Architect Peter Hilger advised students working on the University of Minnesota's Solar Decathlon entry, ICON house. On Thursday, November 5, 2009, 7 p.m., in the Continuing Education and Conference Center, Hilger presents the November edition of the College of Continuing Education's Headliners event: The Journey of Solar Decathlon 2009: A View from the Trenches. Hilger, who as taught classes in the College of Design, will recount the team's adventure in making ICON house a reality. Registration is available on the College of Continuing Education Web site.

Related links:

• University of Minnesota Solar Decathlon Web site


• College of Design Solar Decathlon Web page

LA DALLMAN: Fabricated landscapes
Monday, November 9, 6 p.m., 100 Rapson Hall
Cass Gilbert Fund Lecture

The work of LA DALLMAN explores architecture as transformed site, reshaping the raw materials of found and abstracted landscape in projects of diverse scale and type. The practice deploys material and detailing investigations as cultural artifacts, which grow from the context. Among recent projects, the lecture will discuss LA DALLMAN's permanent exhibits at Discovery World, the new University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Hillel Student Center, and the Levy House.

Led by James Dallman and Grace La, both graduates of Harvard University, the LA DALLMAN design studio has been awarded over 30 professional honors since its inception in 1999. Most recently, the Marsupial Bridge and Urban Spaces has received the Silver Medal of the national Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. LA DALLMAN was featured as Architectural Record's emerging architectural firm (April 2001), and was recognized as one of four small firms nationally working on large scale projects (Dec. 2002).

Recently, the practice won six design awards for excellence from the American Institute of Architects Wisconsin, second prize among 109 submissions in Pittsburgh's 2006 International West End Pedestrian Bridge Competition, and was a finalist in Atlanta's 2005 International Andrew Young Design Competition, Madison's Chazen Art Museum, and Pittsburgh's Allegheny Square Competition. The practice was awarded first place in the 2000 design competition for Kilbourn Tower.

LA DALLMAN is published in Detail in Process (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), The Green Braid (Routledge, 2007), The Public Chance (a + t, 2008), 1000x Architecture of the Americas (Verlaghaus Braun, 2008), Architectural Record, Praxis, Spain's a + t In Common Series, Canada's Azure, and Germany's Topos. They have lectured broadly and have exhibited their design work in various cities including at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

A number of you have asked about the composition of the Blue Ribbon Committee, which the provost thought should consist of no more than 10 faculty, staff, students, and community members. After consultation with deans, heads, and directors across the college, I have asked the following colleagues to participate, all of whom have accepted:

Lee Anderson - Architecture
Brad Hokanson - Design, Housing, and Apparel
Janice Linster - Alumni
Martha McDonell - Staff
Tom Meyer - Advisory Board
Kristine Miller - Landscape Architecture
Shona Mosites - Undergraduate Student
Monica Sklar - Graduate Student
Greg Van Bellinger - Advisory Board
Mary Vogel - Research and Outreach

I will urge the committee to think about larger trends affecting higher education and our disciplines as they make recommendations in response to the provost's request to look at what needs more investment, maintenance at current levels, reduced support, or elimination. I will also ask them to gather ideas from, and report back to, their constituent group.

To that end, we have assembled articles from recent issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times education supplement to offer context and spur their discussions. The more good ideas we have for our compact meeting with the Provost in late February about how to move forward, the better we will all be, so don't hesitate to share your thoughts!

Tom

Related links:

• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "In a Time of Uncertainty, Colleges Hold Fast to the Status Quo"


• The New York Times: "At Public Universities: Less for More"


• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Canon of College Majors Persists Amid Calls for Change"


• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Kent State U. Says It Will Pay Bonuses to About 800 Professors"


• Newsweek: "The Three-Year Solution"


• The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Why Colleges Should Offer 3-Year Diplomas"

The major criterion for the award is how well the book or article strikes a balance between scholarship and accessibility. Books and articles submitted must have been published between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2009. There will be separate award categories for articles and books.

Deadline for submissions is November 30. Winners will receive an honorarium and a one-year membership in MNSAH.

For more information, contact Laura Weber, l-webe@umn.edu

Thoughts of a Sometime Geographer lecture by Deborah Karasov
Monday, November 2, 2009, 6 p.m., 100 Rapson Hall
For a landscape architect or environmental artist, it is not such a great matter to have the technical skills to create beautiful things. Many other qualities of character and temperament are necessary. Karasov says she has been inspired by those who recommend enlarging our sympathies by the patient and loving observation of landscape. Some say it is in this practice, rather than in formulas or theories, where the promise of perfection for the art of landscape can be found.

Events

College of Design Mentor Program kick-off and orientation event
Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 6:30 p.m., McNamara Alumni Center
Student and mentor participants are encouraged to attend to meet each other and begin their mentoring relationship. A brief program will begin the evening. The majority of the time is for students and mentors to get to know each other and connect.

Architecture and Interior design firm tour Fall 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009, 9:30 a.m., Meet in Rapson Hall, HGA Gallery (near Room 100)
Attend the upcoming firm tour of Shea, Inc. and KKE Architects to learn more about the organizations and meet professionals in your field. Each firm will discuss a topic specific to their project work. While both firms have architecture and interior design areas, they are quite different in size, projects, and approach. Register on GoldPASS. Login and click on Career Events. Space is limited to 25 students so register early.

Exhibitions

Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library

Dewey Thorbeck Travel Sketches: An Architect's Recordings of Natural and Human Landscapes
September 25-December 27, 2009
Architects who draw and record their travels have a special way of seeing the world. It is a methodology where images are engraved in their mind rather than on film. A photograph or sketch is a snapshot of a moment in time. The photograph shows you reality as seen through the camera lens, while the sketch records the emotion and character of place as seen through the eyes and hands of the artist.

• Fall 2009 College of Design events, lectures, and exhibitions
• Download the Fall 2009 College of Design events and lectures poster (.pdf; 9.4MB)

Questions? Contact Laura Walton at 612-626-6385 or lwalton@umn.edu.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that sometimes we can be immersed in beauty and yet our eyes have no clear vision. For a landscape architect or environmental artist, it is not such a great matter to have the technical skills to create beautiful things. Many other qualities of character and temperament are necessary. Karasov has always been inspired by those who recommend enlarging our sympathies by the patient and loving observation of landscape. Some say it is in this practice, rather than in formulas or theories, that we can find the promise of perfection for the art of landscape. Our greatest challenge is to mature our imagination among the things of this earth.

Deborah Karasov is executive director of the nonprofit Great River Greening in Saint Paul. She has a Ph.D. in geography (University of Minnesota) and a MLA (Harvard Graduate School of Design). With this background, and as a past collaborator with environmental artists, Karasov writes about major themes of geography and landscape in light of her own experiences. In the art field, she served as director of adult programs at the Walker Art Center; codirector, with Kinji Akagawa, of the Institute for Public Art and Design, Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and consultant to the director, Design Arts Program, National Endowment for the Arts. Author of The Once and Future Park, she also coedited the visual arts attachment of the literary review Rain Taxi, was editor of Public Art Review, and has written reviews for Sculpture Magazine, New Art Examiner, and Architecture Minnesota.

Her community service has included: board member of the Franconia Sculpture Park, New Opportunities Committee of Public Art Saint Paul, jury chair for the Minnesota Women's Suffrage Memorial Garden, and task force member of the Ford Site Redevelopment, Saint Paul Green Development Policy, and Critical Areas Zoning.

Ozayr Saloojee (Architecture) was also recognized with an AIA Minnesota 2009 Special Award for his extraordinary teaching efforts. AIA Minnesota notes that Saloojee received the 2008 MArch Student Choice Award for graduate faculty.

Architecture and Interior Design Firm Tour
Friday, November 6, 2009, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Shea, Inc. (10-11 a.m.) and KKE Architects (11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.)
Bus will leave from Rapson Hall at 9:35 a.m.

Retail Merchandising Career Tour 
Friday, November 13, 2009, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. (tentative)
Christopher & Banks 
Bus will leave from McNeal Hall at 9:20 a.m.
 
Dirty Laundry 
Presenters: Joe Duffy of Duffy & Partners and Apparel Design presenter TBD 
Friday, November 20, 2009, 7‐9 p.m.   
William G. Shepherd Room, Weisman Art Museum

RSVP by November 9, 2009 to Becky Yust, H.O.U.S. faculty advisor, byust@umn.edu or 612-624-7461.

• Download the H.O.U.S. Alumni Gala flyer (.pdf; 2.6MB)

I've mentioned in previous Monday Minutes, as well as at the faculty assembly on Friday, the "blue ribbon committee" that the provost has asked each college to convene. We now know that the recommendations of that committee will factor into the University's decisions about investment requests that we will make at our compact meeting with the provost's office in February or early March.

Based on the suggestions we received from all parts of the college, I have invited faculty, staff, students, and members of the college's boards to participate in this short-term task. Everyone in the college will have opportunities to weigh in with the committee on the questions the provost has posed: what needs further investment, what needs maintaining, and where might consolidation or reductions occur? Answers to the questions will help decide where the University invests back into colleges part of the two percent it plans to cut from each college budget next year.

I will urge the committee to step back and think about answers to the provost's questions in terms of the larger trends affecting higher education, such as the demographic changes affecting our student body, the economic changes affecting our fields, and the technological changes affecting our discovery and delivery of knowledge. The more we can think, strategically, about the dynamic transformations happening around us, the better prepared we will be to thrive in the future.

So, watch for more information about this in the next month or two. In the meantime, you have all received a request to complete a web-based survey as part of my comprehensive review. I urge you to participate; your responses will remain confidential, but I would welcome the feedback. These are difficult times in which to lead and opportune times for improvement.

Tom