KU School of Architecture & Design

🍂 Just a few highlights from the Fall 2025 newsletter: ⚪ Industrial Design grad Jomo Tariku recognized by Wallpaper* magazine as one of America’s top designers ⚪ KPF promotes alumnus Ryan Lyssy to associate principal ⚪ Alumnus Andrew Gilles named principal at Mackey Mitchell Architects ⚪ Q&A with Emily Almloff, AIA, NCARB, 2024 architecture grad and America's youngest licensed architect 🍁 Read the Fall 2025 newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gTKxYchi 📨 Subscribe: https://lnkd.in/gbtvTWUc

Tonight, the KU Design Professional Lecture Series features Jeremy Vickery, an artist specializing in light and color for film, television and video games. Credits include Assassins Creed, Brave, Cars, Fallout, The Incredibles, Inside Out, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Westworld, Uncharted and many more. Committed to demystifying the art and science of storytelling and visual communication, Vickery founded Lighting Mentor, a company that provides educational courses, workshops, and apprenticeship programs to students and other artists seeking to enhance their skills. 🌀 KU Design Professional Lecture Series 🗓 Thursday, October 23 at 6:00pm 🔗 Virtual event, details: https://bit.ly/4hcIkM4

The Athletic profiled leading stadium architect and KU architecture graduate David Manica, founder of MANICA Architecture, to explore how the hand of the stadium designer works to create optimally immersive experiences for spectators. https://lnkd.in/gf6ECrYE

We are saddened to learn of the passing of architecture alumnus and friend Stephen Hopkins. This statement by his colleagues at Shield Casework, the firm he founded, is a wonderful tribute to Stephen, his unique spirit, and legacy. https://lnkd.in/gDEdaZPc

Not all big ideas require big spaces. But some do. Prospective students and their families are invited to tour the largest academic makerspace in the world – the East Hills Designbuild Center at The University of Kansas – on Crimson & Blue Day, KU's annual university-wide open house, Friday, October 17th. With more open square footage than a football field, the steel and concrete building is home to studios, digital fabrication labs, and cavernous assembly areas where students learn to bring ideas – from bespoke furniture to sustainable manufacturing techniques to full-scale modular housing – into the world. Beyond the East Hills tour, the School of Architecture & Design is hosting multiple Crimson & Blue Day information sessions, a panel discussion, facilities tours, and drop-in portfolio reviews. 🔻 Learn more and register https://bit.ly/3VrK6zi Crimson & Blue Day 🗓️ Friday, October 17th 🕘 Events begin at 9:00 a.m.

This Thursday, the KU Design Professional Lecture Series welcomes animator, writer and producer Adam Henry. Beginning his career at Warner Bros. Animation as an animator on the critically-acclaimed feature film, Iron Giant, Henry went on to serve a variety of roles – including storyboard artist, producer, and showrunner – at Walt Disney Animation Studios (Penn Zero, Tinkerbell Movie, DuckTales), DreamWorks Animation (She Ra, Jurassic Park), Nickelodeon Animation (Kung Fu Panda, The Loud House, Ni Hao Kailan, Random Cartoons, Robot Monster) and Netflix Animation Studios (Dogs in Space). 🌀 KU Design Professional Lecture Series 🗓 Thursday, October 2 at 6:00pm 📍 Wescoe 3140 The University of Kansas *Free public event

Architecture professor Kapila D. Silva was among 17 faculty members from The University of Kansas Lawrence and University of Kansas Medical Center campuses to receive an annual KU teaching award. Silva was honored with a Chancellors Club Teaching Professorship which recognizes excellence in teaching and is awarded only to persons who have demonstrated outstanding teaching over a period of years. This is the fifth KU teaching award he has won since joining the Department of Architecture faculty in 2007. A scholar whose research focuses on the social, cultural and psychological aspects of architecture, urbanism, and historic preservation, Silva has served as editor and author for multiple books, including two Routledge Books titles, Theorizing Built Form and Culture: The Legacy of Amos Rapoport (with Nisha A. Fernando, 2024) and The Routledge Handbook on Cultural Landscape Heritage in the Asia-Pacific (with Ken Taylor and David S Jones, 2022). Much of his research has focused on global heritage conservation, addressing theoretical and pragmatic issues related to UNESCO’s World Heritage Program, which attempts to preserve and manage historic monuments and sites with outstanding universal value around the world. For his scholarly contributions, Silva has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Architectural Research Centers Consortium’s 2013 New Researcher Award and the Environmental Design Research Association’s 2018 and 2024 Achievement Awards. https://lnkd.in/gzS8453C

This Thursday, the KU Design Professional Lecture Series welcomes graphic designer, collagist and scholar Aggie Toppins. Aggie Toppins' work explores where graphics come from, what they do, and how they change over time. She combines a studio background with humanities methods to explore meaning making in visual and material culture. Her book, "Thinking Through Graphic Design History: Challenging the Canon" (Bloomsbury USA, 2025) surveys the terrain where historical research and visual communication meet. The project challenges traditional understandings of graphic design history, offering ways for designers to shape socially engaged, critical practices. - 🌀 KU Design Professional Lecture Series 🗓 Thursday, September 18 at 6:00pm 📍 Wescoe 3140 The University of Kansas *Free public event

Architecture students at The University of Kansas have the opportunity to experience something even many practicing architects never will – the comprehensive process of designing and constructing a sophisticated building in its entirety from the ground up. Founded and led by Distinguished Professor of Architecture Dan Rockhill, STUDIO 804 INC empowers KU students in their final year of the Master of Architecture program to manage all facets of the design and construction process over the course of a nine-month academic year. This includes all systems, construction documents, estimates, working with zoning and code officials, site layout, placing concrete, framing, roofing, siding, setting solar panels, landscape and more. Studio 804’s latest completed project – an urban infill home in Lawrence built to meet U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Platinum Standards – is another perfect example of how Rockhill and his students have helped to redefine what is possible in architectural education for going on three decades. The home at 1040 New York Street in East Lawrence – a neighborhood with one of the highest percentages of working artists in the country – is a short walk from the Historic Downtown Lawrence District and the Warehouse Arts District. Appropriate in scale for the neighborhood but with external materials that embrace difference and showcase sustainability-focused design, the house sits comfortably within the eclectic fabric of the neighborhood. Since the beginning, the work of Studio 804 has targeted energy efficient and sustainable design. Since completing the 5.4.7. Arts Center in Greensburg, Kansas in 2008, each project has been LEED Platinum Certified and several of them have been Passive House Institute | iPHA US (PHIUS) Certified. Recognized for ambitious projects and educational innovation, Studio 804 has served as a model for academic design-build programs around the world. Projects have been published and awarded by organizations worldwide. Learn more about the project: https://lnkd.in/gR7ufC9p Photography by Corey Gaffer