School Notes: School of Architecture
January/February 2007

London developer named Bass Fellow

Roger Madelin, a London developer, has been named the third Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Architecture. Selected from among leaders in the development community, Bass Fellows participate in an advanced design studio led by a chaired architecture professor and organized around a development project with which the Bass Fellow is engaged; the aim is to expose architecture students to the real-world application of their art. Madelin, chief executive of Argent, will be teaching the studio with London-based architect and Bishop Visiting Professor Demetri Porphyrios. The studio will design schemes for King's Cross Central, a 67-acre site in the heart of London adjacent to a new Channel tunnel rail link to St. Pancras station. Argent's current scheme for the area proposes new residential, commercial, retail, and cultural spaces, as well as a new home for the university of the arts. The challenge for the students will be to integrate the rich historic fabric with new structures while also focusing on sustainable development for the future. Yale students in the studio will investigate master planning issues of the project and will visit the London site.

Architecture student takes top design prize

Yichen Lu, a first-year master of architecture student at Yale, has won first prize in the 2006 Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition sponsored by Shinkenchiku (New Architecture) magazine in Japan. The objective of the competition was to employ new media or definitions to describe the new urban lifestyle. Lu designed a portable device entitled "The Meaning of Life," which participates in and drives the development of urban lifestyle -- observing, reading, resting, wandering the streets of Manhattan -- and transforms people's activities from "program" into poetic narrative. The prizes and winners were announced in the December issues of Shinkenchiku and JA magazines.

Dutch designs at Architecture gallery

The Architecture School Gallery will be converted into a three-dimensional graphic this spring to highlight the work of Dutch architecture firm UN Studio. "UN Studio: Evolution of Space" will focus on 18 years of the firm's work, including the recently opened Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, and past projects such as the Moebius House and the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam. The exhibition will be on view in the gallery from February 12 to May 4.