Date: January 17, 2012
Time: 2pm
Present: Paul Hajian, Patti Seitz, Meg Hickey (recording), Mitch Ryerson, Will Roberts, Marshall Audin, Lawrence Cheng, Paul Paturzo, Sam Batchelor, Lee McDonald (studio supervision), Kelley Sullivan (grad student), Alice Stanne (office management).

Announcements:

• Kelley has assembled Spring 2012 Tuesday Talks:
• Feb 28 - Antonio DiMambro - Reclaiming Old San Juan, Puerto Rico as the Walkable City - www.dimambro.com/
• Mar 13 - Matt Noblett of Behnish Architekten- Integrated Design Practice: New Work, Updates, Concepts - behnisch.com/
• Mar 20 - Sam Batchelor - Lessons in Making - www.designlabarch.com/
• Mar 27 - Mike Pyatok - Equity and Sustainability: Communities of the 21st Century - www.pyatok.com/
• Apr 10 - David Eisen - Ongoing Negotiations: Housing Precedents and Current Work - www.abacusarchitects.com/
• Apr 24 - Paul Kassabian - Making Digital Real - www.sgh.com/
• May 1 - Rick Lowe - Art in the Social Sphere - www.rowhousecdc.org/rickbio.html
• In future we will avoid lectures too close to semester-end reviews.
• Studio faculty please ascertain semester-end studio review schedule as soon as possible and notify Paul so he can book space.
• Paul needs images of student and faculty work to show at freshman Major Registration Day. Images can be placed on Cumulus, a digital image storage owned by the college. If worried about copywrite issues, just give the images directly to Paul. Kuyen is our grad student responsible for documenting our work and events.
• Please notify Paul of any proposals to attend professional conferences. If faculty are presenting their work it is often possible to get monetary support for travel and/or conference fees if Paul has sufficient notice. If class/es will be missed we can arrange cover with advance warning.
• All 2nd floor storage areas will be given up this semester because of new Design Center construction. 2 Saturdays after spring break will be announced for students to pick up models and other work shown in the recent NAAB exhibit.
• Please remind your students to document their work electronically, and check that what they submit actually does work on department machines.
• The first meeting with the students this semester will be a review of the new 2.0 release of the Intern Development Program.
• Lee will visit all classes to ensure everyone has had the shop safety training.
• NAAB is meeting in Puerto Rico and will vote on our status during Feb. 16-17.
• We will hold faculty meetings monthly in the wednesday meeting slot.

Discussion:

• NAAB mentioned that we have a lot of performance criteria centered on the design build course, they thought probably too many. On the spectrum from theory to practice our program is heavily weighted toward practice, a position we all endorse. Discussion ensued on what other programs are similar to ours in US and Canada, so we can build communication and interaction with them, and compare our curriculum.
• Sam mentioned "critical regionalism" and the paper about this by Kenneth Frampton as a useful reference related to our approach. The Brian McKay-Lyons Ghost 13 conference in Nova Scotia is also a source of like-minded potential guest lecturers, such as Glenn Murcutt.
• We need to be more proscriptive about what each student must display on their review boards. Precedents must be shown and identified, and aspects which inform the student's design specified. Design details working towards sustainability need to be identified.
• Patti will alter her sustainablity course to include MEP.
• NAAB expects more emphasis on ordering systems. Patti will email to studio faculty some references at urban scale which may be useful in augmenting their discussions with students.
• We need to clarify the difference intellectually and in the curriculum between graduate and undergraduates taking the same course. We will investigate separate course numbers, adjust content level for graduates, and give them more opportunity for writing about applied research. With a larger population it would be possible to run separate grad and undergad studios.
• Mitch finds it beneficial to have both grads and undergrads together in the furniture classes.
• Will would like to relate his real estate course with some project in another course.
• We are considering adding another 3 credit history/theory/crticism course to the grad curriculum by reducing a 9 credit studio to 6 credits.