School Notes: School of Architecture
January/February 2022

A new home for Handsome Dan

Handsome Dan now resides in a brand-new doghouse at the Yale Visitor Center, designed by students Shelby Wright ’22MArch and Christine Song ’22MArch. The project was built at the Yale School of Architecture by faculty member Tim Newton ’07MArch and his team in the fabrication shop out of plywood with custom laser-cut Y and bone-shaped finials and other details. The students also designed a custom pawprint-based Yale shield for Handsome Dan. The design was selected following a competition among current Yale architecture students in spring 2021. The judges included vice president for communications Nate Nickerson, Yale Visitor Center director  Nancy Franco, architecture dean Deborah Berke, and architecture associate dean Phil Bernstein. Two runner-up designs were chosen: “Tetris House” by YuhanZhang ’21MArch, and “Handsome Dàn House” by Yuyi Shen ’22MArch and Yuyi Zhou ’22MArch. (For a photo, see Scene on Campus.)

Alumni win design competition

Yale School of Architecture alumni Katharine Blackman ’20MArch and Jerome Tryon ’20MArch have been selected to design a new memorial garden for the campus of Southern New Hampshire University commemorating the collective grief of 2020, following a design competition. The design combines a meditative labyrinth with meditative views and seating, as well as a “solstice stone,” cut to align with the summer sun.