FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Over the course of a year, an architecture student’s creative work is subjected to many intense reviews from professors and peers. In addition to generating feedback, the review sessions give students some real-life experience in public speaking - a necessary skill in a profession where presenting ideas to clients, town meetings and contractors are all in a day’s work. On Thursday, May 1, architecture students and professors will wrap up the year with a comprehensive Spring Review that is unusual in its scope. This public review will focus on the products and progress of the curriculum while evaluating the teaching efforts of the faculty.

Three guest critics - Darrell W. Fields from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, architect Charles Menefee III from the University of Virginia and Dan Hoffman from the University of Arizona - will spend the day evaluating representative projects from every architecture studio taught in the spring. Students and faculty will discuss models, sketches and computer renderings of design projects and course work, which will be displayed throughout Vol Walker Hall. Although the students’ work is critiqued, it's the professors’ teaching methods and the School of Architecture program that will be evaluated in the process.

Since its inception in 1998, the Spring Review has provided the School with feedback on its strengths and weaknesses as well as an opportunity to showcase the skills of our students to architects and educators from prominent graduate schools or professional practices.

"There are other schools that have year-end reviews, but I believe our program is unique in the scope and breadth of the final review process," noted School of Architecture Dean Jeff Shannon.

Following is a sampling of studios that will be discussed and evaluated:

• Surface Space -- Co-taught by visiting professor Julie Snow of Julie Snow Architects, Minneapolis, and University of Arkansas architecture professors Marlon Blackwell and Yume Rudzinski, this course has focused on new interactive technologies for building surfaces, with a goal of creating dialog between building inhabitants and the city. Students visited three downtown sites in New York City and met with representatives of Material ConneXion, an on-line database of innovative materials and manufacturing processes, prior to beginning their design work.
• Vertical Power Centers: Stacking Big Box Retail -- Taught by University of Florida professor Stephen Luoni, who is visiting this semester in part to research Wal-Mart’s development protocols, students have explored an emerging building type that stacks big box retail space, service, and parking, thus checking sprawl and reducing storm water runoff.

• Home -- Taught by associate professor Greg Herman, students in this class developed designs for a competition for affordable housing organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C. and DWELL magazine. They devoted the second part of the semester to designing and fabricating minimal housing units that are both inexpensive and portable for the homeless.

The review will pause at noon for a celebratory barbecue with students and faculty near the Fulbright Peace Fountain in front of Vol Walker Hall.