University of Florida
In This Issue
Orange, Blue & You
Upcoming Events
Witters Competition 2011
BCN Residential Construction Management Team receives award
DCP holds showcase for new students
Published & Presented

 

Orange, Blue & You!

 

 

Orange, Blue and You is the annual faculty/staff campaign aimed at raising funds to support UF. Your gifts made to the University of Florida can go on to support a number of different areas. By participating in this year's OB&Y campaign, you can help your university accomplish goals and continue to shape the future of things that matter to you.

 

Visit our website to make a gift today and receive a unique OB&Y thank you from the University of Florida Foundation.

 

  

 Upcoming Events 

   

URP Planning Day 2011

April 1: Dr. Michael Tomlan, Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation Planning at Cornell University, will be the Keynote Speaker for Planning Day 2011. The event will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. in Holland Hall. 

 

DCP Commencement

April 30 at 3 p.m.

Phillips Center for Performing Arts

    

 

Witters Competition 2011

   

As usual, this year's Witters Competition was a great success.  

During the competition, four student design teams raced to create designs and solutions for Alachua County's proposed Resource Recovery Park project in an effort to claim the $3,500 prize.

 

The park, to be built at the Leveda Brown Environmental Park, would be implemented in response to Florida's ambitious goal of recycling at least 75 percent of the municipal solid waste by the year 2020.

 

The teams had to visit the site and then develop project feasibility and conceptual plans for the park's economic development, all within 48 hours.  

 

Members of the winning team were:

 

Nick Steshyn (ARC)

Thomas Reeves (BCN)
Eduardo Lam (IND)
Kaley Dunlap (LA)
Qing Feng (MSE)
Pamela Cotera (IND)
Cao Yun (URP)

Tingting Huang (URP)

 

 

The Witters Competition was organized by Ravi Srinivasan.  


  

 Architecture awards ceremony       

On March 28, the School of Architecture celebrated its graduating class by bestowing awards on numerous outstanding students, and a few distinguished alumni.

 

 Angela Brooks, ARC 1987, of Brooks + Scarpa Architects received the Distinguished Architect Alumni Award, Jonathan Mallie, ARC 1996, of SHoP Architects received the Young Architect Design Award, John Ehrig, B.Arch 1973, of Helman Hurley Charvat Peacock Architects received the Distinguished Service Award, and the award-winning film director Shane Acker, ARC 1994, received the Design Excellence Award.  This year's Ivan Smith Endowed Professors were Tod Williams, Manuelle Gautrand, Carl Abbott, and Guy Peterson.

 

The event was followed with a lecture by architect Tod Williams and a reception in the gallery of the Architecture building.     

DCP News                April 1, 2011

Alfred Browning Parker, FAIA

 

Alfred Browning Parker, FAIA

Sept. 24, 1916 to March 11, 2011

 

A celebrated designer and professor, Alfred Browning Parker, ARC 1938, began practicing architecture in the early 1940's in South Florida and his work quickly gained popularity for his modernist style. His work was highly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture, and it was Wright who recommended Parker as an AIA Fellow. 


Among many other achievements, Parker received the Distinguished Architecture Alumni Award in 1993, was named UF Distinguished Alumnus in 2001 and was recently honored with the AIA Miami Lifetime Achievement Award.

 

Read more.

Read a personal obituary that Parker wrote before his death.

 

Share your stories 

 

Please e-mail us with your thoughts on Al Parker and his work at [email protected]. We'd love to share your memories in an upcoming issue of the DCP alumni newsletter, Perspective.

 


BCN Residential Construction Management Team receives award
   

 

Left to right: Dr. Smailes, Tristan Lowry, Stephen Loy, Devon Toohey, Michael Rubin, Larry Messer, Nico Hohman and Steve Nellis

The BCN Residential Construction Management Team took 4th place overall (out of 35 teams) at the National Association of Homebuilders International Builders Show held in Orlando in January.  

 

DCP holds showcase for potential new undergraduate students 

 

DCP opened up its doors to potential new undergraduate students and their families during its New Student Showcase on March 26.

 

The showcase was held from 1:45 to 5:00 p.m., and began with a welcome by Dean Christopher Silver. Following the welcome, the 60 visitors were divided into three groups for a tour of the college facilities and explanations of DCP's undergraduate degree programs.

 

Later that afternoon, students were able to speak with current DCP students during an ice cream social in the atrium of the Architecture Building.


IND well-represented at 2011 IDEC Annual Conference

The Department of Interior Design was well represented at the 2011 Interior Design Educator's Council Annual Conference: Design with Intelligence on March 16-19 in Denver.

In her role as the Journal of Interior Design editor-in-chief, IND chair Meg Portillo participated in the pre-conference leadership summit with the IDEC executive board, regional chairs and directors. She also helped introduce the pre-conference symposium, Design for a Small Planet: Environmentally Responsible Interior Design, which was sponsored by the Journal. She led the JID Writers Workshop and was invited to present on behalf of the Journal at the graduate student breakfast. At the conference, the Wiley-Blackwell annual report for the Journal of Interior Design shared the top article downloads since the journal went online in 2008. Of the identified nine papers, two were from the UF Department of Interior Design, namely, Ann Baumstarck (MID graduate) and IND professor Nam-Kyu Park's, "The Effects of Dressing Room Lighting on Consumers' Perceptions of Self and Environment," and IND professors Candy Carmel-Gilfilen and Meg Portillo's, "Creating Mature Thinkers in Interior Design: Pathways of Intellectual Development."

As a member of the CIDA Standards Council, Portillo also was an invited presenter to a well-attended session on CIDA accreditation. Further, IND professor Maruja Torres-Antonini presented or co-presented two papers on sustainable design featuring research by MID students. One of these papers, presented by IND master's student Pamela Cotera, "To what degree do LEED buildings maintain their sustainable integrities: A post occupancy evaluation," was identified as a top 10 paper at the conference. After graduating from the MID program in May, Cotera will continue her studies in the Ph.D. program, continuing her research program in interior design. The paper was guided by Nam-Kyu Park (chair) and Maruja Torres-Antonini.

Zuzana Vatralova, who graduated December 2010 with a master's of interior design, also presented a paper, titled, "ABC of Green Design: Exploring the influence of parents' pro-environmental values, beliefs, behaviors, and knowledge on their preferences related to green childcare design." Vatralova's paper was guided by Maruja Torres-Antonini and Candy Carmel-Gilfilen.

IND professor Marty Hylton gave a well-received presentation entitled, "Flexible, Efficient, and Democratic: Classroom Design in Postwar America," exploring five concepts that informed the design of American public school spaces in the postwar war (1945-1970). As the IDEC Special Projects Chair, Hylton coordinated the IDEC grant review process during the past year and presented the recipient of the special projects award at conference. A clear highlight of the IDEC awards ceremony is the announcement of the results of the annual student design competition. This year a UF student team, consisting of two seniors and an MID student, won first place in the competition with Candy Carmel-Gilfilen and Sarah Cain as the faculty sponsors.   

 


Published & Presented
 

 

Brittany Rueff, an interior design senior, who was awarded the University Scholars grant in 2010, presented the results of her research in the poster session of the UF Undergraduate Research Symposium held March 25 at the J. Wayne Reitz Union. As a University Scholar, Rueff's study will be captured in a formal research paper to be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Undergraduate Research. Brittany's research, Characterization Study of Urban Cohousing Communities, has been advised by IND professor Maruja Torrres-Antonini.

 

Professor Gary W. Siebein, FAIA, FASA, of the School of Architecture presented "Architectural and Acoustical Elements of Soundscapes" an invited paper at the 1st European Congress on Sound and Vibration in Ljublijana, Slovenia. The International Congress was aimed at strengthening common endeavours in the field of sound and vibration for improving the quality of life, humanizing workplaces, improving speech intelligibility in lecture rooms and auditoriums, as well as the aesthetics of music in concert halls and opera houses. Siebein was one of several distinguished professors and acoustical experts from around the world who was invited to share his knowledge and experience.  

 

Siebein's paper, co-authored by University of Florida graduate students Adam Bettcher, Sang Bum Park, Sang Bong Shin, Lucky Tsaih and Keely M. Siebein centered around case studies of urban, suburban and natural soundscapes that are used to develop a catalog of elements that can be used in evaluating and designing soundscapes for multiple activities in widely varying contexts. The soundscape elements include identifying the acoustical communities involved in the soundscape: taxonomies of specific acoustic events that compose the ambient sound in specific localities; acoustical itineraries of various participants in each locality; the characteristics of acoustical spaces and how they are denoted in soundscapes; acoustical calendars of the specific acoustic events in a locale; structural ecological systemic relationships that underlie the specific acoustic events created by the participants in various activities along their acoustic itineraries; and the varying quiet or relative silence achieved in the soundscapes where appropriate. The specific acoustic events are identified by direct observation, through calibrated video and audio recordings of the observations, short-term detailed acoustical measurements of various types and long-term summary measurements of overall sound levels. The method leads to the design of ecological niches for specific acoustic events of interventions proposed for the soundscape that allows participants to evaluate existing and proposed sonic qualities in an iterative, interactive process to preserve and enhance the sonic character of the environment.

 

 

News Tips 
Please send news tips for the next issue
to Julie Frey or Allie Layos by April 8.

DCP News is published by the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning. News and announcements contained in DCP News were submitted by DCP faculty and staff. To make a submission, please contact Allie Layos or Julie Frey.