Facade Tectonics Institute’s (FTI’s) Education Forum was held on Monday, May 15, 2023. This forum started with a presentation on the state of facades education in the United States, introducing the results of a research study that was conducted over a period of two years. This research was conducted by the FTI’s Education Committee: Prof. Ajla Aksamija; Gabrielle Brainard, Associate Principal and Building Enclosure Specialist at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University; Timothy Brown, Principal at Tim Brown Architecture and Associate Professor of Architecture at Clemson University, and Sunny Milosevic, Ph.D. Student at the University of Utah.
The second portion of this virtual event featured four presentations by faculty members, outlining their pedagogical approaches and teaching methods for building enclosure systems:
- Scott Murray, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (technical drawing)
- Ajla Akšamija, Professor at the University of Utah (high-performance facades and building technology core course integrated with studio)
- Liz McCormick, Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte (physical experiments and digital fabrication of facade systems)
- Jihun Kim, Associate Professor of Architectural Technology at the City University of New York and a Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania (environmental performance simulations).
The final component of the forum included a panel discussion moderated by Gabrielle Brainard.