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Thursday, September 25
4:00 to 6:00 pm
Lincoln Campus Center Room 163C

DOUBLE FEATURE—THE ARCHITECT and THE BUILDER

Five Houses: Sustainability Redefined
Stephen Kieran, FAIA, Architect and Author, KieranTimberlake Associates

Adventures in Prefabrication
Tedd Benson, Builder and Author, Benson Woodworking Co., Inc.

Stephen Kieran, FAIA, is a founding partner of KieranTimberlake Associates in Philadelphia, an award-winning and internationally published architecture firm noted for its research, and innovative design and planning services. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale University, magna cum laude, and his Master of Architecture, with honors, from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a recipient of the Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome, 1980-81. Both Kieran and Timberlake were inaugural recipients of the prestigious Benjamin Latrobe Fellowship for architectural design research from the AIA College of Fellows in 2001. Recently, KieranTimberlake Associates received the 2008 Architecture Firm Award, the highest honor bestowed on a firm by the American Institute of Architects.

He has co-authored two books: Manual, The Architecture of KieranTimberlake, published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2002, and Refabricating Architecture, published by McGraw Hill in 2004, which examines how manufacturing methodologies are poised to transform building construction. The partners' forthcoming book, Loblolly House: Elements of a New Architecture (completed in collaboration with Bensonwood) is a case study of a single building which shows a way forward to quality, productivity and sustainability.

Since 1974, Tedd Benson has been the founding owner of Benson Woodworking Company. During that time, the company has built over 700 timber frame structures throughout the country and overseas. He and the company have been featured on a number of shows in the PBS series, This Old House, as well as Good Morning America, and the Today Show. Articles have appeared in The Atlantic, This Old House Magazine, Architectural Digest, Home, Builder Magazine, Fine Homebuilding, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and numerous other regional newspapers local to specific projects.

Tedd has also authored books on timber framing: Timber Frame House, (Scribner's Sons, 1980, Simon & Schuster, 1995), The Timber-Frame Home: Design, Construction, Finishing (Taunton Press, 1988), TIMBERFRAME, the Art and Craft of the Post-and-Beam Home, (Taunton Press 1999). In 1984, Tedd was instrumental in forming the Timber Framers Guild of North America. He served on the Executive Board from 1988 to 1992. Since 1988, Tedd Benson and others at Benson Woodworking have been active in Habitat for Humanity.

Faculty host: Stephen Schreiber, Architecture and Design Program, Dept. of Humanaties and Fine Art

Thursday, October 2
4:00 to 5:00 pm
Procopio Room (105), Hills (North)

Sustainable Cities for a Carbon Scarce Future
Patrick Condon, Professor and James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments, University of British Columbia

Patrick Condon is a Professor in the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and holder of the UBC James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livable Environments. He holds a BSc and a MLA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Since 1994 he has organized and participated in over a score of design charrettes for sustainable communities. He is a senior researcher in the Design Center for Sustainable Communities at UBC, whose goal is to advance the practice sustainable community development in North America. In this capacity he has organized a series of round table multi-party planning and design processes in British Columbia and other parts of North America. These efforts share the goal of creating more sustainable new and retrofitted communities. The work has produced approved and workable plans for providing thousands of new housing units and job sites in sustainable community contexts.

Condon has become well known for producing alternative models for walkable and complete communities - communities that work with, not against, the natural capabilities of the site, and doing so with the people involved - the citizens and stakeholders of the area. The community design strategies that have emerged from this work have received widespread attention throughout the United States and Canada and are provoking a fundamental re-examination of how we plan our neighborhoods and, importantly, how we can most effectively and efficiently provide the urban infrastructure necessary to serve them.

Faculty host: Elizabeth Brabec, Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning Dept.

Monday, November 3
9:00 to 10:00 am
Lincoln Campus Center Auditorium

Measurement and Leadership: Life Cycle Analysis and LEED
Scot Horst, Horst, Inc.

Scot Horst serves as chair of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Steering Committee and is widely recognized as a leader in the sustainable design movement. During his chairmanship, he has overseen the development of LEED for Core and Shell, LEED for Schools, Revisions to LEED for Existing Buildings, LEED for Neighborhood Development, LEED for Homes, LEED for Healthcare and extensive work on the next version of LEED that will establish a new structure for a single LEED known as the LEED bookshelf. This structure will normalize all LEED rating systems to 100 points, add a regional category, intentionally weight the credits, fix credits and align credits and submittals across all rating systems. He has also guided a revised and holistic structure for developing LEED through a new committee structure.

Mr. Horst also serves as President of 7group a green building consultancy and the Athena Institute International, a non profit organization that focuses on sustainable materials and life cycle assessment.

Faculty host: Peggi Clouston, Building Materials / Wood Technology, Natural Resources Conservation Dept.

Friday, November 21
1:30 to 2:30 pm
Cape Cod Lounge, Student Union

Green Energy: Reconfiguring the North American Power Grid
Massoud Amin, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director,
Center for the Development of Technological Leadership, University of Minnesota

Massoud Amin, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, holds the H.W. Sweatt Chair in Technological Leadership, and is the Director of the Center for the Development of Technological Leadership at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on global transition dynamics to enhance resilience, security and efficiency of complex dynamic systems and on technology scanning, mapping, and valuation to identify new science and technology-based opportunities that meet the needs and aspirations of today's consumers, companies and broader society.

Prior to joining the University of Minnesota in March 2003, worked at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on Infrastructure Security, Grid Operations/Planning, and Energy Markets and directed all security-related research and development at EPRI, including the Infrastructure Security Initiative (ISI) and the Enterprise Information Security (EIS) in the aftermath of 911. At EPRI, he developed collaborative research initiatives with diverse groups including the creation and successful launch of the Complex Interactive Networks/Systems Initiative initiated in 1998 in response to growing concerns over the vulnerability of critical national infrastructures. CIN/SI developed six research consortia consisting of 108 professors and over 200 researchers in 28 U.S. universities, along with two energy companies, co-funded equally by EPRI and the U.S. DOD. Dr. Amin coined the term 'self-healing grid' and led the development of more than 19 advanced technologies now being transferred to the industry. Prior to joining EPRI in January 1998, he held positions of Associate Professor of Systems Science and Mathematics and Associate Director of the Center for Optimization and Semantic Control at Washington University.

Dr. Amin is the author or co-author of more than 125 research papers and the editor of seven collections of manuscripts, and serves on the editorial boards of six academic journals. He is a member of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment (BICE) at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Board on Mathematical Sciences and Applications (BMSA) at the National Academy of Sciences, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, a senior member of IEEE, AAAS, AIAA, ASME, NY Academy of Sciences, SIAM, and Informs. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society's Task Force on Security and Privacy, and the Board of the Center for Security Technologies (CST) at Washington University. Dr. Amin holds B.S. (cum laude) and M.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in Systems Science and Mathematics from Washington University.

Amin Website and Publications Links

Faculty host: Paul Fisette, Natural Resources Conservation Dept.