University Design-Build
A look at just a few of the many recent university design-build projects that are giving architecture students across the country real-world lessons on how buildings get made.

Photo courtesy Texas Tech University

Julian King Architect
At press time, Julian King, AIA, and his co-principal and wife Christina Lyons had just discovered their firm, Julian King Architect, was one of six finalists for the Atlantic City Boardwalk Holocaust Memorial design, and an exhibition of their work was on display at The Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, New Jersey. After six years and a handful of completed projects, King says, “We are starting to get some traction."

Photo courtesy Julian King Architect

Transdisciplinary design
Once an academic outlier, transdisciplinary design went mainstream this fall. Parsons The New School for Design launched the first American degree program of the type, and curators Michael Rooks and Jonathan D. Solomon surveyed transdisciplinary design for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which closes November 11. Summed up by Biennale title “Workshopping,” transdisciplinary design is highly inclusive and participatory, embracing fields as disparate as economics and public policy.

Image courtesy SR+T Architects

REC Arquitectura
Since 2000, Gerardo Recoder, lead designer of REC Arquitectura, based in Mexico City, with a satellite office in Madrid, Spain, and his co-principals—his engineer brother Ivan and designer Maria Jimenez, who runs the Madrid outpost—has started and maintained his now 10-person practice while still working for and with other firms, earning an M.Arch., and completing at least a dozen projects.

Photo courtesy REC Arquitectura

SCALEAfrica: Side project to life mission
Many emerging professionals moonlight beyond 9-5, but Erinn McGurn's side project, SCALEAfrica, a non-profit organization dedicated to building sustainable schools in Africa, became her full-time focus.

Photo courtesy SCALEAfrica

Studio H:T
Christopher Herr and Brad Tomecek, principals of Boulder, Colorado-based Studio H:T, operate with what Tomecek calls "the ping-pong effect." "Our firm is very collaborative," he says, "and we find that we always get farther, faster because of the back and forth."

Photo courtesy Studio H:T

Solar Decathlon Goes Abroad
The Solar Decathlon goes to Europe this year with Madrid hosting the competition. Seventeen solar-powered residences were conceived, designed, and built by groups of students from universities around the world.

Photo courtesy Solar Decathlon

ODA-Architecture
In 2007, with an exciting project (renovating New York City’s famed Toy Building on Madison Square Park) in hand, Eran Chen began ODA-Architecture with two colleagues, P.Christian Bailey, AIA, and Ryoko Okada. That project eventually fell through, but momentum had begun, and now the three-year-old firm boasts an impressive portfolio of completed and on-the-boards work.

Photo courtesy ODA-Architecture

Recession follow-up
In last year's March issue we profiled six emerging professionals who were laid off as the economy tanked. Encouraged by news from unemployed colleagues who recently landed new jobs and the infectious optimism in the media, we caught up with our previous subjects and polled a few others on their job situations.

Photo courtesy Morgan Mense

Mikou Design Studio
For twin sisters Salwa and Selma Mikou, principals of Paris-based Mikou Design Studio, their introduction to architecture was family life in a traditional riyad in the heart of the medina in Fes, Morocco. With home and hearth such a strong reverberation in the minds of the sisters, it might seem strange that their architectural practice includes no residential projects.

Photo courtesy Mikou Design Studio

Different approaches win competition for refugee housing
A woven shelter designed by Jiyoun Kim and a lightweight structure made of prefabricated modules by Gene Kaufman shared first place in the first annual Ideas Competition organized by the AIA’s Young Architects Forum and the Committee on Design.

Photo courtesy AIA Young architects forum

construcTWO
Although Julie Ju-Youn Kim, AIA, bases her 3-to-4-person firm construcTWO in Washington, D.C., with a satellite office in Detroit, the answer she’ll give if you ask where her office is located might be “wherever my laptop is.”

Photo courtesy construcTWO

Kansas to Cairo
In January, Marina Del Rey, California architect David Denton launched a Second Life–based class at USC School of Architecture alongside Cairo, Egypt-based architect Amr Attia at Ain Shams University in Cairo. Comprising eight American students and 40 young Egyptians, the group has master-planned a site nestled between the Giza pyramids and the forthcoming Grand Egyptian Museum.

Photo courtesy David Denton

limonLAB
An urban laboratory. That’s how architect Enrique Limon explains why his New York City based firm is called limonLAB. Established in 2005, the 2-to-4 person firm’s bent toward experimentation has yielded a number of completed and on-the-boards projects, including a bar in Philadelphia, a gallery in New York City’s Harlem, a resort in Thailand, and a prototype soccer park slated to be developed in 20 U.S. locations.

Photo courtesy limonLAB

Design studios, taught from afar
Conducting a design studio from afar, with webcams and video chat software, is neither common nor a trend. But it is being done, and, say those who have done it, successfully. Seattle architect Peter Jahnke just completed one at Montana State University, and he and his students argue that this kind of studio gives them a leg up to the world of global business.

Photo courtesy Peter Jahnke

Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz Arquitetos
Now in its 10th year, Brazilian firm Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz (FGMF) has grown from three to 18 employees. From their first project of a small restaurant in the woods of São Paolo to a complicated urban renovation project in downtown Rio de Janeiro, the three architects have never lost their individuality as designers, or their ambition to grow the firm.

Photo courtesy FGMF

University of Colorado Design Build
The University of Colorado’s (CU) College of Architecture and Planning design/build program on campuses in Boulder and Denver has been educating students for 11 years with hands-on projects that focus on community outreach and service learning. The program has lasting effects on both the students and the community, as demonstrated by CU’s latest completed project for Urban Hens.

Photo courtesy University of Colorado Design Build

Davison Architecture + Urban Design
For Dominique Davison, AIA, and Ryan Warman, AIA, principals of 4-person firm Davison Architecture + Urban Design (DA+UD), living in Kansas City, Mo., a city that has more linear miles of highway per capita than any other U.S. city, is like being in the right place at the right time.

Photo courtesy DA + UD

Zero Energy Design
When Zero Energy Design (ZED) first hung its shingle, the partners planned to translate their second-place Solar Decathlon entry into a saleable product. But over time, ZED transitioned into custom green-home construction and renovation.

Photo courtesy ZED

Luca Andrisani Architect
It takes a certain amount of audacity for a 26-year-old Italian architecture school student to write a letter to Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron detailing the reasons why they should hire him. Luca Andrisani was that plucky student, and went to work at the famed Swiss firm right after receiving his M.Arch.

Photo courtesy Luca Andrisani Architect

Graypants
Sitting in a softly lit café in New York or San Francisco, you would probably never guess that the exotic, handmade light fixture you’ve been admiring used to be a cardboard box. Repurposing discarded items into something both useful and elegant is what truly inspires the resourceful young designers of Graypants.

Photo © Sean Watson

Atelier Manferdini
She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Civil Engineering in Bologna, Italy, and an M.Arch. from SCI-Arc, but don’t try to pigeonhole Elena Manferdini. With her firm, Atelier Manferdini, Manferdini switches hats easily from engineer, architect, product designer, fashion designer, and artist.

Photo © Lisa Wyatt

Archiculture, 2010
Many have mused that architecture studio would make the perfect setting for reality television: the combination of caffeine-fueled all-nighters, high stress, and unsympathetic critics is sure to produce dramatic footage. Ian Harris and David Krantz are taking this idea a step further by making a feature-length documentary about studio culture.

Photo © Meghan Roberts