Future of terra cotta on display at UB ceramics workshop

Terra cotta specialists from around the U.S. have been in Buffalo this week as the School of Architecture and Planning hosts its fourth annual Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop.

Architectural firms from New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles arrived on Sunday for the hands-on research and development workshop in which architects and façade engineers explore the use of terra cotta in high-performance façade design.

During the workshop, terra cotta experts and UB students worked in teams to create and assemble prototypes for next-generation architectural applications inside the school’s Fabrication Workshop. The prototypes were unveiled today during a presentation at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.

Teams also toured Boston Valley Terra Cotta and Rigidized Metals.

“The Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop has become the national destination for cutting-edge research and applications for architectural terra cotta,” says Omar Khan, UB associate professor of architecture.

“The workshop aims to situate Western New York as the nexus for architectural terra cotta research and manufacturing in the western hemisphere,” Khan says.

The workshop was presented by Boston Valley Terra Cotta and UB’s Community of Excellence in Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotic Technologies (SMART).