Janice Tuckman, ENR editor-in-chief. served as this year's keynote speaker at the college commencement on May 2. Visit ENR's website and read Tuckman's Advice to Graduates.

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During the weekend of March 28, five teams of students in the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning competed to create the best design for sustainable post-disaster housing for the 2008 Witters Competition.

The annual design competition features teams consisting of four to six students representing at least four of the college’s five disciplines: architecture, building construction, interior design, landscape architecture and urban and regional planning.

This year’s competition presented students with a troublingly realistic scenario: a strong hurricane destroys the homes of about 100 Gainesville residents who now need new local shelters. Students were challenged to create a flexible, rapidly deployable prototype shelter that is environmentally self-sustaining and has the ability to become the basis for a permanent community. Locations for the shelters included the sites of the destroyed homes and also a 33-acre site at the intersection of South Main Street and Southeast Depot Avenue.

The student teams were given the competition’s topic on Friday morning and then had until Sunday afternoon to create their design proposals and present them to a jury of college administrators and faculty. The designs were judged on sustainability, innovation and design, feasibility and constructability and presentation of information. The winning team received a $3,500 prize.

“The winning team offered a sophisticated use of materials and techniques to construct housing that could serve both the temporary needs of the displaced, and if necessary to sustain the community over time,” said Dean Christopher Silver, one of the jury members.

Members of the winner team were architecture student Franco D’Ascanio, building construction students Scott Nelson and Sean Snowden, interior design student Catherine Slemon and landscape architecture student Nicholas D’Ascanio.

The competition was organized by building construction professor Robert J. Ries and building construction and architecture graduate student Dereck Winning.

“The program for the 2008 Witters Competition was both highly interdisciplinary and challenging in scope,” Ries said. “The students were enthusiastic and committed and worked very well together. I commend all of the students for their excellent efforts and teamwork over the course of the weekend.”

Established in 1993, the Witters Competition is endowed by Arthur G. and Beverley A. Witters for a college-wide interdisciplinary academic competition to promote a collaborative approach among students. The Witters family was represented at this year’s competition by Tucker Ryals, Arthur and Beverly Witters’ grandson.

For more information about the competition and to see this year's results, visit www.dcp.ufl.edu/witters

This year, the College of Design, Construction and Planning will host its first Research Showcase. The event is an opportunity for incoming and current graduate students to learn about faculty research, as well as a chance for faculty to share their research with others across the college and university.

The showcase will run from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. For the complete schedule, please visit http://www.dcp.ufl.edu/showcaseschedule.pdf

This year, the University of Florida Department of Urban and Regional Planning will celebrate Planning Day on April 18, 2008. This is an opportunity for the department to celebrate the successes of alumni and students and to bring awareness to the field of urban and regional planning by addressing critical and often controversial planning issues.

In the morning, the department will welcome members of the URP Advisory Council at the council's annual meeting. At 2 p.m., the public is invited to the symposium, "The Future of Hometown Democracy: The Rise of Ballot Box Zoning in Florida." In the evening, the department will hold its awards dinner to recognize the department's students, alumni and friends.

For more information, please visit www.dcp.ufl.edu/urp

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Due to a serious illness in his family, Juan Herreros had to cancel his March 17 lecture at the University of Florida School of Architecture. Herreros is a partner at Abalos & Herreros in Madrid, Spain.

Representing the top student honors in the profession, the American Society of Landscape Architects presented the 2007 Student Awards to 25 projects from 22 colleges and universities at the ASLA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Landscape architecture student Kimberly S. Heiss won an Honor Award in the Research Category for her project, “Visual Preference for Stormwater Pond Edge Treatments.” Her project studied Gainesville residents’ preferences for either manicured, moderate or naturalized edges of ponds. She found that after learning about the environmental benefits of a more naturalized edge, people were more apt to choose the more natural edges.

Her faculty advisors on the project were landscape architecture professors Lester L. Linscott and Gary Purdum.

See story in The Gainesville Sun.

The University of Florida undergraduate program in interior design was ranked 5th in DesignIntelligence’s 9th annual America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools 2008 survey. The interior design graduate program was ranked 7th, and the undergraduate program in landscape architecture was ranked 13th.

The professional publication’s survey ranks accredited undergraduate and graduate design programs from the perspective of practitioners in the field. Respondents are required to be highly involved in the hiring and performance of graduates and are asked to indicate which schools produce the most prepared graduates.

“Both the interior design and landscape architecture programs provide a consistently superior quality of professional training that justifies such a high ranking by leading practitioners,” said Christopher Silver, dean of the College of Design, Construction and Planning, which houses both departments.

In addition, the department of interior design also tied for 1st in presentation skills and tied for 3rd in cross-discipline experience in DI’s national Skills Assessment Ranking.

“It is exciting to see how highly valued our interior design graduates are in the profession. Our department is recognized for research-based innovation in areas such as corporate and institutional design, the adaptive use of historic properties as well as in sustainability, lighting and design security,” said Meg Portillo, department chair.