NEWSLETTER - February 28, 2025

The Huckabee College of Architecture, in partnership with the Museum of Texas Tech University, are excited to announce the LAND ARTS 2024 EXHIBITION OPENING and RECEPTION. The event will be held TODAY, February 28th, 2025, from 6:00 - 8:00 PM CT, at the Museum of Texas Tech University, 3301 4th Street, Lubbock, Texas 79415.

The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West presenting works by students Hallie Ayres, Levi Baruch, Viola Bordon, Ian Dippo, Isaac Dunne, Laura Friedman, Alexander Garza, Jennifer Loyd, and Caleb Mancillas.

Within the Texas Tech University Huckabee College of Architecture, Land Arts is a “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, historians, and writers camped for fifty-three nights while traveling 5,251 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, The Lightning Field—while also visiting sites expanding our understanding of what land art might be such as pre-contact archeology of Chaco Canyon, scientific exploration at the Very Large Array, and military-industrial operations in the Great Salt Lake Desert. To negotiate the multivalent meaning of these places and shed light on strategies to aid their comprehension we invited the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists, and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2024 field guests included Aurora Tang of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, artists Dionne Lee, Deborah Stratman and Steve Badgett, art historian Ann Reynolds, and Aaron Hegert and Eric Simpson of Tablelands Center for Bioregional Art, among many others. Land Arts hinges on the primacy of first-person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular.

The Land Arts 2024 Exhibition will continue through April 25th, 2025. To read the full press release from Land Arts of the American West on the 2024 exhibition, click here.

PhD student Banan Alzoubi has received a Graduate Student Research Support Award from the Texas Tech Graduate School for her research project "Framework for Sustainable Construction: Data-Driven Approach for Assessing Carbon Emissions at Early Design Stage for Tall Building Structural Systems." This award, totaling $1500 for the 2025 academic year, recognizes students who are pursuing research initiatives and have displayed outstanding excellence in their field.

Last week, the HCOA held its annual Career Fair, hosting mixers and interviews for 187 students and 46 firms from February 18th to 20th, 2025.

The event was an overwhelming success and marked record-breaking participation across the board, including an impressive 2,500+ total applications submitted. 

A heartfelt thank you to our Career Season sponsors and everyone who contributed to making this year's event such a remarkable achievement!

To view photos and videos from the week's events, visit our Instagram by clicking here. 

Instructor, Lahib Jaddo, will deliver the keynote presentation for TEDxTexasTech's event, "What is...?" on Sunday, March 9th, 2025, at the Frazier Alumni Pavilion.

TEDxTexasTech is an independently organized event that will bring together thought leaders and speakers from various disciplines. Each speaker will share their perspective on the central theme, "What is...?" exploring topics like innovation, identity, and progress in the modern era. Lahib's presentation will focus on the power of art in shaping one’s identity and reflecting on personal experiences.

To learn more about the event, click here.

plaNext-Next Generation Planning, for which Assistant Professor Dr. Asma Mehan is editor-in-chief, is now indexed in Scopus, a highly respected source-neutral abstract and citation database. plaNext-Next Generation Planning is an international peer-reviewed open access e-journal, which is also indexed in Google Scholar and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

To access the journal, click here.

Assistant Professor Dr. Asma Mehan and LPMD student Sadaf Alikhani and have co-authored a book chapter titled “From Ostads to Architects: Evolution of Iranian Architectural Practices in Residential Buildings,” now available online as part of the Persian Vernacular Architecture volume published by Springer Nature.

This chapter explores the transformation of Iranian architectural practices from traditional master builders (Ostads) to contemporary architects, examining how vernacular knowledge continues to shape sustainable design in residential architecture.

To read the chapter, click here.

Assistant Professor Dr. Asma Mehan’s book, Tehran: From Sacred to Radical, originally published by Routledge in 2022, has been translated by Dr. Mohsen Kameli and Yasaman Gholami and released in Persian.

This edition extends the critical exploration of Tehran’s urban transformations to a wider Persian-speaking audience, offering insights into the city’s evolving architectural and social landscapes.

CALLING ALL STUDENTS, ALUMS, FACULTY, AND FORMER DEANS: As we look forward to celebrating the 100th anniversary of Texas Tech’s architecture program in 2027, we’re calling on the HCOA community to share their memories and experiences with the program. YOUR STORIES are a vital part of the shared history of our College. Our upcoming book, Limitless Horizons: The First 100 Years of Texas Tech’s Architecture Program, will highlight this rich legacy.

We invite YOU to help us fully capture the impact and influence of Texas Tech’s architecture program—stories that reflect the experiences we all remember, share, and celebrate!

All contributors will be recognized in the book.

To share your story, please reach out to 1972 alumni Noel Barrick and Gary Lindsey at architecture.limitlesshorizons@ttu.edu.

Donations are critical to the advancement of our program. With your contributions, we can fund our merit-based scholarships, recruit extraordinary faculty, fund research endeavors and improve our facilities. No gift is too small to make an impact on our students, faculty, and staff. If you're interested in giving, the Texas Tech University Office of Institutional Advancement has a convenient web portal for making secure, online donations to one of the established Huckabee College of Architecture funds. Click here to donate.

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