Future students

Engineering 5, designed by Perkins+Will of Toronto, has won a 2011 Global Excellence Award Best of Category in the Cultural/Institutional/Educational Category, by the International Interior Design Association (IIDA). Winners of the competition were chosen from 92 international design firms from 32 countries judged on representation of outstanding originality, and excellence in the creation of international interior design and architecture projects. Awards will be presented at the Maison & Objet Show in Paris in mid January.

Prithula Prosun, a recent graduate of Waterloo’s School of Architecture, has won a Canadian Architect Student Award of Merit for her master’s thesis project Lift House that provides flood-proof housing for the Bangladeshi poor. Prosun developed a house that rises with flood waters and then lowers once flooding recedes. In October, Prosun’s project was honoured by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for applying leading-edge research to real-world situations. 

A Waterloo Region Record article, entitled UW chemical engineering students hope to change the future, takes a look at the wide range of innovative research taking place in the department’s new home in Engineering 6. Undergraduate and graduate students, as well as current faculty and retired faculty members were interviewed for the feature that describes Waterloo’s chemical engineering as “hot stuff.” The department, once housed in the first facility built on Waterloo’s campus, now has 800 undergraduate students, 155 grad students, 35 faculty, 15 staff and more than 4,000 alumni.

School of Architecture professor John McMinn and his partner architect Melana Janzen of McMinn + Janzen Studio have pulled it off for a professional couple living in south Mississauga — they designed an urban loft on a quiet street lined with 1970s suburban ranch houses. The home, with radiant concrete floors inside and custom stainless steel wire mesh screens, provides a downtown urban feel while meeting the needs of a growing family leaning towards a suburban lifestyle. But success didn’t come easy, says McMinn. The first contractor couldn’t mix oil and water and was let go.

Lola Sheppard, a Waterloo School of Architecture professor, is concerned with how processed foods are threatening hunting traditions and the health of Inuit people in Canada’s North. Sheppard and her partner, Mason White, recently won a $100,000 Holcim Award for an infrastructure project they developed that seeks to reaffirm hunting and fishing traditions among the people of Baffin Island in the territory of Nunavut. The project’s goal is to create a network of shelters along snowmobile paths connecting 11,000 people who live in disconnected communities across Baffin Island.