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

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  • Student creations in wearable architecture featured at international exhibition in Hong Kong
    7/10/23
    Wearable assemblies of folded paper and 3D-printed resin developed by UB architecture students have been on display this summer in Hong Kong as part of an exhibition exploring expanding definitions of fashion.
  • Historic preservation studio informs major East Side development, wins planning award
    7/5/23
    A recent urban planning studio at UB has generated critical insights on alternative approaches to historic preservation for marginalized communities, receiving the attention of the professional planning community and directly informing an adaptive reuse project under way on Buffalo’s East Side.
  • Students honored at UB's annual celebration of academic excellence
    6/19/23
    Two students from the School of Architecture and Planning were recognized with awards at UB's 2023 Celebration of Student Academic Excellence.
  • Figure to Fiber
    12/9/22
    The Spring 2021 Situated Technologies research studio returned to the topics of geometry and topology through surface disclinations, introduced by Assistant Professor Nicholas Bruscia in 2019 as both a developing area of research and a pedagogical exercise.
  • Rooting Resilience: Planning for the future of urban agriculture in Buffalo, New York
    8/1/21

    Lanika Sanders, a 2021 graduate of the Master of Urban Planning program, was recognized with the MUP Best Professional Project for her research on Buffalo’s urban agriculture landscape, synthesizing existing plans and policies to highlight opportunities for enhancement of Buffalo's agricultural capacity.

  • Giga Shed Urbanism
    8/1/21

    Reid Hetzel (MArch '21) was recognized with the Design Excellence Award for his thesis, a reimagining of Buffalo's Tesla Gigafactory as civic space,

  • Volatile Ecologies: Architectural Apparatuses for Earthly Survival
    1/22/21

    ‘Volatile Ecologies’ is a design expedition examining the environmental degradation in the industrial waterfront of Buffalo through the lens of scenario planning and prototype making. The exhibition features the research of Zherui Wang, UB's 2020-21 Peter Reyner Banham Fellow, and students in his fall 2020 graduate studio at UB. 

  • Methods in Preservation
    12/1/20
    This course introduces students to the basic guidelines, standards, research methods, and documentation techniques used in historic preservation to identify and record historic structures and sites. These kinds of research techniques explored by students included the development of site descriptions, creating historical narratives, reviewing existing scholarly and/or professional literature, collecting primary and secondary data, developing skills in architectural photography, and understanding the basics of documenting and analyzing historic material fabric. The course makes use of lectures, discussions, and fieldwork to introduce the various ways in which preservationists document historic sites and resources.
  • Villusion
    12/1/20
    This short film was created using the zoom interface by two students studying on different continents. Miguel Ortiz-Teed, working in Buffalo, and Yogesh Ravichandar, working in India, wanted to examine and express the specific difficulties of personal interaction in the video-conference environment.
  • People & Place
    12/1/20
    Willert Park Courts (WPC), known today as A.D. Price Homes, is currently a vacant residential housing complex made up of ten buildings located in the Ellicott District of the east side of Buffalo, New York.
  • Transformable Shells
    12/1/20
    In 2018, the School of Architecture and Planning hosted a competition to address a design problem: students sitting on the HVAC units in the newly renovated Hayes Hall. The competition embraced the issue by inviting students to offer a design solution that would allow students to use the systems in a safe manner.
  • The Fifth Ugliest College Campus in America
    8/1/20
    The campus story of the University at Buffalo is an alliterative tale of excessive optimism and investment, followed by passive indifference and resignation. The result: three campuses—each a stunted fragment of a vision left unfulfilled—the whole less than the sum of its parts. This seminar explored the trials and tribulations of university growth and campus planning at UB—acknowledging the university's checkered past as a means to project a more effective campus future.
  • Botanical Garden Master Plan
    8/1/20
    The North Tonawanda Botanical Gardens is an 11-acre site located on 1825 Sweeney Street in North Tonawanda, NY, bordering the Niagara River. The site is overseen by the North Tonawanda Botanical Gardens Organization (NTBGO), a nonprofit working towards restoring the garden to a scenic destination for community education and activity. Three members of the NTBGO, David Conti, Robbyn Drake and Laura Pecoraro, gave students the opportunity to design a proposal for the renovation and re-imagination of the North Tonawanda Botanical Gardens.
  • The Border and the Market
    6/11/20

    Samendy Brice (MArch '20) has been awarded the 2019-20 ARCC King Medal, the Deptartment of Architecture's Thesis Prize, for her proposal of a border market as a structural element and condition of exchange along the contested border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

  • Student propsal for a border market along Haiti-Dominican Republic border wins this year's thesis prize for architecture
    6/11/20
    Samendy Brice (MArch '20) has been awarded the 2019-20 ARCC King Medal, the Deptartment of Architecture's Thesis Prize, for her proposal of a border market as a structural element and condition of exchange along the contested border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
  • Playing Against Type
    5/1/20
    The Spring 2020 Inclusive Design studio, Playing Against Type, was a critique on the typological thinking present in western architecture. Assistant Professor Charles Davis encouraged students to examine the reuse of European-inspired developer housing by the material customs of Black life on Buffalo’s East Side. It is understood within these investigations that the typological diagram of a building emulates the function of the cultural potentials of “primitive” peoples against the standards and norms of European civilization. 
  • Solitude Pavilion
    5/1/20
    Solitude Pavilion is located on the University at Buffalo’s South Campus between Hayes Hall and the Hayes B Annex. The project aims to create a nesting environment by combining two contrasting systems using terracotta as the primary material. 
  • Victorian Dreams
    5/1/20
    Encompassing the period from about 1840-1900, Victorian architecture is characterized by a wide range of interpretations and re-combinations of distinctly different historical traditions. The evolution of Victorian architecture was spurred by many factors including the desire of building owners to create associations with past cultures and times, the role of builders (carpenters, masons, cabinetmakers, etc.) as designers, and the newly emergent technological capacities of industrial mass production.  
  • Restoring Scajaquada Creek
    5/1/20

    Architecture and urban planning students in a joint urban design studio explored redevelopment solutions for the Scajaquada Creek corridor and opportunities to integrate the natural and surrounding built contexts to boost public health. 

  • Trellis at Silo City
    5/1/20
    Willow Way aims to create a space for observing time and growth of both the site and structure by using architecture as the infrastructure for habitat and landscape.
  • Domesticity and Mass Customization
    5/1/20
    The Situated Technologies studio of the Spring 2020 semester focused heavily on ideas of domesticity and “mass-customization” in their design investigations. Mass-customization is a term used to describe a change in business perception from a mass market to a mass-customized market. Products developed within a mass-customized market are often altered to fit an individual customer’s needs, leading to more effort placed into manufacturing and retail methods. 
  • 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. 
  • 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.
  • 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.