Architecture and Planning - University at Buffalo

Beloved by students and colleagues alike for the enthusiasm, empathy, and inclusiveness he brings to the classroom, Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, chair and associate professor of urban and regional planning, has received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

One of the highest honors a SUNY faculty member can receive, the award is for those who consistently demonstrate superior teaching, rigorous methodologies, and a deep commitment to student success.

An internationally recognized researcher, policy analyst, and data scientist, Emmanuel investigates the planning processes and institutional structures that impede and “weaponize” planning interventions against historically marginalized communities. Since joining UB in 2017, his “flexible pedagogy across diverse formats, extensive mentoring, embodiment of high professional standards, and vibrant teacher-scholar profile have resulted in transformational learning for our students,” says Dean Julia Czerniak.

Keep reading to learn more about Emmanuel and his impact on our School and surrounding community: https://archplan.buffalo.edu/news/2026/emmanuel-frimpong-boamah-chancellorsaward.html



Photo: Douglas Levere

💡 Are you interested in real estate, site planning, public transit, and housing development?

🎓 Are you a current graduate student looking to add another feather in your cap? Or a current working professional hoping to level-up in your career related to planning, finance, or project management?

🖥️ Our Affordable Housing online certificate program prepares students to develop and implement cost-effective, inclusive housing strategies that expand access to affordable housing and support long-term community well-being.

Learn more and apply: https://archplan.buffalo.edu/academics/graduate-degrees/advanced-certificates/graduate-certificate-in-affordable-housing.html

💰 Bonus: Application fees are waived if you apply by June 30th!

Gregory Delaney, clinical associate professor and Director of Experiential Learning, recently sat down with Archinect to discuss our School’s distinct focus on impact and action. Greg is one of many faculty members who has made the implementation of experiential learning projects a central part of our work, championing our School’s culture of opportunity.

“We try to offer a wide range of experiences to students where we physically leave our campus to engage with our neighbors in the places where they live and work — from community organizations to advanced manufacturing companies,” says Greg, “Whether through studio trips, study abroad, or research efforts that engage broader communities.”

Today, we have more studios collaborating with community organizations than at any time in our history. Thanks to Archinect for highlighting just a few:

- Ecological Practices Studio, “Hot Street Futures” - Kristine Stiphany
- Reimagining Kissing Bridge - Gregory Delaney
- Senior-Friendly Manufactured Housing Prototypes Studio, Rural Housing Coalition of NY - Nick Rajkovich
- Feeding Prosperity: Food System Strategies for Erie County, NY - Samina Raja
- A City of Parks and Trails: A Comprehensive Parks Plan for North Tonawanda - Ernie Sternberg
- The Beautiful Game: Gensler “Big Projects Studio” - Joyce Hwang
- Digitizing + Designing with Reclaimed Medina Sandstone (for The Medina Triennial) - Nicholas Bruscia and Tim Noble with James Beckett
- The Assembly House - Dennis Maher

Learn more about our approach to experiential learning: https://archinect.com/features/article/150542575/beyond-the-studio-university-at-buffalo-s-experiential-learning-approach


Photos: Douglas Levere, Gregory Delaney

Li Yin, an urban planner who applies the tools of technology and spatial modeling to understand the interplay of human activity and urban space, has been promoted to full professor in our Department of Urban and Regional Planning! The elevation to the highest academic rank possible recognizes sustained excellence and impact in research, teaching, and service at an international level.

Learn more:
https://archplan.buffalo.edu/news/2026/li-yin-full-professor.html

A graduate studio worked this spring to address an urgent and often overlooked challenge of housing in rural communities — ensuring that it is affordable, durable, energy efficient, and accessible.

12 students worked in small teams, each tasked with tackling issues of energy efficiency, durability, climate resilience and universal design. The studio partnered with the Rural Housing Coalition of New York, which received a grant from AARP to help sponsor the studio, led by Nicholas Rajkovich, associate professor in the Department of Architecture.

The studio offers a model for how universities, housing advocates, public agencies and manufacturers can work together to improve housing. As New York confronts an aging population, rising housing costs and a changing climate, the studio’s work points toward a future in which manufactured homes are not treated as a compromise, but as a platform for safer, healthier and more resilient rural housing.

Learn more: https://archplan.buffalo.edu/news/2026/studio-to-improve-manufactured-housing.html


Photos: Nicholas Rajkovich

Caroline Attardo Genco, provost and senior vice president at Tufts University, has been named ’s 16th president, becoming the first woman and Buffalo native to lead the university. Her appointment was approved by the SUNY Board of Trustees Tuesday following an international search.

Genco will join the UB community on August 10, 2026. Learn more ➡️ http://ms.spr.ly/6180vb2V4

Now more than ever, designing for resilience requires architects to interpret and act upon expanding domains of data that track everything from building energy use, to greenhouse gas emissions, to clean energy production.

Associate Professor Martha Bohm’s current research explores how students designing in the context of a warming planet construct new understandings from the chaos of information surrounding us.

This Spring, she and a cohort of Master of Architecture students at UB dug into this through a seminar inviting the aspiring architects to translate mounds of climate-related data into inquiries in materiality and making.

The exploratory course – the first of its kind offered at UB – produced a series of prototypes and installations that together construct a new approach to design for resilience – one that uses materials as a physical vocabulary and the act of making as an investigatory process.

Learn more:https://archplan.buffalo.edu/news/2026/climate-data-sensemaking.html


Photos: Maryanne Schultz

As Molly Riordan’s career progressed, working in the field of food systems planning, she found herself consistently forging a path where one hadn’t previously existed. After more than a decade in the field, she joined the doctoral program at UB's School of Architecture and Planning, where she spent her first year learning how to write good research questions, better understanding planning theory, and creating bonds with supportive and intelligent mentors and colleagues.

From Cornell University’s Master of Regional Planning program, where she specialized in food systems planning, to the City of Philadelphia, where she supported efforts to procure high-quality, nutritious food for public programs, to working fulltime at The Center for Good Food Purchasing, a Berkeley-based nonprofit — Molly’s journey has always been fueled by an urgency to provide good nutrition. “The policies, programs, and systems that I’ve been working in — and that planners learn a lot about — are not flexible enough to meet that urgency,” she noted.

A highlight of her first year at UB, in addition to being selected as a WNY Prosperity Fellow for the 2026-27 academic year (the first time a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning student has won), has been her role as graduate research assistant in the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab. She’s been working on a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is examining community food systems dashboards and developing guidelines for how to leverage tools to advance data equity for food equity.

Keep reading to learn more about Molly’s tremendous accomplishments and what drew her to UB: https://archplan.buffalo.edu/news/2026/molly-riordan-phd-student-spotlight.html

Rethinking design for resilient street environments, starting in Buffalo!

A graduate architecture studio this past semester, “Streets as Urban Commons: Designing for Extreme Heat Resilience,” set out to examine a simple question — “What does urban resilience look like in places that are not growing, not resourced, and not typically centered in design discourse?”

Their work focused on the Fillmore corridor on Buffalo’s historically under-invested East Side, and five primary east-west streets that intersect it, each representing a distinct set of urban and climatic conditions. Along these intersecting streets, the students developed scenarios for reconfiguring street right of way and adjacent parcels into integrated cooling streetscapes, collective housing, urban agriculture, and civic spaces for neighborhood residents.

While the Spring 2026 studio is centered on Buffalo’s East Side, the broader initiative is intended to serve as a model for climate adaptation across New York State. Meanwhile, the Rudy Bruner Center — with research assistance from Christian Powell (END ’24, MUP ’26) — has been laying the groundwork for development of a statewide guide, identifying the various barriers that prevent municipalities from implementing heat-mitigation strategies.

This studio was led by Dr. Kristine Stiphany, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture and director of the Design for Resilient Environments Lab, in collaboration with adjunct instructor Jorge Ituarte Arreola, with support from Dr. Lauren Fischer, assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and research director of the Rudy Bruner Center for Urban Excellence, and Mohamed Aly Etman, director of the Building and Environmental Visualization Lab. With the support of a two-year $360,000 grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, these three research labs have joined forces to create the Streetscape Toolkit for Extreme Heat (STEH), a flexible design guide to help municipalities adapt to rising temperatures. Recognizing the budget limitations felt everywhere, but particularly in the most vulnerable communities, the STEH will be scalable in design, ensuring that everyone can find a way to use it.

“Externally funded projects like this one give students a rare opportunity to pursue questions their professors don’t yet have answers to,” says Dr. Fischer. By working alongside practitioners and becoming subject-matter experts themselves, students have the agency to shape the direction of the studio and see how their ideas can lead to real-world implementation.

Continue reading to learn more: https://archplan.buffalo.edu/news/2026/design-for-resilient-street-environments.html

Join us this Thursday, 5/28, for a Torn Space Theater building tour, led by Assistant Professor Christopher Romano!

The tour explores the AIAWNY 2025 Design Award winning project by Studio North Architecture (Chris Romano and Adjunct Instructors Lukas Fetzko and Michael Hoover), “REVEAL/CONCEAL,” the insertion of two additions into a composition of three buildings dating back to 1895. REVEAL is a 400sf addition bounded by Torn Space Theater, the Adam Mickiewicz club, and the Light/Station studio. CONCEAL is a two-story, 1200sf addition to the North of the theater, spatially building over the volume of an earlier addition while bending 90 degrees along Wilson Street. Materially, both additions maintain austerity with dark finishes and minimal punched openings, highlighted by metallic elements emphasizing the utilitarian approach. Together, REVEAL/CONCEAL forms a single, 8,500sf cultural venue on Buffalo’s East Side where additions serve as catalysts for building and neighborhood revitalization.

Participants of the tour will examine both completed and ongoing adaptive reuse projects which range in size, function, and stakeholder engagement yet exist within a single property. Come hear how Studio North’s working methodology frames a process of material investigation by exploring overlaps between precision and imprecision as well as relying on local skillsets. The aim will be to trace the evolution of this multi-phase project as it attempts to find opportunities for innovation using conventional material systems constrained by limited budgets. It will acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of the work, the diverse collaborators that have influenced its production, and how ideas of imperfection, recalibration, and resourcefulness have led to invention and new directions for the team.

RSVP today! https://pci.jotform.com/form/261394403318960?ct=t()