Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
Valerian Miranda, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, has been named director of the college’s CRS Center for Leadership and Management in the Design and Construction Industry, thusly continuing a relationship that began 25 years ago when Miranda went to work for the center’s famous founding firm, CRS.
Prior to his appointment, Miranda had served as interim director of the CRS Center since September 2008. He began his professional career at the CRS firm in 1984 after receiving a master’s degree from Texas A&M. In 1991, he returned to College Station as the college’s first Bill Caudill Research Fellow. Caudill, and John Rowlett, former Texas A&M architecture professors, were the founding members of CRS. In 1948, Wallie Scott, Caudill’s former student, joined the partnership.
“I am very pleased that Dr. Miranda accepted to serve as the CRS Center director,” said Jorge Vanegas, interim dean of the College of Architecture. “His gracious and superb performance as the interim director of the center was clearly recognized by the numerous nominations and expressions of support he received during the search for a new director.”
A professional architect by training, Miranda holds both master’s and doctorate degrees in architecture from Texas A&M University, as well as an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Madras in Chennai, India.
“My prior knowledge of the CRS firm and its founders has helped me understand, in detail, the center’s potential to fulfill its charter in the present and foreseeable future,” he said.
The CRS Center was established in 1990 through a generous endowment by CRS, an internationally renowned architectural firm with humble beginnings in Texas. The firm was later honored during the College of Architecture’s 2005 Centennial Celebration as “Firm of the Century” for being the one firm that most significantly influenced the college’s first 100 years. (See related story)
The CRS Center’s mission is to lead in improving the quality of business practice and management in the planning, design, and construction industry through distinctive educational and knowledge-generating activities. It also houses the historically important archives of CRS and its successor firm, CRSS.
As director, Miranda is looking to extend the center’s founding intent through collaboration between academia and practice, facilitation of inter-disciplinary activities, sponsorship of student efforts, leadership in innovation, and by increasing the accessibility of the CRS archives.
In addition to the center’s current activities, which include hosting the annual Rowlett Distinguished Firm Lecture Series, which brings speakers of national and international significance to Texas A&M, Miranda hopes to guide the center through several new initiatives.
He said the center is preparing an interdisciplinary proposal to gain funding for digitizing center’s 40,000 slides and 1,000 architectural programs.
“These slides and programs contain valuable information of innovation in energy-efficient residential, school and institutional building design, particularly relevant in the current social and economic context,” he said.
His is also planning a series of roundtable discussions with leaders and innovators in the design and construction industries. Such events, he said, will further strengthen industry relations and participation with the college.
He’s also hoping the center can be a focal point for a new publication.
“I want to advance and disseminate CRS’s major contributions to architectural practice,” he said, “by developing a series of monographs that will form the basis for a major publication and potentially a scholarly periodical of value to both academics and professionals.”
The CRS archives tell the story of a firm that was responsible for a number of innovations in architectural practice that today, Miranda said, are taken for granted. “Architectural programming, the concept of the team approach to architecture, research-based architectural design, and user participation, as well as how those innovations came about and what they did are all there in the archives,” he said.
“Another really important issue related to the archives,” he added, “is that CRS identified very long ago the importance of regionalism in architecture and tried to define what it was, the importance of people using buildings.”
In fact, in an obituary for Bill Caudill, the Architectural Record called him “the people’s architect,” which at the time, Miranda said, was an atypical, if not unheard of, reference.
Known today as a firm that was way ahead of the curve, Miranda said archives also show that early on CRS was focusing on energy-conscious design.
“Thirty years ago, CRS was doing experiments in resource conservation in their residential designs, designing homes that used lesser amounts of materials and used natural means of cooling and ventilation. Suddenly,” he said, “that’s become really important to society all over again.”
In addition to directing the CRS Center, Miranda teaches graduate level courses in architectural design and architectural research methods, and supervises students in the Department of Architecture’s masters’ and doctoral programs. His scholarly interests center on design process, environmentally responsible design and architectural computing.
As a practicing architect, he has designed buildings for a variety of uses, including commercial, multi-family residential, health care, institutional, and educational, in the United States, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He also consults and lectures internationally on design process, architectural computing and sustainable design.
“On a personal level,” said Vanegas, in appointing Miranda as the CRS director, “I have valued his contribution as part of the leadership team of directors of the five centers of excellence in the college. I have no doubt that, under his vision and able leadership, he will take the CRS Center to even higher levels of excellence, significance, relevance, reach and impact, than those achieved to date.”
- Posted: March 2, 2009 -
