Our Work

Explore the scholarly, curricular and creative work of our faculty and students as we mobilize our disciplines on today's most pressing societal challenges. Through studios, sponsored and independent research, faculty and students across our programs engage with real-world projects that reimagine our built environment, innovate modes of practice and transform communities both locally and globally.

  • Study Abroad: Aarhus
    12/27/17
    High global carbon emissions is a contributing factor to climate change. The popularity of air travel increases the impact of one's carbon footprint. Travelers are asked to compensate for the footprint they use for travel. Planting biomass allows the airport to generate a cleaner source of energy near the site to power regular activities. In addition, wind and solar energy will also be harvested and utilized at the airport.
  • Biological Organisms
    12/18/17
    This exercise examines the relationship between a biological organism and its context. The Texas Horned Lizard collects water through spikes on its back, which then travels through capillary action to its mouth, thus creating drinking water. The model diagrams the collection of water to one central point.
  • Rain Check
    12/18/17
    "Settler's Landing provides unique opportunities to help address Cleveland's pressing storm-water management issues, as well as the city's current ecological concerns. The site serves a low point in the topography of Downtown Cleveland and the two bridges, making it ideal for storm-water collection and management."
  • Textiles, Machines, Flow and Factories
    12/17/17

    This essay by Brian Carter seeks to examine integrated design and trace the development of the factory as a building type.

  • Blurring Boundaries
    12/14/17
    The directed research engages with designing for non-humans in order to strengthen the relationship between coexisting species. Particularly focusing on birds, bird seed and nesting materials are provided in mesh cages to track the movement in which they are dispersing.   
  • Reimagining terra cotta facades
    12/11/17

    Now in its second year, the Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop convenes architects, engineers and ceramicists to develop environmentally-responsive terra cotta façade prototypes. 

  • ARC + EDU [BPS 53]
    12/11/17
    "An initiative of the Buffalo Architecture Foundation, the Architecture + Education program is offered in select Buffalo Public Schools every other year. Over the past 10 years, the program has involved 25 Buffalo Public Schools, more than 100 architects and 100 classes, and more than 3,500 students."
  • Racial Evidence
    12/4/17
    Assistant professor of architecture Charles Davis II and collaborators' article in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 
  • Climate change and the tale of two cities
    12/4/17

    With funding from National Science Foundation, two architecture and urban planning faculty members are studying the impacts of heat and cold in Tempe and Buffalo.

  • We Are One Generation
    12/4/17
    This senior project proposes units that are designed to create smaller communities in the larger context of the complex. With a focus on housing a multi-generational community, the architecture defines a socially interactive setting in which the young and the old can live and work interdependently. 
  • Creating conversation in Cleveland
    12/1/17
    A temporary art installation by UB architecture professors Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster has put public debate back into the town square.
  • Examining real estate investment impacts on housing affordability and equity
    12/1/17

    Urban planning professor Robert Silverman, in collaboration with Ken Chilton of the Department of Public Administration, Tennessee State University, are investigating the effects of single-family home real estate investment trusts (REITs) on regional housing markets, specifically in Nashville, TN. 

  • Unité de Révolution
    11/27/17
    At a time of sociopolitical unrest, citizens are involved in demonstrations with increasingly spatial qualities, harnessing a legitimized right to the city. The Origam[we] shield system, delivered in the form of appropriable DIY manuals, challenges institutional reproductions of power in political, professional, and pedagogical approaches to the design and construction of our environments.
  • Sugar Shell
    11/27/17
    By crystallization of sugar molecules bonding to the fibers of the bagasse, this pulp mixture, when lifted in the air, creates a solidified thin-shell structure. A spatial condition in which light penetrates through the thin paper shell thus creating a harmonious lighting effect that is only experienced from the interior.  
  • Dispersed Practice
    11/25/17

    From office, to airport, to artist colony, architecture faculty member Joyce Hwang reflects on her navigation of multi-locational practice. Read her blog contribution to ArchiteXX, an organization for women dedicated to transforming architecture through academy-to-practice connections.

  • Investigating Flexibility
    11/25/17
    Black walnut has high strength when bent, and can easily be manipulated without saturation. Students investigate various species of wood to identify a workable balance of flexibility and strength. Layers, cut into 1/8" thickness, are laminated to create the spine and ribs of the boat form under development. 
  • Charles Davis shines a light on student activism in Harvard Design Magazine
    11/20/17

    An essay by UB architectural historian Charles Davis, II, published in the latest issue of Harvard Design Magazine, places the recent history of campus protests into historical perspective to speculate on the future role of progressive student movements in reforming American society.

  • RFP02 Benches: A Design-Build Competition
    11/20/17

    Continuing a series of design-build competitions that activate the newly renovated Hayes Hall as a site for research through making, the school invites faculty and students to submit proposals for the design and fabrication of window seating areas on the building's staircase landings.  

  • IDeA Center publishes new resources on inclusive design
    11/16/17

    The two books were published by faculty and staff of the IDeA Center and offer architects, planners and building professionals practical resources for designing accessible, inclusive products and environments. 

  • Mega Section
    11/14/17
    The sectional collage highlights progression and amplitude in a way to express a dynamic motion of circulation throughout space.  "The idea of elevation of [the] verticals, and the passage of time of the horizontals" resembles the journey throughout the space. 
  • Brews & Bakeries
    11/9/17
    Our design provides a supportive infrastructure that includes on-site wastewater treatment facilities, biogas treatment centers, and a steam production facility. We realized that incentives such as these would make the transition to the area easier for light industries such as breweries, bakeries, and distilleries. All of which, produce a lot of waste and biomass that could be used to serve each other with the infrastructure provided. 
  • Systemic Tectonics
    11/9/17
    The sketches visualize an exploration of spatial organization as a result of aggregating a tectonic system. The system is derived from previous studies of buoyancy as the facility attempts to reintegrate people and water along the shoreline of the Erie Canal. 
  • Children’s Museum: Artifacts
    11/7/17
    Older People: 
    "According to a recent study, the number of first-time parents aged 35-45 has grown nine times larger since the 1970’s.  This rapid growth in the amount of older first-time parents means designers must accommodate their needs more than ever before.  There are several reasons for this shift in age range including infertility and business of everyday life"
  • Julia Jamrozik presents work at symposium on public art
    11/1/17
    Assistant Professor Julia Jamrozik recently presented” ‘Full Circle’ and other ways of bringing people together” at the symposium ‘Public Art: New Ways of Thinking and Working’ at York University in Canada.