On September 23, the UB School of Architecture and Planning hosted the third phase of its Designing for Resiliency Project at Hayes Hall—a symposium titled Advancing Resilient Design through Criticism. This public event brought together distinguished academics and practitioners for a two-part panel discussion examining key insights from the School’s Resilient Campus international design competition and exploring how those ideas might inform future strategies.
Long before he built a career shaping urban centers, Brian Kurtz (MUP ’10) was fascinated by cities, particularly downtowns. What began as childhood curiosity has grown into a fulfilling profession dedicated to strengthening the places where communities gather, businesses thrive, and cultures intersect.
Last month, Polish architect and urban planner Rita Łabuz made her first visit to America, traveling from Krakow University of Technology, where she is an assistant professor of spatial planning and urban design, to Buffalo, N.Y., where she was to present a public lecture at UB sharing her research on the relationship of planning practices and urban sprawl in the transitioning, post-socialist context of Poland.
The City of Niagara Falls, like the cataract that gives the city its name, is at a tipping point, burdened by the heavy tolls of its industrial past and buoyed by a new wave of plans that honor the city’s rich ecological heritage, complex socioeconomic realities, and transitioning urban form.
After graduating high school in 2021, Brody Kennedy wasn’t sure college was the right path for him and considered going right into the workforce in the construction trades. Today, he’s preparing to launch a career on the other side of that industry as a final-semester student in UB’s MS in Real Estate Development program.
Amidst the high-powered drones, thermal cameras, and heat guns stacked in the office of Mohamed Aly Etman, assistant professor of architecture and director of UB’s Building and Environment Visualization Lab (BEVL), sits a children’s bike – his daughter’s.
Jin Young Song, an architect, educator, and design researcher whose work has pushed the limits of the façade as a site of technical innovation and social interaction, has been promoted to full professor, the highest academic rank possible.