School Notes: School of Architecture
September/October 2016

Professors to design Obama library

The Obama Foundation has selected Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects/Partners to design the Barack Obama Presidential Library in Chicago. Tsien ’71 and Williams have taught the advanced studio at Yale several times and are currently serving as SoA’s Davenport Visiting Professors. Their firm, based in New York, focuses on schools, museums, and not-for-profits. “This has been a transformative presidency,” they wrote on learning of the commission, “and we will work to make a center that embodies and expands the Obamas’ vision.” 

Alumni win national AIA award

Wendy Pautz ’91MArch, John Chau ’93MArch, and Stephen Van Dyck ’04MArch, partners of the Seattle-based firm LMN, are winners of the 2016 National AIA Firm Award. This is the highest honor bestowed upon a firm by the American Institute of Architects. It recognizes a practice that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least ten years. In the award announcement, the AIA wrote, “LMN has nurtured a commitment to civic life, exploring the potential of architecture to strengthen the identity of the city and its communities, creating vivid places that bring people together around culture, the performing arts, education, and civic amenity.” One of their projects is the Vancouver Convention Centre West, winner of 19 design awards nationally and internationally and the world’s first LEED Platinum convention center. Other projects include the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts in San Antonio.

Eight rules to follow

School of Architecture dean Deborah Berke is author of a new book, House Rules: An Architect’s Guide to Modern Life (Rizzoli, 2016). The book outlines the guiding principles that Berke has employed in designing houses over the past 30 years. One chapter is devoted to each rule and is illustrated. The book includes a foreword by Hiram “Rick” Moody, critic at the School of Art, and an afterword by Marc Leff ’93. It was edited by Tal Schori ’10MArch with Matthew Zuckerman ’11, ’17MArch, and Anne Thompson ’02MFA. In July, Berke became the first woman to head the YSoA, where she has taught for 25 years.