UB's Shibley Receives More National Recognition

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Robert Shibley, Ph.D., professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning and founding director of the school's Urban Design Project, was an invited participant on April 23 in the Bruner-Lobe Forum, "Transforming Community through the Arts" in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The Forum represents a partnership between the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (RBA) and the Loeb Fellowship Program of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

It was the fourth in a series of forums held over the past two years. The others were held in Cambridge, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Shibley, of Buffalo, also was the featured speaker at the "Smarter Niagara Summit" presented by the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Ontario, on March 25, where he presented initial proposals for a 35-square-mile bi-national Niagara Peace Park. The idea emerged from the "Rethinking Niagara" project of the Urban Design Project http://www.urbandesignproject.org.

Last month, Shibley was named the sixth recipient of one of his field's most prestigious awards, the James Haecker Distinguished Leadership Award for Architectural Research presented by the Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC).

Rich Wener, associate professor of environmental psychology at Brooklyn's Polytechnic University, who nominated Shibley for the award, says that what distinguishes his body of work from that of other design researchers "is his unique ability to take into account and effectively deal with the variety of issues, disciplines and perspectives that affect the creation and success of urban design projects."