NATIONAL ASSOCIATION RECOGNIZES TWO ISU ARCHITECTURE PROFESSORS

AMES, Iowa -- Two faculty in Iowa State University's architecture department are among 14 nationwide to receive honorsthis year from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).

Assistant Professor Tom Leslie received the ACSA Creative Achievement Award, which recognizes a specific creativeachievement in teaching, design, scholarship, research or service that advances architecture education. He was honoredfor the development of a seminar course, "Physics and Form: Construction and Performance as Architectural Vocabulary1750-2000."

Assistant Professor Jason Alread was one of five faculty to receive the ACSA Faculty Design Award. The award advancesthe reflective nature of practice and teaching by recognizing work in architecture and related environmental designfields as a theoretical endeavor. Alread was cited for his work on a structure at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Heworked on the project while with the Des Moines firm, Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture.

Leslie's seminar course integrates the three substantive areas of architectural education--design, technology andhistory/theory to explore the roles and meanings of technology in architecture. A wide array of artifacts and texts isused to construct a material and technical history of modern architecture.

"By putting technical developments into a historical context, the evolutionary process of architectural and engineeringdesign becomes tangible for students," Leslie said. "Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The popularity of thecourse suggests that students perceive the roles and meaning of technology in architecture to be vital and intriguing,"Leslie said.

Leslie won the ACSA/American Institute of Architecture Students New Faculty Teaching Award in 2003. He joined the IowaState faculty in 2000 after working seven years as an architect for Sir Norman Foster and Partners, London and SanFrancisco. Leslie earned his master's of architecture in 1992 from Columbia University in New York City.

The ACSA presented the faculty design award to Alread in recognition of his work from 1998 to 2000 as project architectand associate in charge of the Newton Road Parking and Chilled Water Facility.

The structure--a large, utilitarian storage building--was to hold 800 cars and a 5,000 ton chilled water facility. Theclient saw it as an invisible building, a necessary evil, but one that should not detract from the more importantmedical buildings, Alread said.

"Is it possible to create an invisible building? No, but the attempt can sometimes surpass the initial goal. We tookthe challenge seriously and set about the task of making the project disappear," Alread said. "The opportunity to dogood work is everywhere and in every project."

The building won several awards, including the 2002 National Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture from theAmerican Institute of Architects.

Alread joined the Iowa State faculty in 2002, after working as an associate at Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architectureand as a design consultant for Herman Miller Inc., Zeeland, Mich. He received a bachelor's of design in architecturewith honors from the University of Florida, Gainesville in 1988, and a master's of architecture from Yale UniversitySchool of Architecture, New Haven, Conn. in 1991.

ACSA is a nonprofit, membership association founded in 1912 to advance the quality of architectural education. Morethan 250 schools are members, representing more than 5,300 faculty.