CCA News

Design MFA / Interior Design Faculty Member Awarded Fulbright Grant

Posted on Monday, March 9, 2009, by Sarah Owens

Bruce Levin, adjunct professor in the Graduate Program in Design and the Interior Design Program, has earned a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach and do research in Japan during the 2009–10 academic year. The grant is issued to U.S. scholars as part of the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program.

The Fulbright Program, proposed to the U.S. Congress in 1945 by Senator J. William Fulbright, awards approximately 6,000 grants annually to promote "mutual understanding between the people of the United States and people of other countries."

Levin's project, "Japanese Small Urban Dwellings: A Model for the American Context", will engage Japanese design and architecture students in researching the use of space in small urban dwellings in Japan. He will share the findings with American students who will examine and translate the results. Levin proposes such findings "can inform the design of future American housing design."

Levin's project developed from his interest in "our ability to live the way we choose in a more flexible manner. . . . As urban spaces become more compact and ubiquitous," he predicts, "smaller spaces will be a likely byproduct." Smaller spaces would create a need to have multiuse rooms: "Spaces that are less specifically named—such as living room, dining room—and yet more precisely considered given the full range of human activity that must be compressed."

Levin, in association with architect and professor Yoko Kinoshita, will conduct the research and teaching at Kogakuin University in Tokyo. Levin specifically based his research project in Tokyo:

"My primary focus is on Japan, as the Japanese currently have the largest city (Tokyo's population stands at 35 million) and have had a major city in the top-ten largest city populations during the last 1,000 years. It is this ongoing tradition of urban density and its responses that I am interested in. This is manifested in traditional dwelling design and current microhouses. For this reason Tokyo is the most appropriate laboratory, although I will look at other major cities in Japan and Asia."

This is Levin's first major award, although he has been invited to participate in numerous exhibitions in the United States and Japan.

To view Levin's work, visit www.studiolevin.com.