a UB architecture graduate and an architectural planner in UB’s Capital Planning Group.
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Buffalo is ready to put its long-neglected grain elevators back to use, this time in service of tourism.

The Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation just rolled out a four-stage plan to illuminate the grain elevators along the city’s waterfront. It’s an attempt to attract more visitors and, perhaps more importantly, to put to rest the negative association grain elevators have with Buffalo’s economic decline.

Despite acclaim from the likes of LeCorbusier and Reyner Banham, the grain elevator tends to be seen as burdens from the past by locals. This is beginning to changes though thanks to the emergence of Silo City, a project that has so far included art shows inside the old silos and the nationally acclaimed bee hive concept, “Elevator B.”

The ECHDC, already responsible for Canalside, a sweeping redevelopment of Buffalo’s inner harbor, is hoping to build off the momentum along the city’s waterfront by creating an attraction that’ll help reshape Buffalo’s image. “It will change how we see ourselves and where we live, and it will change how visitors from near and far see us again,” Albright-Knox Art Gallery director, Janne Siren told the Buffalo News.

Ambiences Design Production will be doing the illumination work. It has garnered acclaim for a similar project it developed in Quebec City, one which started off as a one-time event to commemorate the city’s 400th anniversary only to be so successful however, that it has since become an annual event. It’s now seen by the city as one of its most compelling tourist draws.

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http://youtu.be/NrEEBWMo1Os

The fourth MediaCity reflects on pluralities and globalities, on MEDIACITIES everywhere.

What new lines of inquiry and emergent relations between urbanity and digital media are found in non-Western cities, in post-Capitalist cities, in cities hosting civic turbulence or crossing international boundaries? What urban-medial relations are taking shape differently in urban milieux that may have been heretofore overlooked? These cities are deserving of more attention than ever before, as sites of population growth, of new cultural and social formations, of new entanglements between urban life and contemporary media, communications and information technologies, and more. MEDIACITIES promises to expand our understanding of both media and the city today, and to articulate new sites of practice and working methods for an expanding field.

In addition to a conference program of panels selected from an international call for papers, MEDIACITIES will feature keynote speakers, including Benjamin H. Bratton, Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Director of D:GP, The Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego; Mike Crang, Reader in Cultural Geography at Durham University in the UK; and Stephen Kovats, cultural and media researcher, formerly artistic director of transmediale, Berlin’s festival for art and digital culture, and international program curator at V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam.

MEDIACITIES will feature an exhibition of commissioned works that confront different aspects of the contemporary entanglements of digital media and urban life in cities around the world today – spaces of appearance, of exchange, and of identity. Artists in the exhibition include Paolo Cirio, Julian Oliver, Stephanie Rothenberg, and Antoine Schmidt.

MEDIACITIES workshops introduce skills and themes relevant to this year’s conference focus on multiplicities. Workshops include Interactive Planning Istanbul, examining the emergent ecologies of interaction between socio-economical relationships and the structure of a city using computational design tools; NeuroVision, exploring the urban aesthetics of spaces in Buffalo with artist Ursula Damm via a web-based sandbox for Generative Video Processing; Neo-provincialism, a knowledge-share workshop addressing the concept of neo-provincialism through connecting cybernetics and urban agriculture to their adjacent spatial and xeno-spatial implications; and Digital Media in Urban Spaces, mapping and visualizing urban digital media based on a methodology for empirical research using GPS and geo-tagging techniques.

for more information or to register: http://mediacities.net/

The Buffalo Architecture Foundation is inviting everyone to attend an event on Thursday at 6:00pm called “6 Minute Building Stories”. Guests will be treated to a series of six minute stories about planning, architecture and landscape, as seen through the eyes of co-presenters who, through use of photos, will paint a picture of our built environment and the effect that it has on different people.

Building Stories will give us an insight into the people who help to shape our city, while opening your eyes to a world that can sometimes be so obvious that it escapes us. The series is meant to be an eye-opener to our surroundings and the impact that the built environment has on all of us, in more than just utilitarian ways.

Thursday, Apr 25, 6:00pm to 8:00pm
The Greenhouse @ The Hotel Lafayette
391 Washington Street
Buffalo, NY 14203

To browse some Building Stories, please view the Buffalo Architecture Foundation Building Stories Collection.

The Buffalo Architecture Foundation Building Stories Collection is a cooperative venture of the UB Libraries and the Buffalo Architecture Foundation, Inc. (BAF). It features a celebration of Western New York’s architectural landscape; the digital collection includes text and images submitted by individuals interested in documenting and sharing their personal experiences with the region’s architecture, construction, landscape and planning.

Meet Buffalo Niagara’s “Sustainability Igniters”–our local leaders and innovators in environmental sustainability. There will be exhibits from local sustainability organizations, local food, music, prize giveaways, and much more!

Register at: http://www.buffalo.edu/sustainability/engagement/earth-week.html

For more pictures, see: Hayes Hall Renovation Interior

Interview from OnArchitecture: Anne Lacaton
http://www.onarchitecture.com/interviews/anne-lacaton

Books:
Lacaton & Vassal
APL Book Collections: NA 1053 .L24 L34 2006

Lacaton & Vassal
APL Book Collection: NA1053 .L19 A4 2009

2G Lacaton & Vassal: obra reciente = recent works
APL Book Collection: NA1053 .L3 A4 2011

Plus : la vivienda colectiva : territorio de excepción = les grands ensembles de logements : territoire d’exception = large-scale housing developments : an exceptional case
APL Book Collection: On order

Online publications at http://www.lacatonvassal.com/publications.php
The website features project descriptions and options to download article pdfs.

UB Course Reserve: Clarkson Chair Lecture Series – Anne Lacation
-Printed publications from lacatonvassal.com/publications

107 Capen Hall (Honors College Colloquium Room)

Can sustainable farming feed America?

Find out: don’t miss an upcoming screening of documentary film American Meat (www.americanmeatfilm.com) at 6:30pm on March 21st in 107 Capen Hall.

American Meat looks at cattle, hog, and chicken production in the U.S. Three core actionable principles guide American Meat’s nationwide Young Farmers Screening Series: thank America’s farmers; support young farmers; and food choices matter.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion including the filmmaker, Samina Raja (Associate Professor, UB School of Architecture and Planning), Jesse Meeder (Farm Director, Massachusetts Avenue Project), and Douglas Bunker (co-owner of Lake Country Premium Natural Meats).

All films in the Sustainability Film Series are free and open to the public.

It was back in January of 2009 when I first wrote about a corner market store that was in the midst of getting a much deserved makeover (see here). At the time, owner of the property, Giles Kavanagh, knew one thing for sure. He knew that he wanted to restore the corner into a productive, functioning neighborhood anchor that would pay homage to innovative architecture and design, in order to create an operable commercial space like no other. Basically, Giles wanted to follow in the footsteps of Buffalonians who had built this city with ingenuity and pride, while at the same time leaving his own mark so that people would be able to rethink what it means to rebuild, restore and recreate Buffalo.

In doing so, Giles retained the design and architectural services of Stephanie Davidson, Georg Rafailidis and Davidson Rafailidis. I met up with German-born Georg Rafailidis who is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning (University at Buffalo) in order to get a sense of what was unfolding at the corner of Jersey and Fargo. What I learned has forever altered my thinking when it comes to building a simple, clever, green, efficient, modern and inspiration build-out. When it comes to setting the bar for design standards, the owner-builder team is one of a kind.
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