NEWS & EVENTS:

Kent expands grad track; hires director

Friday, March 09, 2007

Steven Litt

Plain Dealer Architecture Critic

Kent State University is unleashing a one-two punch to liven up Cleveland's architectural community and to make a greater commitment to the city.

Steven Fong, dean of KSU's College of Architecture and Environmental Design, announced Wednesday he has appointed Christopher Diehl, a rising star in the city's design scene, to be director of Kent State's Urban Design Collaborative.

He'll succeed architect Ruth Durack, who held the position from 1999 to 2005 and who used it as a bully pulpit to advocate for better architecture and urban design in Cleveland. She later moved to Perth in her native Australia to start a similar program.

Diehl said he expects to follow Durack's example "with vigor" when he starts at the collaborative Tuesday, May 1. "I'm thrilled and couldn't be more excited," he said. "I think it's terrific."

Fong also announced that by March 2009, KSU will relocate its entire master's degree program in architecture to Cleveland. The move means increasing the number of architecture graduate students in the city from 20 to 50 -- plus hiring local architects to teach in the expanded program.

Fong said he hopes to use the graduate program as a platform for lectures and other programs that will enrich the city's cultural life by inviting notable architects from around the world to Cleveland.

"We'll devote more of our budget to flying people in from other cities and having the kinds of exchanges that make a great graduate program a very rich experience. And, being in Cleveland, we'll be able to share that rich program with the city," Fong said.

The expansion may require moving the existing KSU programs from their present location in the Pointe Building at Prospect Avenue and Huron Road.

Fong said the school is considering locations in University Circle, the former Tyler Elevator Products plant at East 36th Street and Superior Avenue, and developer Scott Wolstein's Flats East Bank development. He said it's also possible the KSU programs may consolidate and expand in and around the Pointe Building.

But first, under Diehl's leadership, the Urban Design Collaborative will expand its focus.

Founded in 1983, the collaborative is staffed by professional architects and graduate students who provide nonprofit urban design and planning services to communities across Northeast Ohio, particularly in urban neighborhoods.

KSU moved the program to Cleveland in 1999, along with its graduate program in urban design (part of the school's larger graduate program in architecture). Fong wants to expand the collaborative's purview to involve research.

Upcoming projects will focus on what Cleveland can learn from other Great Lakes cities, especially in waterfront development; how mental-health facilities can be designed to improve patient care; and how shrinking cities such as Cleveland can adapt to the future.

Diehl said the program "needs to recharge and investigate a broader regional vision. It needs to deal with a larger vision than just [proceeding] project by project."

Diehl, 45, earned a bachelor's degree in environmental design at Miami University of Ohio in 1983 and a master's degree in architecture at Harvard University in 1988. He pursued postgraduate studies in architecture and film at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Frankfurt, Germany, and interned in Spain with Pritzker Prize winner Rafael Moneo.

Diehl joined the Cleveland office of the engineering and architecture firm URS in 1999 after two years of teaching at Penn State University. At URS, he heads a design staff of 24 in an office dominated by more than 120 engineers.

He said he will step down as a vice president at the firm, but he hopes to continue part time as an architect there, because he wants to integrate teaching with professional practice.

His credits at URS include the exterior renovation of the Idea Center at Playhouse Square; the Student Affairs Building at the University of Akron; and Cuyahoga Community College's Corporate College East in Highland Hills.

"I love to teach and love to practice - and it's always hard to do both - but this gives me an opportunity," he said.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

slitt@plaind.com, 216-999-4136