Arun Khopkar has created a feature on Taubman alumnus Charles Correa. The documentary, an hour-long film on Correa's architecture, is called Volume Zero: The Work of Charles Correa. The Times of India published an article about Correa and Volume Zero on September 5, 2008.

Khopkar's documentary is a cinematic tour of some of Correa's best work. "I'm interested in the relationship between architecture and cinema," says the film-maker who has previously documented Jehangir Sabavala's art and Alarmel Valli's Bharatanatyam. "With each location there is a specific problem with how to make the location come alive." The first Correa building he came across was the Gandhi Smarak Sangrahalaya in Ahmedabad 20 years ago. It's a large airy structure built around a courtyard, a feature that Correa repeats in many of his later buildings. In the film, Khopkar recalls feeling "the rhythms of its spaces" and noting how "it responded to changing lights."
The Times of India
Time Out Mumbai

Wez Janz, a ’95 alumnus of Taubman College, is a finalist of the Curry Stone Design Prize from the University of Kentucky College of Design. Wes received his Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Michigan and is now associate professor of architecture at Ball State University.
The Curry Stone Design Prize, founded by visionary architect Clifford Curry and his wife, H. Delight Stone, was created on the belief that designers can be an instrumental force for improving peoples’ lives and the state of the world. The goal of the prize is to “make the talents of leading designers available to broader segments of society and to inspire the next generation of designers to harness their ingenuity and craft for the social good.”
Wes Janz is author of the forthcoming book One Small Project, which was inspired by Wes’s past and current work on the living conditions in the working class neighborhoods of Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Colombo, Delhi, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Mumbai, New Orleans, St. Petersburg, and Singapore. His practice focuses on “leftover places” – the world’s slums and settlements where people build shelters from scavenged materials – as sites of innovation and inspiration for architects committed to using their craft for social good. In collaboration with his students and local communities, Wes has constructed shelters and pavilions in Argentina, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere from found materials such as mud and rubble from demolished buildings.
Nominees for the Curry Stone Design Prize are selected by an anonymous, rotating group of leaders representing broad fields of contemporary design and key individuals from other disciplines with global vision. The finalists will be presented at the 11th International Venice Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy, during the week of September 11-14, 2008. The winner of the Curry Stone Design Prize will be announced on September 25, 2008 at the IdeaFestival in Louisville, Kentucky.
Curry Stone Design Prize
Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader's announcement

We've got a winning team in this year's EPA P3 competition!

The Mada Biofuels team lead by student Doug Kolozsvari and faculty advisor Gavin Shatkin had received a grant to fund its effort to compete for the EPA P3 Award. The team studied developing biofuels from plant materials (Jatropha curcas) in Madagascar.

On April 29, 2008, the University of Michigan’s A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning announced the appointment of Monica Ponce de Leon as incoming dean. A tenured professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), Ponce de Leon is the founder and principal of Boston-based Office dA with Nader Tehrani. The firm is known for its sensuous forms, innovative use of materials, and pioneering use of digital technology and production, and Ponce de Leon has balanced teaching with a full-time thriving practice since she graduated from the GSD in 1991.

She will arrive at the school with the institution on very strong footing. Michigan has the largest endowment of any public architecture school in the country, and is undertaking an expansion of its building. Over two five-year terms, outgoing dean Douglas Kelbaugh, an architect and planner who has been closely associated with New Urbanism, launched an urban design program, as well as a certificate in real estate development. Kelbaugh expects Ponce de Leon, who has a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design, to continue the school’s focus on urbanism and strengthen its commitment to sustainability and technological advancement. “She believes that technology is revolutionizing the field,” Kelbaugh said. “She’s one of the best designers in the country. She has an incredibly refined sense of techtonics.”

“Michigan is one of the best universities in the country,” Ponce de Leon told AN. “I want to see how we can advance architectural education and address how technology is transforming the field.” She expects to open an office in Ann Arbor and retain a presence in Boston. Office dA has won numerous design awards—including a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award—for buildings ranging from the Tongxian art center in Beijing to the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Macallen building, the first large multi-unit housing development in Boston to attain LEED certification.

“She’s a catch. She’s young, she’s tenured at Harvard. I think it’s a real vote of confidence in the place that she would come here,” Kelbaugh said. “We think she will continue to push the school on its current upward trajectory.”

by Alan G. Brake, The Architect's Newspaper

National Public Radio's Weekend Edition had a month-long series this June focusing on the state of America's infrastructure. Historian Robert Fishman of the University of Michigan has written extensively about the role national planning played in shaping the United States' development and he joined the discussion. Listen to the interview on NPR here.

The team, the UP 634 Dustbusters, will use the award from EPA to implement some of their vegetation strategies to address the problem of particulate pollution in Southwest Detroit. This student team is headed by Larissa Larsen and advised by Eric Dueweke. Congratulations to Will Brodnax, Mark Hansford, Tyler Kinley, Carolyn Pivirotto, Shiply Singh, Jeff Storrar, Benjamin Stupka, Erin Thoresen, Jon VanDerZee.