Prominent Women Architects from Woodbury University School of Architecture Address Facades+ Conference

Facades+ leads a robust dialogue that covers all aspects of building envelopes. The event is instrumental in creating resilient buildings, systems integration, and a sustainable built environment. Facades+ hosts an ongoing nationwide series of forums and conferences, with stops in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, D.C., among others.

Barbara Bestor, director of Woodbury University's Julius Shulman Institute and founding chair of the school's graduate architecture program, spoke about her role as an urban mediator. Drawing upon her experience as designer of the award-winning Beats by Dre headquarters in Culver City, among other projects, Bestor's session highlighted the interplay between interior and exterior, small and large scale spaces and traditions of high and low design.

Also building on Woodbury's reputation at the intersection of cutting edge architectural practice and hands-on scholarship, associate dean Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter joined a lively panel discussion with such leading design educators as UCLA's Neil Denari, USC's Quinyun Ma and Cal Poly Pomona's Michael Fox. The panel examined how future architects and engineers are being taught systems integration and building performance.

At an event that took place concurrently with the Facades+ conference, Interior Architecture Prof. Annie Chu, FAIA, moderated Haworth + Gensler's 5th Annual Women in Design Breakfast Panel. Chu's firm, Chu + Gooding Architects, is part of the primary design team that has been awarded the $350 million Los Angeles Convention Center renovation project. In 2014, Chu received the International Interior Design Association's Leadership Award of Excellence from IIDA's Southern California chapter and was recently named to the American Institute of Architects Fellowship program.

The Facades+ conference and Haworth + Gensler's Breakfast Panel follow a recent Los Angeles Magazine article, "Six Women Who Changed the Face of L.A. Architecture," showcasing three leaders from the School of Architecture. The magazine lauded Barbara Bestor as a "prolific designer who has her hand in residential, retail, and office projects spread throughout the city," citing her whimsical Beats by Dre creation as "one of the coolest offices in the world." Bestor's work there was also showcased in the April 4 issue of New York magazine. Residential architect and wife of late Woodbury professor Nick Roberts, Cory Buckner earned kudos for "her love of clean lines and breathtaking views" reflected in work that stretches from Malibu to Beverly Hills. Also winning high praise was iconic local landscape architect Mia Lehrer, a member of the Dean's Advisory Council at Woodbury, who has "helped the city add to its relatively paltry stock of public spaces with iconic, forward-thinking projects like the Annenberg Community Beach House, Vista Hermosa Park, and the Silver Lake Reservoir Pedestrian Path."

The School of Architecture's undergraduate Architecture program was ranked among the top 25 nationally, in the 2016 DesignIntelligence survey of the nation's Top 35 undergraduate architecture programs. The undergraduate Interior Architecture program has been ranked second best in the West, according to the DesignIntelligence 2015 ratings of America's Best Architecture & Design Schools. Woodbury's Architecture program was recently accepted by the National Council of Architects Registration Boards (NCARB) as one of only fourteen schools in the country whose students will now have an opportunity to achieve architectural licensure upon graduation.

Woodbury University School of Architecture is a network of hubs strategically sited within the Southern California megalopolis: Los Angeles, Burbank, Hollywood, and San Diego. Together, these sites form a critical infrastructure for architectural investigations. The school's undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture and interior architecture train students as entrepreneurs, architect citizens, and cultural builders. Explore the program at architecture.woodbury.edu.

About Woodbury University
Founded in 1884, Woodbury University is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in Southern California. With campuses in Burbank/Los Angeles and San Diego, the university offers bachelor's degrees from the School of Architecture, School of Business, School of Media, Culture & Design, and College of Transdisciplinarity, along with a Master of Business Administration, Master of Arts in Media for Social Justice, Master of Architecture (MArch), Master of Interior Architecture (MIA), Master of Science in Architecture (MSArch), Master of Leadership, and Master of Arts in Media for Social Justice. The San Diego campus offers Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture, Master of Interior Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees, as well as an MSArch degree with a concentration in Real Estate Development and Landscape + Urbanism. Woodbury ranks 15th among the nation's "25 Colleges That Add the Most Value," according to Money Magazine and is a 2014-2015 College of Distinction. Visit woodbury.edu for more information.

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