CDes MEMO Archives

A bi-weekly electronic newsletter for the faculty and staff of the College of Design.

The deadline for submissions is noon on Wednesday prior to Thursday of publication. Send submissions to Michael Fraase <mfraase@umn.edu>. The next issue comes out September 28.

Read CDes Memo online on the College of Design Web site.

October 26, 2006

Editor: Michael Fraase <mfraase@umn.edu>

Coming up

Thursday, October 26 -- Comprehensive Planning for Healthy Cities and Communities workshop
8 a.m. - noon
Campus Club Conference Room ABC, Coffman Memorial Union

Design for Health is a collaboration between the Metropolitan Design Center and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota that serves to bridge the gap between the emerging research base on community design and healthy living with the every-day realities of local government planning. This workshop -- the first in a series -- focuses on how to integrate health into comprehensive planning by looking at a range of issues like air quality, physical activity, and mental health. The event features Marya Morris from the American Planning Association and Matt Raimi, a lead consultant who helped developed LEED-ND. More information on the workshop is available on the Design for Health Web site.

Wednesday, November 1 -- Updating Olmsted? Robert Moses and Central Park lecture
12:15 p.m.
225 Rapson Hall
Rachel Iannacone, University of Pennsylvania
Design@Noon lecture (College of Design Fall 2006 Lecture Series)

Monday, November 6 -- Safety and Public Spaces workshop
8 a.m. - noon
Campus Club Conference Room ABC, Coffman Memorial Union

This workshop features Wendy Sarkissian, an Australian consultant, and Kristen Day, from the University of California-Irvine, who are experts on crime prevention in public spaces. They will examine the potential (and limitations) of crime prevention through environmental design. More information on the workshop is available on the Design for Health Web site.

Monday, November 6 -- The Missing Dimension: The Social Component of Sustainability lecture
5:45 p.m.
100 Rapson Hall

David Pijawka, professor, School of Planning and faculty, Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University
H. W. S. Cleveland Lecture (College of Design Fall 2006 Lecture Series)

Wednesday, November 8 -- Design Process and the City lecture
12:15 p.m.
225 Rapson Hall
Diogo Burnay, architect, CVDB arquitectos and assistant professor, Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Design@Noon lecture (College of Design Fall 2006 Lecture Series)

Wednesday, November 8 -- Bachman's open house
5:30-6:30 p.m.
Lyndale Avenue Bachman's store
Bachman's is hosting a special open house for CDes faculty, staff, and students to showcase the "Project Holiday" displays. Refreshments will be provided.

Thursday, November 16 -- Beyond Desire: Fashion, Art, Life lecture
6 - 9 p.m.
33 McNeal Hall

Dr. Valerie Steele, chief curator and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), in New York, analyzes how clothing communicates and mediates significant social and personal desires. Steele's talk will provide perspective on everyday clothing, and on the artistic and high-fashion concepts operating in two current University exhibits.

News and announcements

Want to stay in touch with important CDes announcements? Consider setting your Web browser's home page to the College of Design Announcements page. Updated frequently, this page has timely information that didn't make the CDes Memo deadline.

Goldstein Museum mini-exhibitions
The Goldstein Museum is staging a series of mini-exhibitions throughout McNeal Hall. Four small-scale exhibits are curated by staff and graduate students working at the museum, and change approximately every six weeks. Currently the Goldstein main office is showcasing a pressed glass water carafe from 1898 with a pattern entitled "Minnesota Pattern." The lobby of 240 McNeal features samples of the innovative design journal Emigre (1984-2005). Displayed in the lobby of 32 McNeal is a bowl from 2006, made from dicroic glass, which both refracts and reflects light in a unique and beautiful way. In the same exhibit there is a textile wall-hanging from 1960-70 which is typical of Hmong needlework. An annotated label accompanies each mini-exhibition.

New College of Design student and alumni board
The College of Design student and alumni board had its first meeting on October 24. Representing undergraduate and graduate students and alumni across disciplines, the board's charges are to build community, enhance the student experience, and support the transition from college to career. This group will serve as both the College of Design student board and the board of directors for the 1,100-member College of Design alumni society. Membership in the CDes alumni society is open to all students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the college. A portion of society membership dues comes back to the college to support alumni and student activities.

CDes in the media

The following CDes activities and expertise have been featured in the media. Contact Laura Weber, communications director, at l-webe@umn.edu if you have news to promote through the media.

"Design students present plans for riverfront area" -- The Minnesota Daily, October 16, 2006

"U of M students volunteer to provide interior designs for University-Northside Partnership office on West Broadway" -- Insight News, October 9, 2006.

The Goldstein Museum of Design's exhibition, "American Fashion Transformed: Four Master Designers," is featured in the November 2006 issue of The Rake.

Rebecca Noran's (MFA student, interactive design) thesis exhibition, "Places to Go: Bathrooms of the Twin Cities," is gaining significant local media attention: KMSP television, U of M Moment, Minnesota Daily, City Pages, and Downtown Journal.

Congratulations and kudos

Brad Hokanson (DHA) recently presented a symposia entitled "The role of creativity in the instructional design program" at the recent conference of the Association of Educational Communications and Technology in Dallas, Texas. In the parallel International Visual Literacy Association Conference, he presented a workshop called "Teaching creativity: Research and observations."

William Angell (DHA) received invitations to present at two international conferences in early 2007. The first presentation is "Radon Mitigation and Training" at the North American Radon Action Month Workshop in Ottawa, Canada, sponsored by Health Canada from January 22-23. The second presentation is "Future Directions in Radon: International Continuums and Choices" at the Radon Risk: Time for More Effective Action conference in London, UK sponsored by Informa from January 29-30.

Clothing design senior Lisa Venne received one of four scholarships presented by Fashion Group International during its annual upper Midwest career day, October 13, 2006.

Julia Williams Robinson (Architecture) was invited by Eindhoven Technical University in the Netherlands to serve as a member of the Ph.D. award council for dissertation defense.

Hazel Lutz (DHA) organized a speaker's session for the Textile Society of America biennial meeting, held in Toronto October 11-15. In a session titled "The Thread of Khadi is Still Being Spun," Lutz and the founder of Dastakar Andhra -- a craft development organization in India -- spoke on the organization of the Indian textile industry, the history and ongoing competing efforts to embody the Gandhian vision of small scale local economic development in cloth production, and contemporary uses to which the cloth so produced is being put by fiber artists and clothing designers in North America.

The Goldstein Museum's exhibit, "American Fashion Transformed," is featured on the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's National Design Week Web site. (Click on the Saint Paul dot on the map at the top of the page.)

Karen LaBat (DHA) was elected chair of the USDA Regional Research Project, NC170, "Personal Protective Technologies for Current and Emerging Occupational Hazards." Marilyn Delong (DHA) is the research group's administrative adviser. The research group will hold its annual meeting on the U of M campus next summer.

Julia Williams Robinson's (Architecture) painting "Rockport Breakfast" has been selected by jurors to be part of The Best of Northstar Watercolor Society's Fall Members Show at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans' building in downtown Minneapolis. The show will run from Monday, December 4-Friday, December 29 in a gallery just outside Thrivent Financial's popular cafeteria (which is open to the public) on the second floor of the 625 Fourth Avenue South building.

Richard Kroeker's (Architecture) design for the children's theatre in Cheticamp Cape Beton has won the Nova Scotia Lieutenant Governor's Masterwork Award. Other finalists for the award included a locally written symphony, a book, and a paintings exhibition. This marks the first time a piece of architecture has won the award.

Publications

"In Wonder," an essay by Leslie Van Duzer (Architecture) has been published in a new book, Archipelago: Essays on Architecture (Rakennustietoi, Finland, 2006). The book was published on the occasion of Juhani Pallasmaa's 70th birthday. Contributors include Kenneth Frampton, Peter Zumthor, Daniel Libeskind, and Steven Holl, among others.

Leslie Van Duzer (Architecture) and her brother, magician and associate professor of education Eric Van Duzer, have a paper accepted by the 2007 Hawaii International Conference on Education. The paper, "Perceptions of Deceptions," describes the 2006 free lab they co-taught at Dalhousie University in July 2006. In the two-week course, architecture students applied techniques used by stage magicians to study the distance between real and perceived space.

Brad Hokanson (DHA) has contributed a chapter to the Handbook of Visual Languages in Instructional Design (forthcoming, 2007, Idea Group) called "The Virtue of Paper." The book is edited by Luca Botturi, of Lugano, Switzerland.

Each year the Metropolitan Design Center publishes a number of reports, fact sheets, posters, and articles. A list of the Center's external publications is also available.

The Metropolitan Design Center is currently working on its 60th Direct Design Assistance project. Funded by the McKnight Foundation since 2003, this program brings free technical assistance to cities, citizen groups, and non-profit organizations. For details on each of the projects completed and under way see the Design Center's Web site.

Transitions

Theresa Tichich begins work as the manager of Web and multimedia support services for the college on November 6 and will have her office in 67 Rapson Hall. Tichich comes to the College of Design from a similar position in the U of M's Centers for Public Health Education and Outreach. Before that, she worked in Networking and Telecommunications Services doing Web design and server and database administration. Tichich is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction, Learning Technologies, College of Education and Human Development.

Colophon

CDes Memo is published by the College of Design at the University of Minnesota bi-weekly, every other Thursday, September through May, on the Web. Please send comments, questions, or submissions to Michael Fraase <mfraase@umn.edu>.

Submissions are due by noon Wednesday prior to Thursday publication. Fall semester publication dates are: September 14, September 28, October 12, October 26, November 9, November 22 (Wednesday because of Thanksgiving; submissions due by noon Tuesday), December 7.

This e-mail was sent by: University of Minnesota, College of Design. 32 McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55108, USA.