Lonn Combs, Assistant Professor

Lonn Combs awarded American Academy in Rome Prize.

Each year, through a national competition, the Rome Prize is awarded to approximately thirty individuals who represent the highest standard of excellence in the arts and humanities. Prize recipients are invited to Rome for six months to two years to immerse themselves in the Academy community where they will enjoy a once in a lifetime opportunity to expand their own professional, artistic, or scholarly pursuits, drawing on their colleagues’ erudition and experience and on the inestimable resources that Italy, Europe, and the Academy have to offer.

Lonn Combs, currently teaching in our undergraduate,  was selected as a 2011-12 Rome Prize winner. There are only two individuals that are awarded this prestigious architecture prize throughout the US every year.

Links to announcements:
http://www.gg-art.com/news/newsread/artnews72483.html
http://www.aarome.org/

Professor Combs Biography

Lonn Combs studied architecture at the University of Kentucky in the United States, where he received his first professional degree in architecture in 1992. He later received a post-professional degree at Columbia University in New York City, in 2001. Lonn Combs co-founded EASTON+COMBS in 2004 with over ten years of professional experience in Germany, China, and the U.S. He received professional licensure in Germany in 1996 and in the U.S. in 2002. Lonn Combs and Rona Easton were invited to participate in the MoMA P.S.1 Young Architects Program in 2009-10. Lonn Combs was awarded in 2008 the ‘League Prize’ by the Architecture League in New York City and received in 2010-11 Independent Projects awards from the Architecture, Planning and Design Program of the New York State Council on the Arts. A full grant was awarded to support ongoing research and application into lightweight structural membranes for public space implementation.

EASTON+COMBS received Design Merit awards in the AIANY Design Awards 2010 and the 2011 awards programs. Recently they were awarded in the biannual New Practices New York 2010 competition with the ‘highest honor’ within a field of seven new offices recognized as important emerging and innovative practices in New York City.

In tandem with the founding of EASTON+COMBS, Lonn began teaching design studios and has taught at Pratt Institute, City College of New York, and Cornell University. He has served as the Assistant Chair and then the Acting Chair of Undergraduate Architecture at Pratt Institute from 2007-2010. Lonn Combs is currently a Clinical Associate Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Rome Prize Research Topic:

New Vectors of Liquid Stone: Speculations on the Material Innovations of Pier Luigi Nervi and the Roman Tradition

The proposal begins with an analytical approach to the structural systems and material innovations found in Nervi’s applications of reinforced concrete, specifically thin shell systems with novel structural performance and environmental effects. The case studies will focus on the lineage of material innovation from classical to modern times. The research will seek to construct a platform for design speculation incorporating emerging material innovations and computational strategies for managing structural performance, material organization and environmental effects. The examinations of the innovations of Nervi will depend on extensive site visitations in Rome and throughout Italy. It is through this context of historical and incremental innovation in building culture that this project will explore alternative futures with the use of advanced computational strategies as well as physical material research that focus on recent breakthroughs in performance enhancement, fabric reinforcement and environmental performance of emerging material methodologies of concrete and cast material systems.–

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