Techbuilt Open House

September 11, 2016 In Events

Techbuilt Open House

An open house will be held on Sunday, October 2 at 1 PM, 2 PM, and 3 PM.

Techbuilt homes are considered the best of the many prefab houses that were developed to help solve the post- WWII home shortage. Created by Boston area architect Carl Koch, a modernist who had studied under Gropius and Breuer, his design was a simple and inexpensive two-story bi-level house that could be built in a few days and added to when the family grew. Anitra and Jesse Gordons’ home, built in 1955, is one of the first built in Ann Arbor.

Click here to purchase tickets to the event.

The Gordon house on Chalmers Drive sits on the crest of a gentle ridge nestled in an encircling forest setting. On one side, steps descend to a swimming pool, open to the sky; on the other, a thick growth of tall trees provides a sheltering canopy for a spacious screened-in porch. This is a perfect site for a Techbuilt house, whose modern design allowed for ample light, open interiors and a settled-in-the-earth feeling.

Techbuilt, the brainchild of architect Carl Koch, solved two problems for homebuilders—wasted space in the basement and unusable space in the attic. By sinking the foundation a half story in the ground, the basement became the first floor. The second floor then rises to the pitched roof, whose gentle incline creates the dual effect of a cathedral ceiling in the center of the room and attic eaves at the edges. Because the barn-like frame of the building carried the weight, it was easy to install the standardized pre-fabricated wall panels and windows. Once the foundation was poured, the shell of a Techbuilt house could be put up in two days.

The Gordon house reveals the many strengths of the Techbuilt concept. Structural features—post and lintel framing, a roof visibly supported by solid but slender wooden beams, wall panels and windows placed to provide light or privacy, and an open interior wall-to-wall—present the durable, rational design elements typical of the original building. More recent modifications and additions demonstrate the flexibility of the original design, such that the four major additions authorized by the Gordons extend and cooperate with the lines of the existing structure. The large screen porch built over a wooded outlook, for example, continues the roofline in a natural extension, its gentle angle creating a cozy feeling in an open and airy space.

The Gordons are the fourth owners of the house. The second owner put in the swimming pool. Outside the house, one path leads to a short walk to Mallett’s Creek and another walk meanders in the densely wooded area nearby, accentuating the cabin-in-the-woods feel of the site. An original carport blocks the house from any view from the street. As with modern houses, the original entrance to this house was designed not to be immediately obvious to a visitor, and when you stepped in you could go up or down stairs. The Techbuilt design was the forerunner of the split-level house. These houses have a sleek, modern look and two levels of windows. Balconies could be added on, either on the ends or along the sides, and as for furniture, Carl Koch designed Techbuilt Spacemaking Furniture for those who found conventional furniture ill-adapted for use in these houses. Koch’s book, At Home with Tomorrow, catches the spirit of those days just on the verge of the Space Age and an encounter with a Techbuilt house provides an indelible insight into a vision for affordable living carried to an exceptionally detailed and successful resolution.

Written by Jeffrey Welch

August 17, 2016 In Events

Ann Arbor Hills Walking Tour

On September 4th at 2:00 PM Grace Shackman will lead a walking tour in an area filled with Mid-Century-Modern gems, including houses by Metcalf, Osler, Brigham, Johe, Muschenheim, Olencki and Albano. Meet at Heather Way just south of Devonshire.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at http://www.a2modern.myevent.com/

August 5, 2016 In Events

Law Library Tour

On August 21st at 2 PM there will be a rare chance to see the University of Michigan Law School addition.

Almost entirely underground, yet light and airy, Gunnar Birkert’s 1981 law library addition is an amazing feat. The law school desperately needed more space for a library, yet were loath to build anything that would impair the look of their 1920s neo-Gothic buildings. Birkerts solved the problem by building a structure three stories underground, lighted by V-shaped troughs that bring in light from several directions, aided by the limestone base that reflects light and the mirrored window frames. Not open to the general public, this is a unique opportunity to see the underground library, led by Margaret Leary, Director of the Library when the addition was built.

For tickets go to http://www.a2modern.myevent.com/

July 5, 2016 In Events

Livingston Bandemer/Mirsky Home Tour

August 14th at 1 PM, 2 PM, and 3 PM. This is one of several homes designed by architect James Livingston in the Arbor Hills neighborhood. It is newly restored by John and Renate Mirsky and recently featured on a tour during the national Docomomo convention, which explored modern architecture in the Detroit area. Tickets can be purchased at http://www.a2modern.myevent.com/

When John and Renate Mirsky were searching for a new home, they were not specifically looking for a mid-century modern one, but “spotting the listing in an emailing, I immediately recognized that the house fulfilled all of our priority wants,” remembers John. Their wish list included large windows to let in the sun, an open floor plan, and room for a garden.

The home was built in 1956 for William and Mary Bandemer. William was vice president of King Seeley and a Republican city council member from 1960-1964. Before marriage, Mary had been secretary to long-time mayor William Brown. The house was designed by James Livingston, who at the same time did one next door for Mary’s older sister, Margaret, and her husband Paul Greene. The two houses share a driveway and are both MCM but are quite different, although they share some traits like cove lighting and the same woodwork inside.

When Livingston designed the Mirskys’ house he was in his mid-thirties and moonlighting from his day job working for architect Walter Anicka. Joining with Bob Chase, another Anika employee, they worked evenings and weekends on their own projects. According to Chase, Livingston was the driving force, making the initial contacts and finding out what the clients wanted. Livingston clearly didn’t do cookie cutter houses, as reflected by the two sisters’ houses, but his designs were always modern. “All of Livingston’s houses were contemporary, with lots of daylight. He did nothing old-fashioned, he wouldn’t waste his time,” says Chase, adding “It was a lot of fun working with him, he was so imaginative.” Livingston went on to start his own firm and work on larger projects including the Bell Tower Hotel, Webers, Lawton school, and Maynard house. He is best remembered as the architect of Lurie Terrace, a pioneering project to house active seniors.

John and Renate moved in the summer of 2015 after spending a year and a half working on the house. They kept the original materials whenever possible or, if not, by using compatible replacements. They refinished all the woodwork and cleaned the metal hardware used throughout the house which often entailed taking things apart. Keeping an open feeling they have furnished the house with MCM furniture such as Herman Miller, Saarinen, and Eames. At the same time as meticulously keeping the Mid Century Modern ambience,they have made the house more energy efficient with a geothermal furnace, tripled glazed windows, andinsulation above the ceiling and in the crawl space.

Enthusiastic gardeners, they are using the original landscape plans by Edward Eichstadt, a Detroit-based landscaper whose projects included Cranbrook, the GM Tech Center and the basic plan for U-M Botanical Gardens, as a basis for future changes. The land sloping down to Hill Street is a natural area, perennial gardens and raised bed vegetable gardens are on the side, and fruit trees in front.

May 2, 2016 In Events

Wells Bennett / Barbara Bergman Open House

Saturday, May 14th, at 2 PM, 3 PM and 4 PM

This is the first modern home that Wells Ira Bennett designed, although at that time, 1953, he’d designed almost thirty houses in more traditional styles. He is best remembered for hiring a group of stellar modern architects while dean from 1938 to 1957 of U-M’s College of Architecture.

Bennett arrived at U-M in 1912 as an instructor and rose to leadership through his early interest in low-cost housing and city planning. As a practicing architect, Bennett was active after 1921, developing a considerable residential practice, mainly with faculty clients. His first project was a home for himself and his family at 500 Highland. He kept busy in the 1920s and early 1930s, designing homes in the styles of the time, mainly Tudor and Colonial Revivals. He stopped during the Depression, when few could afford to build, and then became too busy in his years as dean.

Taking over the deanship from Emil Lorch, he followed Lorch’s example of encouraging new ideas and modern styles. He invited many of leading architects of the day to participate in seminars and conferences. After WWII, he began hiring some of the stars of Modernism, luring both Walter Sanders and William Muschenheim from successful practices in New York City, and Edward Olencki and Joe Albano, both of whom studied under and then worked with Mies van der Rohe, from Chicago. He also hired talented U-M grads such as Robert Metcalf and Tivadar Balogh. These hires not only brought prestige to the U-M architecture school but built many fine examples of modern architecture in the Ann Arbor area.

In 1953, as Bennett was nearing retirement, and after a long hiatus, he designed a house, this one again for himself. He sited it on the front lawn of his first house, on land that sloped down to Geddes. Although this was his first modern house, he had by then seen many examples from the rest of the faculty and of course had a dream group of colleagues to advise him if he had questions. Bennett died in 1966.

Barbara and Rueben Bergman bought the house in 1980 from Sybil Bennett’s estate and moved in with their three sons. They made the house their own –enlarging windows, reconstructing the side balcony so it would be safe, enlarging and improving the master bathroom, making a closet out of a hallway for more storage, while still keeping the totally modern feel and in fact improving it with more natural light pouring in. The most interesting change is a small room with a tower added to what was basically a galley kitchen. Designed by Janet Attarian, it not only makes the interior feel more roomy, but gives the outside of the house more pizazz.

For tickets go to a2modern.myevents.com

Grace Shackman and Jeffrey Welch.

Photo courtesy of Carolyn Lepard

April 26, 2016 In Events

Modern Cuba Encore

Back, by popular demand –

Modern Cuba: Slideshow by Howard Shapiro

May 7, 3-5 PM: Slide show starts promptly at 3:30 PM

Cost: $15: Proceeds will go toward upgrading our website.

Last October Howard participated in a do.co.mo.mo-US sponsored tour “Modern Cuba.” The architecture of Havana from the colonial area to the present was surveyed with an emphasis on the modern era prior to and following the revolution, including interior visits to numerous structures not open to the general public. Howard’s slideshow demonstrates the relationship of changing architectural styles to corresponding social changes and major historical events. Highlights include the Tropicana Cabaret (Max Borges Recio, 1951-1956), the Alfred de Schulthess House (Richard Neutra, 1956), and the National Art Schools (Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi, 1960-1964).

To purchase tickets go to a2modern.myevent.com

April 6, 2016 In Research, Research Articles

A Review of Albert Kahn: Under Construction

Albert Kahn: Under Construction

A Review of the Albert Kahn Building Projects, 1903 – 1943,
University of Michigan Museum of Art
February 27 to July 3

The north wall on level three at the University of Michigan Museum of Art has become Bentley Historical Library turf in the ongoing collaboration between these two kindred institutions. Albert Kahn: Under Construction, a gathering of documentary photographs generated by Detroit architect Albert Kahn’s building projects around the world is the latest installment in an ongoing series of joint exhibitions. Curated by Claire Zimmerman, Professor of Architecture, Albert Kahn: Under Construction surveys the years 1903 to 1943, during which Kahn actively managed an architectural firm that by the early twenties had grown to be the largest in the country. The exhibit dutifully documents stages in the actual construction of selected buildings, but revealed through the accumulation of these 130+ images is a a portrait assembled photo by photo of a man of exceedingly large vision who actively constructed a creative, nimble and versatile organization that helped shape significantly our modern American identity.

Here are some highlights: The photographs have been arranged in nine of eleven panels. Five categories identify the purposes of the selected buildings: Photograph (shows the range of projects), Manufacture (looks at factories and warehouses), Buy and Sell (focuses on city office buildings), Explore and Enlighten (deals with educational and religious structures) and Fight (highlights factories designed for the mass production of large-scale war machines like tanks and heavy bombers).

The projects cover a wide range of building kinds, but the 16 selected for display are significant and soundly represent what was typical of the more than 1,900 buildings produced by the Kahn office within these years.

1903 Packard Motor Company, Detroit
1912 Bates Manufacturing Company, Maine
1915 Natural Sciences Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan
1916 Ford Factory, Omaha, Nebraska
1917 The Vinton Building, Detroit
1917 Krolik and Company, Detroit
1921 Durant Building (General Motors Headquarters), Detroit
1924 Ford Motor Company Power House, Iron Mountain, Michigan
1929 Stalingrad Tractor Plant, Stalingrad, Russia
1930 Autostroy Forge Corporation, Moscow, Russia
1930 Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, Detroit
1938 Chrysler Half-Ton Truck Plant, Warren, Michigan
1939 General Motors Building, New York World’s Fair, New York City
1941 Glenn Martin Assembly Plant, Omaha, Nebraska
1941 Chrysler Tank Arsenal, Warren, Michigan
1943 Willow Run Bomber Plant, Ypsilanti, Michigan

The five categories of building types allow for a chronological arrangement, while the accompanying texts identify key issues and clarify sometimes hard-to-see details. However, on the panels themselves narrative sequencing often proceeds counter intuitively, from right to left rather than from to left to right. Under Explore and Enlighten, panels seven and eight (counting from the left side of the display), for example, the stark image of a steel frame forming the sides and roof of the Shaarey Zedek synagogue (center photograph on the bottom row on panel seven), demonstrates how skeleton and cut stone cladding go together to make a traditional structure. But the story of Shaarey Zedek actually begins on panel eight, so that the evolution of this building tracks from right to left. This trope of reading backward is repeated on other panels. The intention is to counter expectations and by doing so draw closer attention to the content of each photograph.

Another fine surprise is the cluster of photographs on the lower half of panel eight showing massive metal roof trusses being fabricated at Lehigh, Pennsylvania, and by the McClintic Marshall Production Company in New York City. Until the Russians had facilities of their own, design and construction of trusses for their factory buildings took place in the US. These pictures capture close up not just the scale but also the craftsmanship and the elegance of these purely functional elements in factory construction.

In the middle of panel five (under Buy and Sell) a photo of the Durant Building/ General Motors Building presents all four of the magnificently towering blocks of this immense and nearly completed project. To track the evolution of the Durant Building going up, however, begin at the bottom of panel six and work backward. To add to our understanding of the complexity attendant on urban building projects, the modest Vinton Building has been juxtaposed to the Durant Building. Pairing these two projects that were built so close together in time helps with understanding the rapid expansion of Kahn’s architectural office as Detroit escaped the constraints of war rationing and the labor shortage.

The last two panels (Fight) reflect changes both in design and in use of materials as dictated by new requirements for mass production. Even more vast interior spaces for building large, heavy machines for war were needed, and the scale was set for these colossal buildings well before Roosevelt’s declaration of war. The buildings rose rapidly out of empty fields, their proportions shockingly beautiful. Photos showing the fabrication of metal skeletons and then the application of concrete strips convey sleek, aerodynamic qualities in the designs, which become even sleeker when enhanced by ribbons of glass. The special knowledge and skill involved in selecting the photographs for all the projects presented in this exhibit show through everywhere, but these last spectacular choices confirm the fact that Kahn’s firm, right up to his death in 1942, was constantly advancing in its capability of building practically, efficiently and beautifully whatever the need.

More needs to be done both to illuminate the practices of the photographers who took the pictures and to comprehend the methods and interests of the various contractors brought in to do the work of construction. On panel ten, for example, photos of the Glenn Martin Assembly Plant show in one instance black men digging a foundation while next to it is a shot of what appears to be a low-cost workers’ housing development. How were black workers housed? How were they treated? How were vast sites taken in hand so that the work was sequenced, the materials brought in on time, and the daily schedules adjusted to occupy the workforce of men? Such questions cannot be addressed by a concise and intense show like Albert Kahn: Under Construction, but this show, the first of many it is hoped, opens the way for the investigation of new questions. The photographs on display are accompanied by an account book, an issue of Architectural Forum featuring Kahn’s buildings as of August 1938, and a typical scrapbook for holding and organizing a project’s pictures. These items enrich the encounter with Kahn’s routine photographic documentation of his projects and it is a pleasure to have them available in the two vitrines on each side of the display. One last note: along with photos of two projects conducted for the Soviet government, there is a map with data and diagrams showing the Soviet Union’s 5-Year Plan, 1928 – 1933, for modernizing Russia. It is a treat to be able to study this map in its large-scale format.

By Jeffrey Welch, April 6, 2016

April 4, 2016 In Research, Research Articles

Tale of a House: Architect Priscilla Baxter Neel

IN the fall of 2015 Dr. Mary Ann Hunting of New York City wrote a query to Washtenaw County Historical Society for information on a female architect who had designed the home at 2235 Belmont here in Ann Arbor. The architect’s name was Priscilla Baxter Neel. Dr. Hunting was writing a book on women architects. A graduate of Vanderbilt and CUNY, she had previously done a book about Edward Durrell Stone.

Mailbox, carport, boarded windows behind yews

The WCHS administrator forwarded the query to Susan Wineberg, who had just completed the second edition of Historic Ann Arbor: An Architectural Guide. Susan Wineberg forwarded the query to Fran Wright. Mary Ann Hunting knew the house was “falling apart” and was slated for demolition by the owner. Dr. Hunting wanted an early photograph of the house.

Susan and I started with the City Assessor’s website. We found the house and the current owner, CR Investments LLC, or Campus Realty, a student apartment rental firm, but there was no photograph of the house on the website. And the old photograph from the handwritten assessor’s pages was only black and gray showing no details. So we went to see the house at 2235 Belmont for ourselves.

Assessor’s floor plan, with modifications

The house, built in 1951, is brick with a the modern flat roof. There are skylights in the roof over the kitchen area. The living room/dining room/kitchen is one large area. One living room wall is brick with a raised fireplace and brick hearth. Large floor to ceiling windows and also glass doors to the exterior lighted the space. One glass door leads to a greenhouse. Four bedrooms and two bathrooms are in the wing that is closest to the street. One bathroom has a square deep tub in it. The house is on a concrete slab, no basement, and the furnace room is at the back end of the house. There is a carport connected to the house on the west side.

The family name Neel was still on the mailbox and the Ann Arbor City Directories confirmed that the owners were Dr. James V. Neel, geneticist at the University of Michigan, his wife Priscilla, and their children Frances, James Van Gundia, and Alexander Baxter. Priscilla did not have a separate listing as a professional architect in the directories.

The architect of this house, Priscilla Baxter Neel, had a twin. Her family lived in Wollaston, Massachusetts. Priscilla and her twin sister, Frances, both studied at Radcliffe College (the separate college Harvard University had for women) and graduated in 1940. They also received Bachelor of Architecture degrees from the Cambridge Graduate School of Smith College (another women’s college). In 1942 they were both awarded scholarships to study with Walter Gropius at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Front door, opening to the west

James V. Neel was born in Ohio and educated at Wooster College and then the University of Rochester, where he received a Ph.D. and an M.D.. Neel taught at Dartmouth until 1941, was in Washington in 1942 and then in the US Medical Corps. Immediately after the war (1947) he was chosen by the National Research Council to be the acting director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan. The Neels came to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan in 1948, where James was Professor of Internal Medicine and a geneticist in the Institute of Human Biology which he helped found. He was director of the University Hospital from 1966 through 1970. He was a member of many professional Genetics and Internal Medicine societies, Phi Beta Kappa, the scientific research society Sigma XI, and the medical honor society Alpha Omega Alpha. His hobby was orchid cultivation, thus the greenhouse attached to 2235 Belmont. He died at 84 in the year 2000.

Priscilla was a good friend of Mary Palmer of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Palmer House, and with her started a yoga program in Ann Arbor. The two women and other friends were in a yoga class at the Y. Their instructor encouraged them to read some of the yoga literature, including B. K. S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, leading to the two of them becoming the Y’s yoga teachers. Priscilla and Mary and other women practiced yoga in Mary Palmer’s Japanese tea house in her garden. This led to Mary Palmer going to India to meet B. K. S. Iyengar and to his coming to Ann Arbor to teach yoga here.

Priscilla never practiced architecture professionally as far as we could find out. When she died in 2012 her children sold the house to Stegeman’s Campus Realty firm the next year. We believe she designed only her own house at 2235 Belmont. Her twin sister Frances designed one house in Connecticut and some time after her marriage moved here to Ann Arbor and designed and built her own house in Barton Hills where she still lives.

Front door, living area, fireplace at base of brick will, hidden

Front door, from living area, fireplace, hidden, at base of brick wall left edge

The Campus Realty firm bought the house in 2013 and by the looks of it never had a tenant move in. The mailbox still says Neel. All the windows have been taken away and replaced with plywood boards. The greenhouse attached to the living room has lost all the glass, leaving only the three foot high brick foundation, a little fan, and two thermostats on the house’s exterior wall. The shrubbery around the house is quite overgrown.

All the kitchen appliances were gone. The interior finished walls of the kitchen (and perhaps laundry room) were gone too. The milk box was intact and opened both inside and outside. The living room had a ceiling-high pile of cupboards and such in front of the raised hearth fireplace. All the copper pipe that could be reached had been removed with the holes in the walls as evidence. One of the bathrooms had the entire wall of ceramic tile taken off and left leaning against a wall in the bedroom in two large sections. We could see from the inside that the windows were removed, frames and all, not just the glass panes. All the debris from the interior demolition is still in the house.

Windows and doorway to patio, across from kitchen/dining area

We wish for a more positive end to this house but CR Investments has had a demolition permit since January 2015. It is not advertised for sale. CR Investments originally bought the property, which was in poor condition, to demolish and to build another small house for a family member. But that moment passed and now they are just holding the property. It is only a matter of time before architect Priscilla Baxter Neel’s only house and long-time home is replaced by another dwelling.

But we finally found an early photograph of the Neel house; the Ann Arbor News did a feature article on the house and architect Priscilla Neel and it appeared in the paper in May of 1952. You can see the original Ann Arbor News article and see pictures here and here. In the exterior photograph, taken in 1952, Dr. Neel’s orchid greenhouse is yet to be added outside the glass door on the right side of the photograph.

Milk box by the utility door

Inside the kitchen

By Frances Wright, March 11, 2016

April 2, 2016 In Events

Modern Cuba

Modern Cuba: Slideshow by Howard Shapiro in his 1965 Alden Dow house, 7 Regent Drive

April 16, 2-5 p.m.: Slides at 3 with tours of the house before and after.

Cost: $20: Proceeds will go toward upgrading our website.

To purchase tickets go to a2modern.myevent.com

April 2, 2016 In News

36th Annual Michigan Modernism Exposition

The Detroit Area Art Deco Society is sponsoring a Michigan Modernism Exposition Preview party on Friday, April 8, 2016.

The 36th Annual Michigan Modernism Exposition will feature premier national dealers offering furniture, decorative and fine arts representing all design movements of the 20th century.

Each year the Detroit Area Art Deco Society cues up their biggest fundraiser of the year with an Annual Preview Party. Break out your best 1960s party attire in tribute to Detroit’s 1960’s supper clubs and sip a complimentary Tom Collins.

This year DAADS sets the stage with the theme celebrating a “Night on the Town: A Salute to Detroit’s Historic 1960’s Dining Spots.”

Take a trip down memory lane while you’re visually presented with Jeffery Bladow’s vintage 1960 Cadillac ready to roll with fashions from Leah’s Closet styled to the 1960s, Detroit’s own DJ Dave Lawson spinning vinyl tracks that he’s hand-curated from stacks of Detroit 45s from the 50s and 60s to set the tone for the evening.

On display will be a fabulous collection of vintage menus and collectibles from Detroit dinning spots presented courtesy of George Bulanda. George’s personal collection was recently presented in Hour Detroit and his collection contains iconic venues like the London Chop House, Little Harry’s, and the Pontchartrain Wine Cellars. Our curator, Rebecca Savage’s favorite “Top of the Flame” once high a top on the 26^th floor of the Mich Con Building. Several other personal collections will be on display and will take you back to those glamorous and slightly crazy nights in Detroit hitting all your favorite dinning spots.

Stroll aisle upon aisle of mid-century finds designed by such greats as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Comfort, Tiffany, Herman Miller, Heywood Wakefield, the Stickleys, and so many other talented designers representing the Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Prairie, Arts and Crafts, Surrealistic and Neo-Classical Schools of Design.

Serious collectors will be thrilled to preview the show before the public opening on Saturday morning, while others will be content to sip wine, sample the sumptuous food and enjoy the music. It’s a spectacular evening for all.

Preview Party Tickets are on sale and may be purchased for $65 in advance and this year DAADS is excited to announce our New Collector ticket of $30 under 30. Tickets are available by visiting the Detroit Area Art Deco Society website at www.daads.org

The Michigan Modernism Exposition Preview Party

Friday, April 8, 2016, 7:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.

Southfield Pavilion, 26000 Evergreen Road, Southfield, MI 48076

The Detroit Area Art Deco Society is a private not-for-profit corporation founded in 1986 by a group of collectors and enthusiasts interested in the decorative objects, architecture, preservation and design of the Art Deco period. The non-staffed organization is operated by a highly dedicated Board of Directors and a committed pool of on-call volunteers, providing education, documentation and design assistance to the community. www.daads.org