Archinect - News

Julia Czerniak chosen as next dean of University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning

2023-06-22T12:37:00-04:00

Noted architect, landscape architect, and Syracuse University professor Julia Czerniak has been named dean of the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning following a competitive search to find the next design education leader for the SUNY flagship campus.

Czerniak will take office effective September 11th and comes to campus with extensive experience both in academia and the development of communities like Buffalo that are working to come out of the long shadow of deindustrialization.

Czerniak has been on faculty at Syracuse since 1995 and served as the associate dean of the School of Architecture between 2014 and 2022. The Penn State, Princeton, and Glasgow School of Art alumna is also the founding creative director at CLEAR, a unique interdisciplinary design practice focused on developing urban landscapes in cities in the Rust Belt region. Her work there and at other ventures has led to a 2024 residency at the American Academy in Rome and the J.B. Jackson Book ...

Is momentum building to revitalize Rust Belt cities?

2019-10-07T12:32:00-04:00

To local leaders, a row of abandoned redbrick buildings in the heart of this Rust Belt city’s ailing downtown presents the best hope to spark a citywide revival. The buildings—stripped down to their plaster walls, tin ceilings and worn wood floors—are part of a $150 million plan to draw more people to live and work downtown.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the resurgent efforts being undertaken by local, state, and federal entities aimed at revitalizing Erie, Pennsylvania, a city that has suffered through persistent economic and population decline over the last 60 years.

John Lettieri, CEO of the city's Economic Innovation Group tells WSJ, “One of the biggest questions policy makers, economists and pundits are asking now is, ‘What do we do for places like Erie?’ Is there a future for these places when the industry they were built around has withered?”

Buffalo’s population grows for the first time since 1950

2019-07-02T18:21:00-04:00

Mayor Byron Brown said there will be a significant change documented in the 2020 Census for Buffalo. "We believe that in the 2020 census will allow Buffalo to show its first population growth since the 1950 census,” he said.

After nearly 70 years of population declines, The City of Good Neighbors is growing once again.

According to Buffalo mayor Byron W. Brown, the city could register significant population growth after the 2020 Census, a product, in part, of the city's growing refugee and immigrant communities. According to Census counts, Buffalo's population registered at roughly 260,000 inhabitants in 2010; Updated estimates for the 2020 Census have not been announced.

At an event commemorating World Refugee day, Brown touted the city's population boost, saying, "Diversity is an engine of growth," adding, "It is the way our country has grown from the very beginning."

To help guide future growth, the city overhauled its zoning code in 2017, another first since the 1950s.

Rendering depicting OMA's proposed expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Image courtesy of © OMA and Brick Visuals.

The new Unified Development Ordinance is billed as as a form-based "green code" that eliminates parking requir...

Documentary showcases how architecture students of the University at Buffalo School are shaping the city

2018-07-19T16:11:00-04:00

"How do we bring a city not back to what it was, but what it needs to be in the future?" A new documentary at the Venice Architecture Biennale explores this question, showcasing how students of the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning are learning from and rebuilding the Rust Belt city around them.

Once a thriving American city, since the latter 20th century, Buffalo has seen a sharp population loss and growing inequality stemming from its industrial decline. As Buffalo rebounds, students and faculty of the University are becoming an integral part of this process. Whether it's working with local refugee entrepreneurs or revitalizing local fabrication and industry, students are using the city itself as a laboratory, deeply embedding themselves in the community and the challenges it faces.

Their work is currently being showcased at the Time Space Existence exhibition in Venice, through a new film and an accompanying catalog highlighting sites of faculty and stude...

A closer look at gentrification in the Rust Belt

2017-12-26T18:50:00-05:00

Gentrification. It is a word that we hear with increasing frequency in contemporary discussions about American cities. But what does that word really mean? And, even more importantly, what does it mean in the context of the region that I live in and love – the Rust Belt? [...] It is important to be clear about the meaning of this increasingly ambiguous term, because what needs to happen in the vast majority of urban neighborhoods in the legacy cities of the Rust Belt is far less ambiguous.

"Many critics of Rust Belt gentrification are holding cities to an unreasonable standard, and placing them in an impossible situation. If much of the city remains poor and run-down, this is proof that the city does not care, and is not trying hard enough. If, on the other hand, parts of the city begin to attract new residents and investment, this is proof that the city does not care, and is not trying hard enough. Heads I win. Tails you lose."

City Observatory published a commentary piece by Jason Segedy, Director of Planning and Urban Development for the City of Akron, Ohio.

Repurposing Old Rail Stations in the Rust Belt: What Buffalo, Detroit, and Cincinnati can tell us about adaptive reuse

2014-09-08T13:39:00-04:00

The CTRC’s efforts are part of a larger phenomenon of rail station preservation occurring throughout the Rust Belt, including places such as Cincinnati’s Union Terminal, and Detroit’s Michigan Central Station. And while a geographic disadvantage and heavy rehabilitation costs make for an uphill battle, the Buffalo nonprofit and its ebullient members have high hopes for the future.

In Buffalo, One Man's Living Museum

2013-01-24T00:16:00-05:00

In 2009, Dennis Maher... bought an abandoned property from D’Youville College for $10,000...After he sorted through the junk he found inside, he began to build, reconfiguring the pieces of things like a home entertainment center...and dollhouse furniture... He attached the structures he created to the floors, walls and ceilings, like Joseph Cornell sculptures run amok...You can sense dust bunnies everywhere swelling with importance.