School Notes: School of Architecture
September/October 2007

Architecture professor to work with FES program

Recently appointed professor Michelle Addington brings a unique combination of expertise to the new joint degree program with the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She specializes in two areas: energy, environment, and sustainability; and advanced technologies and smart materials. She defines smart materials as "those that directly undergo a transformation in one of their properties or transform energy in relation to their environment." For example, thermochromatic materials are one color at a given temperature and another color at a different temperature. But unlike many other architects who are interested in smart materials, she says, "I choose them not because of what they look like but because of what they can do -- make discrete, local, and direct modifications to the immediate environment." Addington has a courtesy joint appointment at FES. The joint degree program is beginning with just a handful of students, but she's enthusiastic about the program's potential. "What's super about working with FES is that we recognize there's a certain amount of science and knowledge that doesn't belong to architecture, and so instead of bringing a green overlay [to it], we're trying to respect the field and depend upon another discipline's knowledge."

Building project embraces new challenges

The First-Year Building Project, which began four decades ago to give hands-on design experience to architecture students, will offer two new challenges this year for the students designing a home for a low-income family. One is that this year's design includes an attached rental apartment for the first time; the second is that the home has to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ground floor, where the owner will live, is designed to be barrier-free. The project's new development partner, Common Ground, describes itself as the "nation's largest not-for-profit developer of supportive housing" and has prioritized disabled female veterans for this type of two-family housing. The new homeowner is a disabled female Iraq War vet.  "We're hoping that this project and the ones we anticipate in the future," says Dean Robert A. M. Stern, "will develop new templates for urban infill housing for veterans and take into consideration in creative ways the needs of disabled and elderly people. From the point of view of pedagogy, it's very important to our students to be introduced to this field of architecture." The home is being built on Kossuth Street in New Haven's Hill neighborhood and is scheduled for completion this fall.

All moved in, for now

The School of Architecture has moved into temporary quarters around the corner in the new Sculpture Building on Howe Street. "It's working out beautifully," Dean Stern says. "It will be home to the [Art School's] sculpture department once we go back into our building, but we are enjoying the space. Our own building renovation is going full-tilt and we expect to be back in by next summer."