A visit with DAAP Associate Dean Anton Harfmann
By Emily Schneider
A stack of books on his desk all relate to building in some way, and a pile of papers is revealed to be the plans for UC's Solar Home Project, more formally known as the reform house. The project has been in the works for roughly almost two years, and soon construction will begin on UC's campus. Harfmann has been involved since the very beginning.
Christopher Davis, an architecture student who started taking classes from him a few years ago, described Harfmann as "practical, confident and infinitely knowledgeable about how exactly to put a building together."
He went on to describe his experience with Harfmann regarding this project as such: "I hadn't really expected him to be one of the central team leaders because I knew that as an associate dean, he was, and is, already incredibly busy," said Davis, who is now one of the forerunners of the student team. "But he's been our team's strongest leader." "Anton has worked extremely hard to bring disparate groups of students, faculty and administrators together," said Luke Field, another architecture student at work on the project. "His passion for the work has rubbed off on others."
Harfmann discusses the project like a young architecture student who has just been given his first opportunity to build. "For me, it's been an intellectually stimulating experience," he said, hinting at the deeper reasons for his excitement about the house.
"I get the sense that this project is right in line with his thinking of what an architectural education should be," Davis remarked. "Working in collaborative teams, technological innovation, experience with construction, all of these things."
"This project occupies a unique place somewhere between academia and practice," said Field. "Both the students and the faculty have benefited from the opportunity to apply the more theoretical research generated in the University setting to an actual built project. It's an opportunity that is rarely seen in the professional world." This may explain the burgeoning student interest. Over 100 students from four separate colleges of the University are working on the project together.
"I've learned more in the last six months, working with the business majors and the engineering students and faculty, than I've probably learned in the last ten years of my life," said Harfmann. "The information and the exposure to new technologies, and to how they work, has been fascinating."
"Just watching the students work together - the engineering and business students are always in our studio, the industrial designers - has been amazing," he continued. "To just see the people who haven't figured out that there are boundaries between our disciplines working together in harmony towards this project, seeing them excited, seeing them pour their hearts into this has been a remarkable thing."
Stay tuned to http://daap.uc.edu/solar2007/index for information on UC's entry to the Solar Decathlon in the fall.
