The University of New Mexico

NEWS RELEASE

 


Contact: Carolyn Gonzales 277-5920

cgonzal@unm.edu

 

March 30, 2006

UNM Meem Lecture To Focus On The American Campus

“The American Campus Now” is the topic of the final installment in the spring John Gaw Meem Lecture Series sponsored by the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning. Urban designer Stefanos Polyzoides will deliver the lecture Friday, April 7, at 4:30 p.m. in Northrop Hall room 122 on the UNM campus.

His presentation will address how university campuses are changing under the influence of new urbanism and the smart growth movement.

“Campuses throughout the country face a broad series of architectural and planning dilemmas,” he said. Among them are projects designed with little regard for chosen sites; ready acceptance of the effects of automobiles on public space; and continuing erosion of the historical assets, which often formed the foundation architecture of campuses, Polyzoides said.

“The best traditions of campus architecture and urbanism must be rediscovered as the prime source of generating architectural and campus forms if we are to fully realize our ideal vision of academic life,” he said.

Polyzoides earned a bachelor's and master's of arts in architecture and urban planning from Princeton University . A Los Angeles resident since 1973, Polyzoides was associate professor of architecture at the University of Southern California . He and Liz Moule, partners in the award-winning firm Moule and Polyzoides, Architects and Urbanists of Pasadena, Calif., are two of six co-founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism and are current members of its board of directors.

“As one of the founders of the new urbanism movement and a lead planner
for downtown Albuquerque revitalization, it will be very interesting to see what Polyzoides feels the major impacts of that movement will be on campus planning,” said Chris Wilson, J.B. Jackson Professor of Cultural Landscape Studies and director of the graduate certificate program in historic preservation and regionalism in the School of Architecture and Planning.

Polyzoides led the planning for the Alvarado Transportation District Revitalization, for the area around the Century 14 Theater, and for the EDO plan for the
Huning Highlands area around the old Albuquerque High School .

He contributed “On Campus-Making in America ,” a chapter in the 1997 Rockport Publishers book, “Campus & Community.” The event is free and open to the public. For more information call 277-5885.

 

 

 


The University of New Mexico is the state's largest university, serving more than 32,000 students. UNM is home to the state's only schools of law, medicine, pharmacy and architecture and operates New Mexico's only academic health center. UNM is noted for comprehensive undergraduate programs and research that benefits the state and the nation.

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