Architecture School Association Honors Huber With Teaching Award

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Jeffrey Huber, an adjunct assistant professor and project designer, won a 2011-12 New Faculty Teaching Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and American Institute of Architecture Students.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A University of Arkansas Community Design Center faculty member, as well as a manual produced by the center, won national accolades from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and American Institute of Architecture Students.

Jeffrey Huber, an adjunct assistant professor and project designer, was one of three recipients of the 2011-12 ACSA/AIAS New Faculty Teaching Award. The Community Design Center is an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

Jurors lauded the expertise and professionalism Huber brings to an academic setting. “Jeffrey leads students through the difficult work of large-scale, community-driven projects while still retaining a high degree of architectural quality; with a scale and client relationship that often overwhelms the design intentions of many established architects, much less students, it is an admirable undertaking handled exceptionally well.”

Huber thinks the judges were impressed by the way the projects and research he’s done at the center have combined academics with professional practice. With every studio, students have real clients with real projects.

“It teaches them to learn how to be malleable and also adapt,” Huber said. “They have to have a different mindset. And it pushes them to be more creative.”

For his portfolio, Huber presented teaching work that focused on independent studies courses, research, and design studios that he taught with architect Larry Scarpa and Stephen Luoni, director of the design center. Huber considers both colleagues strong mentors.

“To be an extraordinary teacher requires a multitude of skills that not only inspire students to excel beyond their own perceived capabilities, but it also requires the delicate delivery of sometimes difficult critiques that can be hard on students,” Scarpa said. “Jeff possesses the intangible skills [that] inspire students, while maintaining critical thought and debate.”

This manual, Low Impact Development: A Design Manual for Urban Areas, won a 2011-12 Collaborative Practice Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

Luoni, who nominated Huber for the award, said, “The design professions need model teachers like Jeff, capable of bridging scholarship and teaching with practice and public agency, and who accomplish this with great integrity, facility, and unbounded optimism. He is an effective role model to students on accomplishment within an interdisciplinary, collaborative environment that prizes research and applied scholarship in design. At a young age, he is already a respected teacher within the university and a strong advocate for design in the state’s public realm.”

Huber submitted a portfolio that featured a proposed design for the new Fayetteville High School, which combined master plans and small learning communities. This project, done in the design studio with Scarpa, won a 2010 Education Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Other projects submitted for this award include the Fayetteville 2030: Transit City Scenario, which features a streetcar system to curb urban sprawl and prompt more compact walkable neighborhood environments along the College Avenue corridor, and Townscaping an Automobile-Oriented Fabric, which introduces context-sensitive highway solutions and urban agriculture solutions along U.S. 62 in Farmington. These projects won AIA Honor Awards for Regional and Urban Design in 2012 and 2011, respectively.

Huber also was co-author and developed graphics for the 227-page book Low Impact Development: A Design Manual for Urban Areas. He has also led independent studies courses with landscape architecture students for xeriscape gardens at the Fayetteville wastewater treatment plant.

Huber remains committed to blending landscape architecture, architecture and urban design – and teaching students to equally understand and value each discipline.

Low Impact Development: A Design Manual for Urban Areas won one of three 2011-12 Collaborative Practice Awards. Huber and Luoni, working with the ecological engineering group in the department of biological and agricultural engineering at the university, guided production of the low-impact design manual. The center and the group developed the book under a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission.

The jury noted the practicality of this guide: “This community-based research is a manual for living, a project that has the capacity to link sustainable approaches to development in a manner that is both accessible and resilient. From insight to implementation, this cross-disciplinary approach to environmental design education presents public policy as a mechanism for design.”

The manual also won a 2011 Award of Excellence in Communications from the American Society of Landscape Architects; a 2011 AIA Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design; and a 2010 Unique Contribution to Planning Award from the Arkansas Chapter of the American Planning Association.

Winning projects and awards will be presented at the 100^th annual meeting of the ACSA, planned for March 1-4 in Boston. All award winners will be published in the 2011-2012 Architecture Education Awards Book, to be released in March.

Aaron Gabriel, a former designer at the Community Design Center, won the 2007-2008 ACSA/AIAS New Faculty Teaching Award.

More information about the 2011-12 awards is available at Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture website.