Our Work

Explore the scholarly, curricular and creative work of our faculty and students as we mobilize our disciplines on today's most pressing societal challenges. Through studios, sponsored and independent research, faculty and students across our programs engage with real-world projects that reimagine our built environment, innovate modes of practice and transform communities both locally and globally.

Our approach to research

Intersight, our journal of student work

Project sort

Discipline

Degree

Student work

Type

Topics

  • Anachronistic Spaces
    5/1/20
    Through the design of Anachronistic Spaces, this thesis speculates on futures in the Great Lakes Region through a stance on Architecture that advocates for sensitivity towards a world often ignored or neglected in sedentary frameworks. Research into Nomadism reveals that many nomadic communities have long been cognizant of the relationships between resources, consumption, and environment. As a counterpoint to modern sedentary living, nomadic communities are a case study on resiliency and adaptation in the face of increasingly extreme climactic, political, economic, and social conditions. 
  • Manufactured Housing
    5/1/20
    The affordability of housing has become a critical problem in most of the United States, especially in large, fast-growing cities where there are shortages of vacant land and housing. Post-industrial cities also face severe housing affordability problems due to population loss and deindustrialization, even though vacant land and abandoned houses are common. These “shrinking” or “legacy” cities face problems of low incomes, combined with surplus housing stock that has deteriorated to the point where it is no longer economical to rehabilitate it. The purpose of this report is to propose a unique opportunity for meeting the affordable housing needs of residents in post-industrial cities.
  • Fitting In
    5/1/20
    Students in the sophomore year in the Spring of 2020 made many explorations regarding site context. This approach was taken to help students understand how architecture achieves a sense of belonging in a given place, especially in an ever-evolving context.
  • Reflections on Zhu Pei and contemporary architecture in China
    3/30/20

    In his latest book, UB Professor of Architecture Brian Carter explores Beijing-based architect Zhu Pei’s museum for the Imperial Kiln in Jingdezhen, China, a globally significant example of contemporary civic architecture that preserves and celebrates the remains of the region’s porcelain industry, dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties.

  • Farming within a dual legal land system
    1/9/20
    Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, assistant professor of urban and regional planning, and Samina Raja professor of urban and regional planning, join James Sumberg in examining how Ghana’s dual legal land system affects urban farmers
  • Environmental Design workshops plan for reenergized communities
    12/20/19
    This fall, two studios in the BA Environmental Design program were busy developing design recommendations for two critical sites spanning municipal borders in and around Buffalo.
  • Winning teams announced for senior studio | Urban Life: Self + Society
    12/18/19

    Four teams of senior architecture students were recognized for their proposals during the senior competition final review. The fall studio is the last design studio in the BS Arch curriculum, when students tackle integrated architectural design - a synthesis of concept and construct addressing design strategy, program, site, construction, and technology.

  • Fall 2019 final reviews recap
    12/17/19
    As 2019 comes to a close, students in the School of Architecture and Planning pull out all the stops in preparing to present the projects that they have worked on through the course of the fall semester. Faculty and guest critics from firm and schools around the region come together to review student concepts and provide feedback.
  • Call for submissions: 50th Anniversary Alumni Exhibition
    12/16/19

    To culminate our 50th anniversary year, the School of Architecture and Planning is curating an alumni exhibition celebrating the personal and professional achievements of 50 graduates from the past 50 years. All alumni invited to submit work for consideration. The exhibition will run April 1 - Sept. 30, 2020.

  • Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style
    12/3/19
    Assistant professor of architecture Charles Davis II reveals the parallels between race and style in modern architecture.
  • Incubator
    12/1/19
    The Inclusive Design studio focused on developing a student oriented, small business incubator to foster creativity and entrepreneurism at UB. The designs were tailored to meet the needs of different “personas” for an imagined incubator design team through the use of inclusive strategies.
  • Launch Party - Intersight 22
    11/22/19

    Nov. 22, 2019

    Join us for the launch of Intersight 22, the 2019-20 journal of student work. Learn more about the vision for this year's book from editor and Brunkow Fellow Lizzy Gilman (MArch '20). 

  • Daniel Hess explores the legacy of central planning in Baltic States
    11/5/19
    State-sponsored housing projects dating back to the socialist era are a ubiquitous presence across Eastern Europe, particularly in the Baltic Countries. Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries , the latest book edited by Daniel B. Hess, UB professor and chairperson of urban planning, focuses on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of such projects in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
  • Sun_Food_Water design prototype
    10/29/19
    Affordability is defined based on monthly costs, with reductions for incorporating solar gain & PV-generated energy, water collection, and food production. 
  • Senior citizen cooperative housing Masten Park
    10/29/19
    These projects were part of a larger studio examining models for infill housing within two Buffalo neighborhoods, one of which was the Masten District.
  • Health hostel design prototype
    10/29/19
    Health Hostel provides temporary housing for those that may have just finished medical treatment of some sort or just need help navigating daily life activities.
  • Care house design prototype
    10/29/19
    The conceptual design developed by Alexa Russo, student, working with architecture professor Edward Steinfeld. The model was built in Spring 2018 by clinical assistant instructor Stephanie Cramer’s fourteen inclusive design students.
  • As the climate changes, architects and engineers need to design buildings differently
    10/24/19
    As climate change intensifies, much of the nation's building stock will need upgrading to strengthen it against flooding, snowstorms and other weather hazards.
  • Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries
    9/17/19
    Professor of urban planning Daniel B. Hess and Tiit Tammaru of the University of Tartu, Estonia are editors of this book focusing on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
  • Exclusivity in the street railway era
    9/17/19
    Professor of urban planning Daniel B. Hess and Evan Iacobucci examine the role of historic entry gateways to American streetcar suburbs as markers of exclusivity. 
  • Making Bibelot: Casting material research within cultural frameworks
    9/4/19

    Bibelot gives a detailed account of the entire process and the working assumptions behind a terra cotta installation built by the authors, which explores untapped potential material to expand design and manufacturing possibilities. The project also demonstrates how bridges could be built between practice and material research without sacrificing the cultural significance of architectural artifacts.

  • Serendipitous conservation
    8/30/19
    Assistant professor of urban planning Ashima Krishna and Masters of Urban Planning graduate Enjoli Hall examine the conversion of former churches on the East Side of Buffalo as they are transformed into spaces for other faiths.
  • "Renaturing" a former slaughterhouse to respond to a changing climate
    7/18/19
    As part of a multi-year initiative in Madrid, associate professor of architecture Joyce Hwang will join an international group of designers to explore how design can create a new discourse on climate change in the context of public space.
  • Buffalo Turning the Corner
    6/26/19
    Professors of urban planning Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. and Robert Silverman join associate professor of urban planning Li Yin collaborated on the Buffalo Turning The Corner Initiative through the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies.