The Hip Hop Architect: Michael Ford

In collaboration with?the Merce Cunningham Trust, the dance departments of Cornish College of the Arts and 91探花 present the fruits of a two-week immersion in Cunningham’s innovative and influential practices in chance operations. Led by?Merce Cunningham Dance Company alums??and?Holley Farmer?(also a 91探花and Cornish alum), the residency?honors the centenary of Cunningham’s birthday and acknowledges his formative training at Cornish, where he met composer John Cage and formed a partnership that has influenced generations.

Film Screening: “If the Dancer Dances | April 11, 7:00 pm | Henry Art Gallery

Free |

Informal Performance: Exploring the Creative Legacy of Merce Cunningham | April 13, 2:00 pm | Henry Art Gallery

Free |

Faculty Recital: Craig Sheppard, piano

Earlier this month the American Planning Association named the UW’s Rainer Vista to its annual Great Places in America , one of 10 public spaces on the list this year. That recognition highlights the campus landscape’s role in creating memories of place and providing a university identity.

Opportunities to take advantage of mountain and water views, possibly rethink areas of campus such as the cement wall along 15th Ave. NE, and take better advantage of underused areas of campus are among the starting points for the framework, which has been under development for two years.

The symposium is open to everyone, and those wishing to participate are asked to register by Oct. 15, however, walk-in registrants at the door are welcome.

The morning session will consider the importance of a campus investment in general. The afternoon will include a presentation about city-campus collaborations, and the discussion of the new 91探花framework from 3-5 p.m. The draft is expected to be available online that afternoon on the Office of the University Architect’s website.

Landscape quality is a consideration in the campus master plan, the agreement between the city and the 91探花about future campus development. The most recent master plan was finalized in 2003.

The landscape framework now being developed will be part of the next master plan and help guide landscape considerations for the next 20 years, although the effects could be even more long lasting, according to Kristine Kenney, university landscape architect. She led efforts on the framework with Rebecca Barnes, university architect and associate vice provost for campus and capital planning.

The framework identifies existing features to highlight, including formal quadrangles such as the Liberal Arts Quad, informal greens such as Denny Yard, wooded areas, views of the water and mountains and canopied areas such as Memorial Way. The consulting firm on the framework, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, determined that the mosaic and variety of open spaces is what gives the 91探花its distinctive beauty, Kenney said.

It’s not a completed plan, but rather a way of looking at opportunities, Kenney said. Once the draft is finalized, it is hoped that a steering committee might develop guidelines, set priorities and find ways to fund the work.

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is a 91探花 professor of architecture and associate dean for academic affairs in the . He edited both editions of “.” Ochsner answered a few questions for 91探花Today.

Q: The 1994 publication of “Shaping Seattle Architecture” marked the 100th anniversary of the American Institute of Architects in Seattle. What was the reason for a second edition now, 20 years later?

A: The 1994 edition was reprinted in 1998, but has been out of print since about 2006. It would have been possible to reprint again, but since 1994 there has been 20 years of new research that the editorial board and I wanted to include. In addition, in the two decades since the first edition we have gained more historical perspective on the second half of the 20th century and we wanted to include more architects who contributed to Seattle’s built environment in that time period. We also wanted to include updates and new illustrations in some of the 1994 essays.

Q: This edition includes profiles of four architects not in the original edition. How did you decide which architects to include in the new edition?

A: Working with 91探花Press, we determined that we could include a few additional essays as well as updates to the 48 essays in the previous book. The editorial board and I engaged in a lengthy discussion about whom to include.

In the 1994 edition, we included in the essay; in this edition Ivey gets his own essay, which also allows us to include more of Ayer’s later work. was still active in 1994, but once he retired from practice we felt we had to include him because he was so important.

was a similar case — as founder of the 91探花landscape architecture program and as a key figure in the development of landscape architecture in this region. And was a leading figure, a successful practitioner who has won numerous accolades and also served as chancellor of the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows.

Q: Also new to the second edition is an essay on architects and suburban housing before and after World War II. How differently does an architect work when creating a design that will be repeated many times in subdivisions?

A: The 1994 edition tended to emphasize the roles architects played as creators of custom designs for individual clients. However, architects also played roles in shaping what is sometimes called “production housing” — designs that are repeated with variations in single-family residential subdivisions.

These designs are often produced taking account of the specific needs of the developer and may be offered as prototypes that are examples of the kinds of houses a developer intends to build. Readers may be surprised to see the number of different Seattle architects who, at one point or another in their careers, worked with developers or builders designing this kind of housing.

Q: The book has a substantial reference section at the back. What does this section embrace, and how has it been updated since 1994?

A: The editorial board and I believed updating the appendices was especially important as a way of keeping the book as a useful reference. More changes were made there than to any other part of the book. The “sources of information” for each of the architects now includes publications that appeared in the last 20 years. The address lists have been corrected and updated (including removal of buildings that were destroyed).

The biggest changes are found in short entries for “additional architects” who were significant in Seattle’s history: In 1994 we included about 85 additional architects — now we have more than 250, including many who practiced in the second half of the 20^th century. Finally, the appendix by David Rash titled “Researching Seattle’s Architectural Past” has been completely updated and expanded to include digital resources.

One thing that may not be immediately apparent is the number of architects included who have 91探花connections. With the expansion of the “additional architects” appendix, a very long list of 91探花faculty and graduates is now included.

Q: What lessons might a reader learn about the changing nature of architecture and design from this book?

A: The editorial board and I wanted to show the wide variety of kinds of architectural achievement and the extraordinary diversity of those who contributed to making Seattle’s built environment. The book includes over 600 photographs, so it really shows a wide range of what has been done by the architects of Seattle.

Every year the United States alone uses about 300 million cubic yards of ready-mix concrete to make streets, bridges, buildings, dams and driveways — and it lasts a very long time.

But, what if concrete could be made “greener”? What would the global energy savings be if concrete had a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint?

Concrete is typically made of a combination of cement, rock, sand and water. To produce cement, materials are heated in a large kiln that emits greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels and a chemical reaction termed calcination.? Rock and sand also must be processed and transported, and all these processes have environmental impacts.

That’s the question being addressed by the 91探花-led , an alliance of researchers, associations and companies in the building industry formed to develop what are called environmental footprint standards for building materials, especially concrete.

Those standards, also called product category rules, are designed to meet goals expressed by , an industry nonprofit working to dramatically reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the manufacture and transport of construction materials. More specifically, Architecture 2030 came from the group’s , which seeks a 50 percent reduction in carbon-equivalent product footprint by 2030.

The standards alone don’t create energy savings, of course — they’re designed to enable direct comparisons of building materials from different manufacturers.

Methods already exist for reducing concrete’s environmental impact, such as replacing cement with ash from coal-fired power plants, called fly-ash. Innovative manufacturing methods and materials also are being developed.

But before now, there was no method to consistently compare different concretes to ensure selection of a lower environmental impact concrete.

“We already know how to specify concrete for a lot of performance characteristics — strength, shrinkage, permeability,” said Kate Simonen, 91探花assistant professor of architecture and director of the forum. “Now, people who want to specify environmental performance as a different performance characteristic will have a method to compare it.”

Simonen said that the results of these standards, called Environmental Product Declarations, help users understand and compare the environmental impacts related to product manufacturing, use and disposal, roughly the same way a nutrition label shows the ingredients in a food product.

She said the standards also will provide “quantifiable life-cycle information” to enable comparisons among products fulfilling the same function. Life-cycle assessment measures a project’s total environmental impact from design and construction through its entire use and end of life.

The standards will have practical applications, such as helping a city or company set and meet specific targets for reducing carbon use. Cities trying to push their carbon use even lower will be able to specify low-carbon concrete. Users who might be willing to pay a higher price for a lower-environmental-impact concrete could provide financial incentive to advance developing technologies.

Ed Mazria, Architecture 2030 founder and CEO, praised the standards. “Reducing the carbon footprint from concrete is one of the most significant actions that the building sector can take. The Carbon Leadership Forum recognized this issue, and its members set in motion a process for developing clear rules to govern the environmental reporting for concrete mix designs.”

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For more information or interviews, contact Simonen at 415-641-1421 or ksimonen@uw.edu. A copy of the new product category rules and environmental product declarations is available on request.