LibGuides: Illinois School of Architecture Spring 2023 Lecture Series: Climate Fictions: Frances Yang

The Illinois School of Architecture Lecture | Spring 2023

Publications

Articles
Books

Replacing a Shopping Center with an Ecological Neighborhood by Dowdell, Jennifer; Fraker, Harrison; Nassauer, Joan. The writers discuss the case of the Phalen Village Small Area Plan in St. Paul, Minnesota, in which a deteriorating strip shopping center was replaced with a wetland park. They describe the success of this retrofit but note that new residential development has begun to encroach on the park itself, severely compromising its original purpose as a public amenity that embodied urban ecological function. They argue that this case shows that urban ecological restoration can succeed as a retrofit strategy, but its public boundaries and access must be carefully defined, and “ownership” by adjacent residential and commercial uses must be established from the beginning, so that the park has empowered beneficiaries and defenders.
Publication Date: Fall 2005
Housing the next ten million by Fraker, Harrison. A report on the winners of “Housing the Next Ten Million,” a competition that solicited design and development concepts for accommodating the ten million additional people who are projected to live in California's Central Valley by the year 2040. The magnitude of the problem produced bold proposals, but the jury was attracted to solutions that focused on adding growth and value to existing communities, especially those that tried to maintain and enhance a local sense of place when considering development on such a massive scale. The first award in the New Growth category was won by a proposal by Daniel G. Parolek Urban Design, which places all new development in a clearly articulated growth boundary. The writer goes on to discuss the other winners in the categories of Redevelopment, Infill, Small Agriculture Community, and Housing Prototype, as well as several projects that received honorable mentions.
Publication Date: Winter 2000
Negotiating Implicit Theoretical Agendas by Fraker, Harrison Part of a special section on the winning projects in the EDRA/Places Awards for 2001 and 2002. The writer discusses the theoretical issues, both explicit and implicit, negotiated by the jury for the 2002 EDRA/Places awards. He observes that four of the winners—the least theoretically problematic for the jury—share a common interest in activities and social processes of the everyday, while not appearing to promote any prescriptive aesthetic or design agenda. Noting, however, that the choice of the two final winners revealed problematic theoretical differences, he discusses how the question of what is a meaningful relationship between design and research recurred throughout the jury process. He considers the jury's most theoretically charged debate, which occurred over one group of projects that could be described as orthodox New Urbanist or neotraditional infill, versus another group whose design guidelines give prescribed shape to the public realm yet intentionally do not prescribe building types or regional styles.
Publication Date: Fall 2002
The Importance of “Place” at the Bellagio Global Summit by Fraker, Harrison, The Innovations for an Urban World conference in Bellagio, Italy, brought together specialists with an interest in new forms of planning and design practice and pedagogy to help meet the needs of the world's rapidly expanding urban poor. There were discussions exploring the experiences of participants with regard to specific questions, and breakout sessions saw the formulation of issues, new questions, and recommendations. The overwhelming conclusion was that place-based problems and challenges are at the core of future teaching and research on urban sustainability and central to improving the lives of the urban poor.
Publication Date: Fall 2007
Where is the Urban Design Discourse? by Fraker, Harrison. The writer discusses current modes of urban design thinking. He presents a chart that describes six such modes: Everyday Urbanism, Generic Urbanism/Hyper-Modernity, Hybrid Urbanism, New Urbanism, Transformative Urban Morphology, and Urban Ecological Reconstruction.
Publication Date: Fall 2007
Linking Science to Design by Fraker, Harrison Two recent gatherings point toward a more meaningful and focused collaboration between the fields of science and design on climate-change issues. Leading climate scientists and energy experts who attended “Energy, Security and Climate: Resilient Pathways for a Non-Linear World,” a workshop at the Lawrence Livermore National laboratory in California from March 31 to April 2, 2008, concluded that the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has underestimated the rate and extent of global climate change. At a second meeting at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., from July 10 to 11, 2008, members of a steering committee of U.S. planning and environmental-design professionals called for a “national organization to leverage the expertise of the design and planning professions and institutions to address the impending catastrophic impacts of climate change.”
Publication Date: Summer 2008

Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment by Frances Yang Prepared by the WBLCA Guide Special Project Working Group of the Sustainability Committee of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment: Reference Building Structure and Strategies serves as a guide for the project team to define and model the structural system within the reference building design as required by green building standards and rating systems. The book is organized in two parts. The first part sets out terms of reference including definitions, reference building options, and general considerations in reference building design. The second part describes specific strategies the structural engineer may employ to reduce life cycle impacts on a project. Whereas whole building life cycle assessment (WBLCA) is a relatively new application of life cycle assessment (LCA), this book aims to guide and encourage structural engineers to take an active and meaningful role in green building development.
Call Number: Closed Stacks ; 690.0286 W6204
ISBN: 9780784415054
Publication Date: 2018-08-14

Frances Yang - Associate, ARUP - "The Matter of How We Build"

After starting with Arup 19 years ago, Frances created and has led the Sustainable Materials Practice in the Americas region for the past 12 years. Drawing from her expertise in structural engineering, construction materials and advanced used of life-cycle assessment (LCA) tools, Frances has helped numerous projects embrace more circular design and drive down embodied carbon within our built environment. Frances is a constant mobilizer and collaborator, having served on the Carbon Leadership Forum Board, vice-chaired the USGBC Materials and Resources Advisory Group, co-founding the All for Reuse initiative, and currently vice-chair of SE 2050. She has also contributed to the chapter on mass timber construction within the New Carbon Architecture book, the Bay Area Low Carbon Concrete Code, and the ASCE technical guidance document “Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment: Reference Building Structure and Strategies,” which is referenced by LEEDv4, ILFI’s Zero Carbon Certification, and other respected standards. Through her career, Frances has shown how structural engineers can influence projects and policies towards a climate-positive future. (From Event Page Website)

Illinois School of Architecture Spring 2023 Lecture Series: Climate Fictions: Frances Yang

The Illinois School of Architecture Lecture | Spring 2023

Publications

Frances Yang

Interviews & Previous Lectures