MASS Design’s Alan Ricks Joins UMD as 68th Kea Professor
Alan Ricks, AIA, Int FRIBA, the founding principal and co-executive director of MASS design group, joins the University of Maryland this fall as the Architecture Program’s 2025-26 Kea Professor. A celebrated, socially minded, global designer, Ricks will work alongside Associate Clinical Professors Julie Gabrielli and Brittany Williams, Assistant Professor Deok-Oh Woo and Lecturer Dan Curry to teach the fall Integrated Design Studio.
Beaux Arts Restart
Alums of a certain age look back on the Architecture Building’s Great Space as the setting for countless studio hours, lectures, thesis and even graduations—but also for its wild transformation each spring to a 1920s speakeasy, the streets of New York City or a star-studded Hawaiian luau. Beaux Arts Ball, the beloved annual fete that ran from the mid-’70s until 2007, was part Halloween costume party, part Hollywood movie set and a dash of high school prom, where elaborate décor and dress dominated the building’s Great Space for one epic night.
Take This Class (Summer Edition!): The Secret Life of Buildings
This story originally appeared in Maryland Today. The seven floors of books, offices and resources at the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library house plenty of facts, but one thing about the building is pure fiction: Step outside, and you’ll count just four stories—an intentional design trick (thanks to oversized windows) that makes the building appear imposing and impressive from a distance, and the people walking by it smaller.
New Exhibit Uncovers a Buried History
In the summer of 2006, University of Maryland Professor Emeritus Lindley Vann and 19 architecture students traveled to the Bay of Naples to explore an ancient city, lost in ash. Over the next 20 years, factions of students returned each summer to participate in a global effort to excavate and document one of the last surviving Italian villas that once catered to the Roman elite.
Graduate Student Awarded Boren Fellowship by the National Security Education Program
A University of Maryland graduate student in information management and community planning is among 102 recipients nationwide to earn the David L. Boren Fellowship to study critical languages overseas. Alanna Leshea Anderson will receive $25,000 to travel to Brazil for a year to take intensive Brazilian Portuguese classes and live with a host family who will give her more practice and a better understanding of life and culture in the country. She plans to become proficient enough to pursue a sustainable development internship at a nonprofit.
Whose ‘Right to Suburbia’?
This article originally appeared in Maryland Today.Ellsworth Avenue in Silver Spring, Md., sizzles on a summer evening: Residents stroll along its tree-lined sidewalks under the neon glow of upscale chain restaurants, retailers and a Whole Foods Market. Beyond the din of downtown is a different kind of sizzle: the intoxicating aroma of sliced meat frying in butter, garlic and onion—called tibs—wafting from one of many Ethiopian restaurants just outside the city center.
Can College Park Become a 15-Minute City?
A doctor’s office, grocery store or part-time job is just a quick walk or bike ride away for most University of Maryland students. But, for many people who live and work in other communities in College Park, running errands without a car is stalled. Recommendations and tangible interventions that UMD students developed this semester in the new course “15-Minute Cities in College Park” may help improve access to local amenities for residents through the 15-minute city concept.
‘Exhausted’ by the Car Commute? You Might Like a Bike
The story originally appeared in Maryland Today.Anyone who’s experienced the off-ramp from the Beltway to Baltimore Avenue on a typical Wednesday morning (and the tangle of roadwork that follows en route to campus) has earned their stripes in the battle to get to work on time.
Pomp and Circumstance
If there was ever a group of students more deserving—and ready—to walk across a commencement stage, it was the class of 2024. Freshly pressed gowns and decorated caps could not detract from the smiles beaming off the parade of undergraduates as they weaved through a standing-room-only Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts auditorium–their first “real” graduation after COVID put high school ceremonies online.
Mike Binder’s Regenerative Career
For Associate Clinical Professor Mike Binder (M.Arch ‘06), teaching architecture wasn’t rocket science. He knows, because he did that—in a former life at NASA before scratching an itch to leverage his science mind to propel sustainable, regenerative design. Teaching architecture for UMD’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation was a literal labor of love for Binder: in studio, on the competition stage, as a mentor and advisor.