Nils Gore, Associate Professor, KU School of Architecture and Urban Design

I am an Associate Professor in Architecture at the University of Kansas (KU) and a licensed architect in Mississippi and Kansas. My education includes a B.Arch degree from Kansas State University, and an M.Arch. degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior to coming to KU in 2001, I taught at the Boston Architectural Center and at Mississippi State University (MSU).

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

e-mail: ngore@ku.edu

Design and Construction Technology Education
A primary teaching/research interest lies in understanding the pedagogy of construction education through hands-on design-build projects (Learning by Doing).

• Click to see work in New Orleans, since Hurricane Katrina.
• Click to see a project for a new jury room in Snow Hall on the KU campus, constructed by a fourth-year design studio in 2004. (4.8mb .pdf)
• Click for an article, Craft and Innovation: Serious Play and the Direct Experience of the Real. (6.5mb .pdf)
• Click to see solar lighting fixtures constructed at Ryan Gray Playground for all Children, during a third-year design studio in 2003.
• Click here for a 5-minute QuickTime video on the construction of Okolona Corner Park, a design-build project constructed by a third-year design studio I taught with Shannon Criss, at MSU, in 1999. (movie)
• Click here for an article on the Okolona Corner Park. (6 page .pdf)
• Click here for recent research on Stabilized Earth Blocks (Cinva Ram) , conducted in the Spring 2000 Materials Class at MSU, and continuing in Fall 2001 in the 3rd-year Design Studio at KU. (website)

Materials Research
I am P.I. on a project to develop materials made out of flyash, a coal combustion by-product. (1.7mb .pdf)

I am co-investigator for a project called Heartland Green Sheets, investigating building materials made of recycled content.

Community Design
At MSU, I was involved in the work of the Small Town Center, a community design center with an outreach mission in Mississippi's small towns.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I am a strong advocate of "learning-by-doing," and of promoting natural learning based on cultivation of a student's own curiosity. I attempt to employ these ideas in both my subject areas: design studio and construction technology.

• Click here for a talk I gave at MIT in the Summer of 2000 regarding What I Believe about Teaching (Technical Subjects in) Architecture.

DESIGN STUDIO
I typically teach an undergraduate or graduate design studio each semester.

STUDY ABROAD
Emerging Technologies & Design in Europe. See Photos.

B-TECH 2 (Building Construction Class)

MATERIAL INVESTIGATIONS
A research methods course for the investigation of material properties.

I am a principal, with Shannon Criss, of Regenerative Architecture, a professional architectural practice.

Click here for photos of Little Friends Farm Childcare Center, in Middletown, RI.

For an article on my landscape photographs click Unexpected Gifts. (published in the Spring 2000 issue of Mississippi Folklife magazine.)(5 page .pdf)

To see a catalog of my photographs, click here. 3 of my photos are in the permanent collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

A personal project, consisting of a virtual museum of wacky packaging products and ephemera, can be found at MisterSmed's Cabinet of Curiosity