Now more than ever, designing for resilience requires architects to interpret and act upon expanding domains of data that track everything from building energy use, to greenhouse gas emissions, to clean energy production.
Research shows that the way we design neighborhood streets—and the materials that we use in public spaces—undermine efforts to combat the effects of climatic shifts in urban neighborhoods. While government officials largely recognize the need for change, practical barriers, such as logistical challenges and funding constraints, often prevent the implementation of solutions that could cool neighborhoods and strengthen long-term resilience.
This year’s Best Final Project in the Master of Urban Planning program is a set of recommendations that could help the Town of Cheektowaga and other municipalities across New York State address rising demand for high-capacity Battery Energy Storage Systems, a central but increasingly controversial component of local and state climate action planning for renewable energy storage and grid stabilization.
On the first day of the Next-Gen Architect graduate studio, Randy Fernando, adjunct instructor in the Department of Architecture, posed a question for the students: “What do you think AI will impact in architectural practice?” The general consensus was that it would make their work more efficient, speeding up production and improving outcomes. Over the course of the semester, that assumption would be rigorously put to the test.
After more than a decade working in food systems planning, Molly Riordan had developed deep knowledge and expertise in her field—but her work had surfaced questions that no one had the answers to.
A staggering four generations of Lillian Radel’s (a double-degree student in Environmental Design and Environmental Studies) family have attended the University at Buffalo. It began with her great-grandfather, followed by her grandfather—a member of the second-ever graduating class of UB’s nurse anesthesia program—then her dad, as well as several siblings. However, among all those fellow Bulls, she stands alone as the first in her family to receive the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence.
Frustrated by a lack of action on gun violence in our country, Master of Architecture student and 2025-26 Eberhard Research Fellow Alli Presutti is mobilizing design as a solution for student security and well-being in schools.
Budding social entrepreneur and recent BAED graduate Tendaji Ya'Ukuu has been recognized for a culminating undergraduate studio project that they will now help implement as co-founder of East Side Stewards, a community redevelopment organization for Buffalo’s East Side.
Urban planning PhD candidate Ambreen Rehman-Veal has been awarded a UB Baldy Center Research Grant to advance her dissertation research on affordable housing policy in Lahore, Pakistan.
Timothy Noble (MArch '23), a self-described robotics sculptor, designer and machine learning enthusiast, came to the field relatively later in life, landing in UB's MArch program after more than two decades of exploring the intersection of art, technology and social concerns. Today, he's investigating fundamental questions of design with students as an adjunct faculty member at UB.
The lobby of UB’s Hayes Hall got a new floor this month—but it’s temporary. The 2026 Banham Fellow Exhibition—an installation by Celia Chaussabel titled Objectile Adventures: The Floor—celebrated its opening on April 20. Testing methods for designing, building, and telling stories with reused building materials, the project challenges us to consider the narratives embedded in the objects around us and how that affects our perception and use of them.
A group of UB urban planning students in a new course on Indigenous Planning are advancing principle into practice with planning that could help save one of the region’s most historic examples of Indigenous architecture.