AUS professors win 2015 ACSA Design Build Award

Two faculty members from the American University of Sharjah (AUS) College of Architecture, Art and Design will receive a 2015 Design Build Award for best practices in school-based design-build projects. Emily Baker and Kenneth Tracy, assistant professors in architecture, will each receive the award for excellence in design/build pedagogy. The awards will be presented during the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) 103rd Annual Meeting: Expanding the Periphery and the Migrating Center, which will take place in Toronto on March 19.

Baker will be honored for Audi-Fab Design/Build Research Studio, a two-semester sequence for AUS fifth-year architecture students. The Bachelor of Architecture degree at AUS is a five-year professional program.

"Acoustics and fabrication processes were the dual-focus of this undergraduate architecture studio sequence that utilized full-scale prototyping as a means to develop innovative material systems for interior applications," said Baker. "Students conceived and prototyped alternatives during the fall semester and developed a site-specific intervention during the spring semester. They used digital fabrication methods to construct an acoustically absorptive stainless steel wall that now stands as a permanent part of the CAAD building on the AUS campus."

In November, Baker's students were honored by the American Institute of Architects' Middle East Chapter for their work on this project.

Tracy will receive his award jointly with Andrew Colopy of Washington University in St. Louis for the Riverlands Avian Observatory Design/Build Studio conducted with Washington University students in St. Louis. The project involved the design and construction of an observatory overlooking a constructed wetland within the Mississippi River flood plain.