Recent Faculty Books

Beyond Patronage (Actar Publishers, 2015)

Co-edited by Martha Bohm, assistant professor of architecture, Joyce Hwang, associate professor of architecture, and Gabrielle Printz (MArch ‘14) 

While the role of private clients is still central to the survival of the profession, an increasing number of architects and design practitioners are actively cultivating partnerships with nonprofits, granting agencies, educational institutions and other public organizations. Drawing from a 2012 symposium at the School of Architecture and Planning, this compilation of essays, projects and interviews explores contemporary architectural practices and design agendas enabled by new forms of ‘patronage’ and strategies for cultivating relationships that rethink typical hierarchies between those in power and those in service.

Bridges: Their Engineering and Planning (State University of New York Press, 2015)

George C. Lee, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering, and Ernest Sternberg, professor and chair of urban and regional planning 

Bridges is a comprehensive text on the engineering challenges and planning decisions that surround the nation’s bridges, including whether and how to build, maintain, upgrade or replace these superstructures. As the nation approaches a trillion-dollar investment to solve the infrastructure crisis, Lee and Sternberg propose that the U.S. mandate a new generation of far more durable infrastructure. Bridges is intended as a primer for a wide audience – from students considering careers in civil engineering or transportation planning to public officials to the interested layperson. 

The Depth of the Skin (Asimétricas, 2015)

Miguel Guitart, visiting associate professor of architecture

The Depth of the Skin is an exploration of filters, light and space that encompasses the basic issues of authentic architecture: matter, light, structure and emotion. Guitart’s approach focuses on the filter as a tension between geometry, structure, gaze and light, whose aim is to activate the architectural space in a profound and reflective way. Ultimately, the text is an invitation to reintegrate the ideas of filtering, porosity and osmosis from timeless architecture into the theory and practice of current architecture. The book is also published in Spanish as La piel profunda.

Entr’acte: Performing Publics, Pervasive Media, and Architecture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

Edited by Jordan Geiger, assistant professor of architecture 

The theater term “entr’acte,” or the interval between acts in a play, becomes a vehicle to explore the interstices of architecture and new media and the formation of new publics. This compilation of 11 essays by architects, interaction designers, media artists and theorists explores contemporary publics as they engage with proliferating communications technologies in opportunistic and transformative ways. For example, “Crowd Choreographies” by the School of Architecture and Planning's Omar Khan examines the crowd’s evolution from the senseless mob to its “virtual doppelgänger” formed by networked technologies.

National Economic Impact Analysis of Terrorist Attacks and Natural Disasters  (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014) 

Co-edited by JiYoung Park, associate professor of urban and regional planning 

Examining the potential impact of terrorist and natural disaster events on local, regional and national economies, this book advances a computational model that assesses multi-scalar economic impacts of both simulated and actual terrorist and natural disaster events, such as the Gulf Oil Spill and Hurricane Sandy. The highly accurate model - the National Interstate Economic Model - calculates impacts based on an event’s direct and indirect influence on interindustry relationships and interregional trade. Park is also co-editor of the just-released Regional Economic Impacts of Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters and Metropolitan Policies.