2020 ARCC Dissertation Award – Honorable Mentions

The ARCC Dissertation Award is offered each year for the best dissertation by a doctoral student from a member school. The award is intended to honor significant new research in architecture and environmental design and to recognize the achievement of an emerging scholar.

Based on the quality and utility of her research in the development of a multi-scale model that captures urban energy use, the ARCC Board of Directors is pleased to announce the recipient of an Honorable Mention of the 2020 ARCC Dissertation Award is Narjes Abbasabadi.

Narjes Abbasabadi, Ph.D. is an architect, researcher, and educator. She earned her Ph.D. in Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology. She also holds Master and Bachelor degrees in architecture from Tehran Azad University. Dr. Abbasabadi currently serves as an adjunct professor at IIT and has been appointed an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington beginning Fall 2020. She received “Best PhD Program Dissertation Award” (IIT CoA, 2019) and 2nd place in U.S. DOE’s Race to Zero Design Competition (2018). In the fall of 2018, she organized the 3rd IIT CoA International Symposium on Buildings, Cities, and Performance, and serves as editor of Prometheus 03: Buildings, Cities, and Performance, Journal of the IIT Ph.D. Program in Architecture. She has received several grants, including funds for the development of design codes and prototypes for low-carbon buildings.  Her work has been published in Applied Energy, Building and Environment, and Energy and Buildings, ARCC 2019 (Best Paper Award Candidate); and 2019 Rosenfeld Symposium, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She has also practiced as an architect at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, where she was involved in major sustainable projects, including the 2020 World Expo.

Dissertation Title

An Integrated Data-Driven Framework for Urban Energy Use Modeling

Dr. Abbasabadi’s dissertation, “An integrated data-driven framework for urban energy use Modeling,” develops a multi-scale model that captures two main components of urban energy use including building and transportation, enabling dynamic exploration of performance-driven design and planning. Her research focuses on developing human-centered methods and interactive tools for the design of sustainable and smart built environments and modeling of urban systems. Her data-driven framework brings human-environment context into the computational platform, allowing multi-scale building and mobility energy modeling as a unified system. Her PhD dissertation included the development of design codes and prototypes for low-carbon buildings.

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Based on the depth and value of her historical research on the transformations of domestic space and urban apartment housing before and after the collapse of Soviet state-socialism near the end of the 20^thc., the ARCC Board of Directors is pleased to announce the recipient of an Honorable Mention of the 2020 ARCC Dissertation Award is Kateryna Malaia.

Kateryna Malaia, Ph.D. is an architect and architectural historian working on the evolution of quotidian architecture, particularly housing, in times of socio-political change. She studies urban homes through the lenses of cultural practices and material culture. Dr. Malaia holds a PhD in Architecture (Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Program) from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2019). She also holds B.Arch (2009) and M.Arch (2011) degrees from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Kyiv, Ukraine. She currently teaches at the School of Architecture at Portland State University. Her writing has been published in venues including East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies and PLATFORM.

Dissertation Title

Domestic Space in the Times of Change: The Collapse of the USSR, 1985-2000’s

Dr. Malaia’s dissertation, “Domestic Space in the Times of Change: The Collapse of the USSR, 1985-2000s” concentrates on the transformations that took place in urban apartment housing in the years before and after the collapse of Soviet state-socialism in 1991. The subject of a forthcoming monograph, this research was supported by the R1 Distinguished Dissertator Fellowship from UW-M. Her most recent completed project, supported by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, investigated the roles of architects and the state in the design of late-Soviet prefabricated concrete apartment blocks. Her new research project will concentrate on individually generated modifications in urban homes in the United States in relation to the growing housing precarity.