02/28/22

AMES, Iowa  — Firat Erdim, an Iowa State University assistant professor of architecture, has been named the next Daniel J. Huberty Faculty Fellow in the ISU Department of Architecture.

Iowa State alumnus Daniel Huberty, a retired principal and project manager with ZGF Architects LLP in Seattle, created the annual fellowship to help faculty in the architecture department reach their professional potential and to recognize those who show tremendous promise. Huberty received a bachelor of architecture from Iowa State in 1966.

Erdim is using the funds to develop experimental proto-architectural practices and instruments of attunement with the environment, which he calls the Kite Choir — an ensemble of custom-made kits and sound instruments that build on the traditions of singing kites from China, Japan, Vietnam and Bermuda. His current objective is to scale up from solo to collaborative and collective performances with these instruments, seeking their potential as political apparatuses.

Erdim joined the Iowa State architecture faculty in 2016. He teaches architectural design studios in both the undergraduate and graduate programs, interdisciplinary option studios, and elective seminars that challenge the conceptual biases embedded in conventions of representation and fabrication.

Through his research, Erdim explores the intersections of place, materiality and projection and questions axioms of architectural imagination and construction. Most recently, his work has been exhibited at Adds Donna, Chicago; Spartanburg Art Museum, South Carolina; Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen; Constance Gallery at Graceland University, Lamoni; Anderson Gallery at Drake University, Des Moines; and the Italian Virtual Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennial.

This research has been supported by ISU foreign travel grants and grants from the ISU Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities, and by recent residencies at Heima, Seydisfjodur, Iceland, and Sculpture Space, Utica, New York. Erdim received a 2016 Santo Foundation Award for Individual Artists and the 2015 Founders Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome.

Erdim previously served as an assistant professor at the IE University School of Architecture and Design in Segovia, Spain; a visiting member of the Izmir University of Economics Faculty of Fine Arts and Design in Izmir, Turkey; and an adjunct assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture in Chicago. He holds a bachelor of architecture from The Cooper Union and a master of architecture from the University of Virginia.

The Daniel J. Huberty Faculty Fellowship was established through a gift made through the Iowa State University Foundation, a private, nonprofit corporation dedicated to securing and managing gifts and grants that benefit Iowa State University.

Contacts

Firat Erdim, Architecture, firat@iastate.edu
Deborah Hauptmann, Chair, Architecture, 515-294-7185, deborah@iastate.edu
Kim McDonough, Senior Director of Development, College of Design, 515-294-7272, kmcdonough@foundation.iastate.edu
Heather Sauer, Communications Director, College of Design, 515-294-9289, hsauer@iastate.edu

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