As architecture graduates nationwide struggle with low employment rates, the University’s Department of Architecture has taken steps to ensure that its alumni are armed with a diverse skill set for an increasingly challenging job market. 

Brian Beeners, tech shop supervisor in AAP, has been offered a reduced job after his layoff prompted outrage from students in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

In response to student protests, Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning Kent Kleinman said he will consider rehiring Brian Beeners, an AAP tech shop supervisor who Kleinman laid off Thursday.

A month after receiving a letter from students concerned about a lack of support for minority students within the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, Dean Kent Kleinman has appointed a Rei Thompson to focus on minority and diversity issues. 

Architecture, Art and Planning Dean Kent Kleinman called the meeting in response to a letter signed by 75 AAP students, detailing their concerns about diversity within the college.

Although some supporters of Milstein Hall argued that the building was necessary for maintaining full accreditation for AAP’s master’s degree program, the college’s danger of actually losing its accreditation appears to have been rather small.  

The desire to collect all of the University’s studio-based programs into a “gathering point” for design within Cornell is an ambitious but concise goal. The College of Art, Architecture and Planning Task Force Report explores the potential to become a new and entirely unique type of design college — a school of Architecture, Art and Design — and provided numerous examples of how to achieve such a transformation. The administration can start with an imaginative use of the building it fought for over a decade to construct, Milstein Hall.

After nearly a decade of cutting though a jungle of bureaucratic red tape, the construction of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning’s new 47,000 square-foot Paul Milstein Hall is well underway. With little delays expected, the project should be completed by Aug. 2011, restoring University Avenue, the AAP Quad and the Arts Quad to normalcy.

As many members of the Cornell community have noticed, the portion of University Avenue stretching from East Avenue to Central Avenue is closed. As a result, a temporary road has been built connecting University Avenue with Central Avenue in order to allow access to the Johnson Art Museum and the buildings along the western side of the Arts Quad.

Curious students and faculty trickled into Sibley Hall yesterday afternoon to hear Barbara Penner, lecturer in architectural history in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, elucidate the relationship between bathrooms, social boundaries and architecture.

As Penner took the podium, the house lights fell to yield the title, “X is for An Expert on Bathrooms: Alexander Kira & Peter Greenaway’s 26 Bathrooms,” brightly projected onto the screen behind her.

The lecture featured a screening of Peter Greenaway’s 1985 film entitled Inside Rooms: 26 Bathrooms.