Career Award

The EDRA Career Award is given in recognition of a career of sustained and significant contributions to environment design research, practice, or teaching.

Eligibility

Candidates in the area of design research shall have produced a body of work that provides significant insights into the relationship between environment and behavior. Candidates in the area of practice shall have made significant and lasting contributions to the planning and design of the environment through the application of design research. Candidates in the area of teaching shall have made positive, stimulating and nurturing influences upon students over an extended period of time and have inspired a generation of students who have contributed to environmental design research.

 

Documentation

Nominations (by self or others) are invited; 1) a one page summary explaining the reasons for the nomination signed by three EDRA members; 2) a resume summarizing the career and achievements of the candidate; and 3) additional supporting materials illustrating the candidate's contributions [such as students letters of support].

The deadline to nominate a candidate for the 2012 EDRA Awards was November 11, 2011.
If you have questions about the EDRA Awards program, contact:

 


Lynne M. Dearborn
Past-Chair, EDRA Board
Awards Committee Chair
dearborn@illinois.edu

2011 Galen Cranz
Galen Cranz wins 2011 EDRA Career Award

Galen Cranz, PhD, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, is the 2011 recipient of the EDRA Career Award.

 

The accomplishments of Galen Cranz, PhD, in teaching, research, and design have inspired a generation of students and professionals. Her ability to transcend the boundaries of discipline, to cross from meticulous intellectual work to applied research and design, and her passion, integrity, and deep concern for the rightness of all things and places we use embody what is best about EDRA.

 
Her decades of teaching and lectures at U.C. Berkeley and at numerous other national and international institutions and conferences have exposed individuals from many fields to the effect of the environment on people. In over three decades of teaching, she has served as a mentor and role model for students. Her survey classes in social factors in architecture at Berkeley have touched thousands of students while her graduate courses and advising have nurtured many others. Many of these students are currently practicing informed design, teaching, and carrying out research across the U.S. and internationally.

Dr. Cranz’s research stretches in scale from the human body to large urban parks, and her work has also made social factors in design accessible to a wider audience beyond the academy. Her book The Politics of Park Design, A History of Urban Parks in America is a staple reading for landscape architecture students across the country.
More recently, her book The Chair won the 2004 EDRA Achievement Award and gained the attention of the international media. For this book, Galen was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air by Terry Gross as well as on Australian and British radio. As the result of this research, she also consulted in ergonomics with furniture and automobile manufacturers.

 

Additionally, although not formally trained as a designer, Dr. Cranz has transcended the role of researcher and academic by participating in and winning design competitions for urban parks. Perhaps most notable is her collaboration with architect Bernard Tschumi which was the winning entry for the competition for the design of Parc de la Villette in Paris.

 

Dr. Cranz has played a significant role in advocating for assessment of designed spaces. For many years, students in her Social Factors in Design class worked in teams to conduct post-occupancy evaluations of buildings on the campus and in the community. This process not only taught design students about the difference between design intention and actual use, but also specific methods for collecting information: interviews, surveys, as-built drawings, etc. At the 2010 EDRA conference, she presented an assessment of this work and proposed a very critical need to shift from evaluation to assessment.

 

It is due to this type of long-range view of the evolving nature of environmental design research as well as her impressive accomplishments in teaching, research, and applied design that we award Dr. Cranz the 2011 EDRA Career Award.

2010 Karen Franck
Karen Franck wins 2010 EDRA Career Award

Karen Franck, Ph.D. Professor, College of Architecture and Design, New Jersey Institute of Technology, is the 2010 recipient of the EDRA Career Award.

 

Dr. Franck is an acknowledged leader in built environment research and has developed very important bridges between the fields of architecture, environmental psychology, urban planning, feminist theory, and phenomenology. Her innovative and highly original research has greatly contributed to the advancement of design research and practice. She has tackled diverse topics and completed pioneering studies on social and spatial issues relating to public space, community design, housing, the process of design, and the forces that shape the process of design. Dr. Franck has very effectively collaborated with a multitude of scholars and practitioners on writings and projects that have offered practitioners and researchers alternative and better solutions to physical and social issues.

 

Dr. Franck has held the position of Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology since 1981. In addition, she serves as the Director of the Ph.D. Program in Urban Systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Dr. Franck has engaged in consulting related to housing choice for people with developmental disabilities, dwelling design and changing family composition, and social and architectural evaluation of college dormitories.

 

Dr. Franck’s wide-ranging publications include: Design through Dialogue: A Guide for Clients and Architects (with Teresa von Sommaruga Howard, 2009), Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Public Life (with Quentin Stevens, 2007), Architecture from the Inside Out: From the Body, the Senses, the Site and the Community (with R. Bianca Lepori, 2007), Food + City (2005), Food + Architecture (2002), Architecture Inside Out (2000), Nancy Wolf: Hidden Cities, Hidden Longings (1996), Ordering Space: Types in Architecture and Design (1994), A Feminist Approach to Architecture: Acknowledging Women’s Ways of Knowing (1999) New Households, New Housing, (with Sherry Ahrentzen, 1989).

 

Dr. Karen Franck has been a long-term member of EDRA, serving as an active member of the Urban Planning, Design Research and Design Education Networks. Most recently Dr. Franck has been contributing to the emerging symposia on bodies, space, design - the connections between these elements, and human experience.

2009 Sherry Ahrentzen
Sherry Ahrentzen wins 2009 EDRA Career Award

The 2009 EDRA Career Award will be given to Sherry Ahrentzen, Ph.D. for lifetime achievement in environment and behavior research and education.  This award is to be presented at EDRA’s 40th annual conference on May 30, 2009 in Kansas City, Missouri.  Dr. Ahrentzen’s career has influenced a generation of young scholars who has made their own mark on the field of environment and behavior studies.  Her work in gender studies, housing, and design education has created a rigorous body of research that has influenced both policy and the built environment.  The Environmental Design Research Association honors the profound influence that Dr. Ahrentzen has made in helping to create more humane environments.

 

As a leader in environment and behavior research, she has championed the needs of underserved and marginalized populations who are often left out of the design and planning process.  Dr. Ahrentzen is the co-editor with Karen A. Franck of the book, New Households, New Housing which is a well respected source for understanding the housing needs of America’s families. 

 

As a Professor of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, she helped develop a graduate program that is one of the top in the environment and behavior field while mentoring an impressive array of doctoral and masters students.  In addition, she was honored in 2003 as a Distinguished Professor by the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture.  At Arizona State University, in addition to being a Research Professor in the College of Design, she is the Interim Director and Associate Director for Research at the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family, where she is “educating a new audience of developers and policy makers regarding the impact of the physical environment on human behavior.

 

As a long standing member of EDRA, Dr. Ahrentzen has served the organization as a member of the Board of Directors.  She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and on the advisory board of the Housing and Custom Home Knowledge Committee of the AIA.
Dr. Ahrentzen’s impressive career of research, advising, and teaching has made its mark in the challenging arena of built form and policy.  For these past achievements and ongoing accomplishments, the Environmental Design Research Association is proud to award Dr. Sherry Ahrentzen the 2009 EDRA Career Award.

2008 Jay Farbstein
2008 Career Award - Jay Farbstein

Jay Farbstein, Phd, FAIA received the 2008 EDRA Career Award at the EDRA 39 Conference in Veracruz, Mexico. A licensed architect in the state of California, Jay has a distinguished career that bridges teaching, practice, research and consulting.  He has incorporated environment and behavior methods and knowledge into a body of work that spans over 30 years. He is the co-author of People in Places: Experiencing, Using and Changing the Built Environment with Min Kantrowitz, as well as the author of numerous articles and book chapters. As principal of Farbstein Associates in San Luis Obispo, California, he served as the mentor for a whole generation of young architects and planners. His firm exemplifies the incorporation of environment and behavior research into architecture in the fields of master planning, architectural programming, and post-occupancy evaluation. His work with federal agencies including the US Postal Service led to new aesthetic guidelines for new buildings. In addition, his book, Correctional Facility Planning and Design has been used extensively by both government officials and designers.

 

Mr. Farbstein has informed environment and behavior research in several key areas including post-occupancy evaluation, architectural programming, and needs assessment. Jay served on the EDRA Board of Directors from 1981- 1984 as both Chair and Vice Chair. His work has been recognized by the US Postal Service, National Endowment for the Arts, and American Institute of Architects Committee on Architecture for Justice. Mr. Farbstein has a Bachelors’ of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, a Masters’ in Architecture from Harvard University, and a PhD from the University of London.

Mr. Farbstein has informed environment and behavior research in several key areas including post-occupancy evaluation, architectural programming, and needs assessment. Jay served on the EDRA Board of Directors from 1981- 1984 as both Chair and Vice Chair. His work has been recognized by the US Postal Service, National Endowment for the Arts, tand American Institute of Architects Committee on Architecture for Justice. Mr. Farbstein has a Bachelors’ of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, a Masters’ in Architecture from Harvard University, and a PhD from the University of London.