Buffalo Matters

Working hand-in-hand with a community-minded local business, architecture and urban design professor Hiroaki Hata and his students have generated a master plan that is helping to transform a struggling neighborhood on Bu alo’s East Side.

Over the past 25 years, hundreds of UB students have built hands-on construction skills by raising walls for Habitat for Humanity homes across Buffalo. Now students have the opportunity to design those homes — and bring universal design features into the national organization’s affordable housing model — thanks to a new pilot program between UB and Habitat Buffalo.

Architecture faculty member Erkin Özay, a native of Turkey and witness to the in ux of Syrian refugees in Istanbul, is now working to position design in support of Bu alo’s burgeoning refugee population. His work was recently featured in a Metropolis magazine piece on legacy city responses — including design — to these new residents (“Refugees Could ‘Save’ America’s Rust Belt — Will We Let Them?”, Nov. 2016).