FRAME/WORKS exhibit showcases UB faculty work in a unique format

On April 9, visitors stepping through the front doors of Crosby Hall for the UB School of Architecture and Planning’s Open Studio were met with bold red lettering painted across a stark white wall. This display announced the Spring 2025 faculty exhibition – FRAME/WORKS, which was curated by Maia Peck, adjunct instructor in the Department of Architecture, with the assistance of Gabriela Zappi, adjunct instructor in the Department of Architecture.

Open Studio, a highlight of the School’s annual Atelier Week festivities, invites students, faculty, staff, and the community at large to gather throughout the classrooms and corridors of Hayes, Crosby, and Parker Halls for a showcase of student work created over the past academic year. This year, it also coincided with the opening of the FRAME/WORKS exhibit, complementing the display of student work with that of their professors and mentors.

The curator of FRAME/WORKS, Maia Peck, who teaches in the Department of Architecture, highlighted the benefits of combining the two events. “Open Studio celebrates the cultures that are happening within the School,” she noted. “It’s a time when the community and alumni are invited, and students and faculty can see what everyone else is working on. The faculty exhibition is also a chance for the students to see how their professors’ work outside the classroom informs their teaching philosophies as makers, practitioners, and historians.”

The interactive exhibit stretches across two long wooden tables on either side of the Crosby lobby. Each submission is displayed on a two-sided panel mounted on a metal rod, allowing visitors to read the question on one side and then swivel the placard around to view the corresponding illustration and caption on the other (or the other way around!)

Reading through the questions, it is quickly evident how diverse they are and how well this exhibit illustrates the vast scope of the faculty’s expertise and research. For example: “Is food sovereignty possible in the absence of data sovereignty?”…“How do we design for weatherization, embodied carbon reduction, and passive survivability during extreme weather events?”…“How can Buffalo’s waterfront reclaim industrial relics as resilient monuments, reconnecting the city to its shoreline?”…“How can sensory storytelling be used as a design tool?”…“How can we support our multispecies communities by amplifying habitat conditions found in the built environment?” 

Once faculty members received the prompt, their processes for responding were as varied as the questions themselves, dictated by a combination of personal workstyle, academic discipline, and the distinctive nature of their work. In some cases, the question was immediately evident and then the image required more in-depth consideration, while others felt it necessary to develop the question and image simultaneously.

In the architectural realm, drawing was often a necessary first step. Christopher Romano, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture and director of StudioNORTH Architecture explained, “We use drawing as a way to find and interrogate an idea to make sure there is one. I wouldn’t say that’s true of all my colleagues and of all our students; we all think quite differently. But that is certainly the way we, as a practice, are always thinking – with the conceptual thread emerging out of the process of drawing.”

For Nicholas Bruscia, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, the question was clear from the beginning – the biggest challenge was selecting just one image to represent the project. Bruscia’s work explores combining traditional handwork techniques with advanced visualization technology to explore new processes using mixed-reality holograms as a guide. “I had to decide whether or not to show an image in mixed reality, which is basically a holographic image that you’re seeing in a headset over the top of the real world. Instead, I wanted to show the people, and I’m hoping the combination of the image and the question got people thinking about how it could work. That was the strategy, to use the question as a way for people to look at the image and say, ‘how did that actually happen?’” In this way, Bruscia’s image augmented his question with both pieces being an essential part of representing the full idea. 

While FRAME/WORKS is based on current ongoing work, the process of preparing for this exhibit provided a unique opportunity for faculty to flex different intellectual muscles and think about familiar topics in new ways. “Having to distill it down into a very short number of words and one image was super helpful,” said Alissa Ujie Diamond, assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, “because my brain likes to do the opposite pretty much all the time. It’s really useful to try on a frame that small to get somewhere with the bigger amoeba of ideas that I’m always working with.”

Despite having a plethora of drawings associated with his work already, Romano chose to create a new one for FRAME/WORKS. This not only resulted in an image that was more holistic and appropriate for an external audience, but the process had intrinsic value for his team as well. “It was taking the practical and then converting it to find the conceptual narrative that was actually driving the project the whole time. But without the opportunity to just focus on an abstraction drawing, the typical architectural process doesn’t always allow that big idea to come to fruition and become clear…the framing allowed us to focus and edit, going from 50 drawings to just 1.”

Peck’s overarching aim for this exhibit is to foster a greater level understanding between faculty and students and to showcase a cross section of the quality and breadth of faculty work for their peers, alumni, industry professionals, and community members who attend. “I hope the exhibition will give the public greater insight into critical questions that our School and its faculty are asking. I also hope the students who walk by this exhibit will gain a deeper understanding of what their faculty are researching, and how that influences their teaching in the classroom. And, hopefully, it will also spark conversation and more interdisciplinary dialogue between our faculty, departments, and research centers.”

For faculty members, this exhibit is an excellent platform for educating viewers about current global and Buffalo-specific topics and challenges of creating resilient communities and built environments, designing adaptive futures, and prompt further inquiry and reflection. “It’s meant to not be totally explained, especially with the short word count,” Diamond explained. “But it’s a teaser, a provocative example of how to use images and text to work though things in productive ways.”

FRAME/WORKS is open to the public and will be on display in the Crosby Hall lobby through May 19^th.

Exhibition Design: Maia Peck, curator, and Gabriela Zappi, assistant curator
Student Assistant: Janice Ng
Special Thanks: Office of the Dean, UB Fabrication Lab, Gregory Delaney, Dennis Maher

Participating UB School of Architecture and Planning Faculty, Researchers, and Collaborators: