Plans ripen for architecture students’ Grand House

Grand House, the residence building being designed and built in Cambridge for and primarily by UW architecture students, is nearing a landmark: September 14, the closing date for purchase of the hillside property. By that day the student co-op that’s managing the project will need to have raised $50,000. Chantal Cornu, a master’s architecture student and executive director of the co-op, says $40,000 has already been raised and she’s confident that the deadline will be met.

Contrary to information in an August 10 Record article, however, Cornu says it’s unlikely that shovels will be in the ground this fall. “It is more likely that we will do this in the spring. We will be beginning to prefab some of the carpentry over the winter in order to move as quickly as possible on site in the spring.” The goal is to have the building finished by fall 2007.

The 4,000-square-foot building, which Cornu says will be worth roughly $500,000 when finished, will include straw bale construction. It will be located on Ainslie Street north of Simcoe Street, an eight-minute walk from the School of Architecture, and will have 12 bedrooms with common kitchen and living spaces.

“The design is happening as a collaboration between several master's of architecture students, professional engineers and building contractors, and professors,” Cornu says. (Professors Mike Elmitt, John Straube, and Philip Beesley are project advisors.) “We, the co-op, make all the final decisions. To be a member of the co-op, you do not need to be a student but you need to attend regular meetings.” The co-op has “around 14 members per term,” Cornu says, mostly architecture students.

When construction begins, it will include students and community members. “It will likely be run partly like a Habitat for Humanity build, but with a stronger focus on education and repeat participation,” Cornu says. Over the next six months the co-op will develop courses and workshops that will be integrated into the build.

The current fundraiser is a “Buy a Bale” promotion. To donate in other ways, contact Tanya Markvart, fundraising and PR co-ordinator, at 519-721-2014, or by email.

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Faculty to begin 12-month sabbaticals

Here are some of the faculty members who will be on sabbatical for the twelve months starting September 1. Their plans are quoted from the information submitted to UW’s board of governors, which has to give its approval to all sabbaticals.

Jim Barker, earth sciences: “I will develop water research projects with the oil sands industry and complete journal papers on recent research. In addition, I will expand the network of academic researchers involved with subsurface hydrocarbon contamination and remediation through visits, lectures, and course instruction involving research institutes and universities in Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, USA, and Germany.”

Keith O. Geddes, computer science: “My location will be Simon Fraser University’s CECM research group. I will study recent literature on new algorithms for definite integrals and implement the algorithms in a computer algebra library. With Fred Chapman (former PhD student), we plan to publish convergence results for tensor-product series. Based on pioneering work by Stetter (2004), I will develop algorithms for Numerical Polynomial Algebra.”

Lyndon Jones, optometry: “During the sabbatical leave I will develop enhanced collaborations with colleagues at McMaster University (in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry), Ohio State University, USA (in Chemistry and Optometry) and the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (in Optometry) — the aim is to develop new skills and write grant proposals; write manuscripts (eight of my graduate students will complete their studies this year); finish a book on contact lens materials and solutions for Butterworth-Heinemann; and renew my current NSERC-CRD.”

Donald McKay, architecture: “During my sabbatical I plan to complete two pieces of work. The first is a book of photographs and essays on the cultural significance of the American landscape, and its infrastructure. The second is a monograph on three buildings designed and built over the last several years. Completion of the first is the most important.”

Javier Cuenca, economics: “New data to be collected in London and in Lisbon should help to establish that Spanish America and Brazil were major sources of exogenous demand for British manufacturers in 1765-1820. At stake is a central contribution to the long-standing debate on whether British industrialization was home-driven or export-led.”

Guang Gong, electrical and computer engineering: “My research interests are in the areas of sequence design, cryptography and network security. For my sabbatical leave, I plan to visit the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (September-December 2006), for research on cryptography and network. After that I plan to visit the University of Southern California (January-August 2007) for research on sequence design.”

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Happening, and not happening

UW-ACE will be unavailable on August 23, at which time the program will be upgraded to ANGEL version 7.1. “Existing courses, along with any courses currently being developed for the fall 2006 term, will be migrated to 7.1 at that time,” says a memo from IST’s Andrea Chappell. Because the new software offers “significant enhancements in functionality and navigation,” users are encouraged to attend a “What’s New in 7.1” course – the next one will be held August 31 -- or send email for information about a group overview session on the changes.

A note from Barbara Bulman-Fleming, director of Teaching Resources and Continuing Education: the TRACE office will be closed August 23 and 24 “for fall planning. People can still deposit response papers under the door if they’d like, and of course can leave voicemail messages.”

The Midnight Sun team were not the only UW people to receive an award this year from the Yves Landry Foundation. The Program of the Year Award for 2006 goes to the AUTO21 Network of Centres of Excellence, a network of university, industrial, and govenment partners based at the University of Windsor. Several researchers from Waterloo, especially from UW’s Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, are involved in AUTO21.

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