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...
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 (t...
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 docume...
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 Brazi...
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...
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 UM...
‘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.But road warriors, cons...
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 ...
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 ...
Stormwater Hits D.C.’s Poorest Neighborhoods Hardest, UMD Study Finds
A new University of Maryland study suggests that Washington, D.C.’s most socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods are less equipped to handle runoff from heavy rainfalls made more frequent by climate change. Published this month in Cities, the study reveals that the most densely populated communit...