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Carter urges administration to consider design improvements on campus
By DONNA BUDNIEWSKI
Reporter Assistant Editor
Design is an everyday activity, from deciding what tie or dress to wear to thinking about the office space one inhabits, Brian Carter, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, told the Faculty Senate at its monthly meeting on Tuesday.
Carter updated the senate on the school's activities and encouraged administrators to think about the importance of design on campus and to consider making small improvements in a variety of areas and environments, rather than waiting for the next huge building to be built, which likely will be years away, he said. Design, he noted, should be an important part of the long-term planning discussions regarding the university's future.
"It's important that we make environments that are beautiful and livable, that encourage people to study and work here," he said. "We go to offices and spaces every day and it's important to think about what those spaces are and what they mean."
For example, he said he's intrigued that there is a place at the heart of the campus called Founders Plaza that faculty, staff and students visit every day. Yet, "he has no idea who the founders are," he said.
"It looks like an advertisement for a tarmac company." The only way anyone knows that it's Founders Plaza, said Carter, is the sign stating as much.
There are many opportunities on campus for inspired patronage, Carter explained. "Buffalo has been built by patronage," he said, adding that it's important that the university steps up to the plate on this issue. "I think it's possible to think about design as a way of lifting the spirit, and often those things could be small things—they don't have to be mega-projects," he said
Antónia Monteiro, assistant professor of biological sciences, said that when she came to UB two years ago, she found it very strange that all of the eating areas in The Commons were oriented away from the lake.
"There is a beautiful lake there and this enormous building has no windows facing the water. In that whole space there is no use of the lake—everybody is facing away from the lake," said Monteiro. "It's just so striking that the water was not used in any sort of real way here."
Carter agreed that many such amenities, like the lake, exist at UB and encouraged administrators to "win back" opportunities to use the lake more in the overall design of that area of the campus.
He said he's committed to furthering cross-disciplinary collaborations with other departments at the university and already is working with the schools of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and Dental School.
Buffalo has a significant role to play internationally in the field of architecture and planning; in fact, its reputation abroad is just that—not seven feet of snow, noted Carter.
"It's very good to be a dean of architecture and planning in Buffalo. It's a great city with outstanding architecture, very good buildings and a useful and amenable city plan," he said. Although architecture and planning is a field less geared toward research than some fields, Carter said, what drew him to Buffalo is the extensive and diverse nature of research at the UB architecture school and its four renowned centers of research—the Urban Design Project, the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA), the Center for Virtual Architecture and the Center for Urban Studies. "We're very, very active in the community, the city and the region," he said of the school's research activities.
As the only architecture program in the SUNY system, the school currently has about 636 students enrolled in graduate and undergraduate degree programs. The school has summer studios in Havana, Cuba; Monteverde, Costa Rica, and Barcelona, Spain, and study-abroad programs in Aarhus, Denmark; Darmstadt, Germany, and Antwerp, Belgium. For more information about the school, visit its Web site at http://www.ap.buffalo .edu/index.asp.