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An article in the Los Angeles Times about an unusual 17-story office tower with steel ribbons wrapped around floor-to-ceiling glass windows quotes Joyce Hwang, who served as a juror in the award-competition the project won last year. Hwang describes the steel ribbons as a “fantastical” structure. “It looks decorative. It looks like it’s hanging off the building, when it’s really the structure,” she said.

An article on Huffington Post about reports that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is considering an offer to serve as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Donald Trump’s forthcoming administration quotes Robert Shibley, dean of the UB School of Architecture and Planning, who said it is especially important that the next HUD secretary understand the agency’s core mission, which he summed up as “homelessness and affordable housing.” “At some juncture, we’re a nation with way too many of one and not enough of the other,” he said. “If the secretary of HUD has a lot of experience, they’ll know this. And if they don’t, they need to surround themselves with people who do.”

A story reports that  Robert Shibley, dean of UB’s School of Architecture and Planning, will serve as lead facilitator of a committee that will decide on a new location for a Buffalo train station. The news was also covered by WGRZ and WKBW.

Korydon Smith, professor of architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning, was interviewed for an article in Seeker, a division of Discovery Communications, about the Google Toilet Tracker, which aims to help people in India, where nearly 620 million people defecate in the open, find the nearest clean toilet. “Open defecation is both a historic and a contemporary practice in settings throughout the world,” he said. “It has gained attention in India because of the size and density of many cities with global and nationwide efforts to be ‘open-defecation-free.’”

An article on Opposing Views, a news site focusing on politics, social issues, international affairs and culture, about the tiny house movement and states and towns that have banned the structures quotes Robert Silverman, professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Architecture and Planning. “People using affordable housing are a diverse group,” he said. “You’ve got retired people, disabled people, families. A 300-square-foot trailer with a loft up top may not be suited for all those groups.”

An article about the restoration of a historic commercial building that was once part of Shea’s Seneca Theatre in South Buffalo reports Robert Shibley, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, conducted a study to evaluate the potential for redevelopment along the Seneca corridor from Mineral Springs Road to the city line. A story also appeared on WBFO-FM.

An article on Environmental Monitor about people who are using bicycles as mobile labs to study issues like air pollution and the urban heat island effect reports Nicholas Rajkovich, assistant professor of architecture, was an early adopter of the technology as part of his study on urban heat islands in Cleveland.

An article in Metropolis magazine about the important role refugees are playing in reviving America’s Rust Belt cities quotes Erkin Ozay, assistant professor of architecture, who recently led a class on refugee integration and points to the importance of “spaces of encounter,” like Buffalo’s West Side Bazaar, which also serve as points of intervention, allowing refugees and residents to intermingle as well as to positively intervene in the city’s built environment.

An article in The Atlantic’s City Lab about plans by the Austrian government to raze Adolf Hitler’s birthplace, and the backlash the proposed demolition has caused, quotes Despina Stratigakos, associate professor and interim chair of the Department of Architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning. “By the early 1950s, Neo-Nazism was starting to reappear in Germany, and stories began to emerge of guides giving pro-Hitler tours on the Obersalzberg [the mountain massif where Berghof’s ruins were located],” she said. “A huge debate broke out over what to do with the site, and the Bavarian government, which included many social democrats who had spent time in concentration camps during the Third Reich, decided to demolish the house.”