Michael Halflants, AIA

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MichaelHalflants, AIA
AIA Florida William McMinn Honor
Award Nomination from Ron Dulaney, Assistant
Professor, University of West Virginia As a
former faculty colleague of Michael Halflants,
AIA, I have had many opportunities to observe his
exceptional abilities as an architectural
educator. During the past eight years, Michael
has developed an outstanding architectural
practice while excelling as a full-time faculty
member at the School of Architecture and
Community Design at USF. He has consistently
proven himself to be an exceptional architect, a
respected colleague, and a gifted educator. In
architectural education, the quality of student
work is the measure of the quality and quantity
of learning. Michael is a devoted and demanding
educator, and his students consistently produce
excellent work. He approaches teaching with both
a broad understanding of disciplinary knowledge
accrued as architecture history and theory and a
practical understanding developed as an active,
innovative design practitioner. From a critical
position of synthesis between the idealism of
academia and the pragmatism of practice, Michael
provides a path and inspires the desire for
Floridas future architects to realize excellent
works of Architecture. The practice of
Halflants Pichette has been recognized for
design excellence by their peers on numerous
occasions, most recently receiving an
unprecedented five design awards in the 2010
Florida Gulf Coast AIA Design Awards program.
Michaels outstanding practice experience
benefits his students in several important ways.
Students exposure to practice issues and
conditions helps ease the transition between
academic study and professional practice
following graduation. Michaels passion for the
practice of architecture is contagious. The
presence of his own work in the school
demonstrates his commitment to getting works
built and evidences that he practices what he
preaches which earns a great amount of respect
from his students. The young architecture
program at USF and the state of Florida are
fortunate to have an architect and educator of
Michaels caliber. His contributions engage and
extend the discipline of architecture, edify the
value of architecture within the state and
region, and undoubtedly elevate the aspirations
and works of future architects. I believe that
Michaels outstanding accomplishments and
tremendous promise are most deserving of the
William G. McMinn, FAIA Award for Outstanding
Architectural Education Contributions.
NOMINATION
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award Santiago
Perez, Assistant Professor, University of
Houston I submit my wholehearted recommendation
of Michael, having taught with him at USF from
2003 to 2006. From an academic perspective, I
have enjoyed and benefited from Michael
Halflants passion and knowledge of architecture
as a rigorous discipline, combining his scholarly
interests and knowledge of modern architecture
with the technical and business knowledge of an
emerging practitioner. Michael carries on the
best qualities of a modern architect, both
regionally within the Sarasota School
tradition, and as a critically engaged 21st
century architect, within a global culture of
architecture. During my time at USF as an
assistant professor, I was able to observe the
very high quality of academic work that emerged
from Michaels design studio and Thesis students.
His high standards, depth of knowledge and
passion for teaching, have enabled him to inspire
and motivate numerous students with excellent
results. Michael was a model for me while at
USF, as I attempted to find my own path as a
teacher and academic. Perhaps most inspiring
for me, in an age of digital media saturation, is
the astute rigor and discipline that Michael
achieves both in his own built work, and in the
standards that he sets for himself and his
students. He is a model teacher and a 21st
century emerging practitioner.
RECOMMENDATION
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award Ap
Zylstra, Professor Emeritus, University of South
Florida Michael Halflants was my colleague at
the University of South Floridas School of
Architecture and Community Design (SACD) for
several years prior to my retirement in 2003. At
that time I also followed his architectural
practice and have since kept abreast of his
designs. I served with him on committees and
worked with him in other functions as co-members
of the faculty. His service to SACD has been
invaluable, most of all through the excellence of
his teaching, the main proof of which lies in the
fact that he was able to bring out the best in
his students. Time and again I witnessed, both in
the less and the more advanced studio courses,
how he helped bring a student along from meager
beginnings to accomplished end results. It is not
difficult to coach supremely gifted students, but
to it is the mark of the good teacher to elicit
from the average student excellent projects. In
this respect, he had hardly his equal and the
formal, functional, and structural merits of
those students designs are the proof of it.
RECOMMENDATION
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
AIA Florida William McMinn Honor
Award BIOGRAPHY Michael Halflants is a
registered architect and an associate professor
at the University of South Florida where he has
been teaching since 2002. His goal is to build
and maintain deliberately parallel, mutually
reinforcing activities as a practitioner and
architecture professor. After starting his
architectural education in Brussels, he earned a
masters degree in architecture at the University
of Florida. Upon graduation, he was awarded the
gold medal, the departments highest design
honor. Michael was first employed as a project
designer with the Polshek Partnership in New
York. In that capacity, he drew designs for
theaters and offices in Manhattan and for the
Kansas University Spencer Museum. Working in a
joint venture with Arata Isozakis Tokyo office,
he was on the design team for the Brooklyn Museum
addition. At the University of South Florida,
Michael teaches graduate design studios. He
created the Tropical Architecture course and the
Modern Housing Prototype elective. He redesigned
the Materials Methods course to include a
prescriptive hands-on material investigation.
His students have won 8 citations and awards in
international design competitions. As a
practitioner, Michael was the recipient of the
2005 AIA Eduardo Garcia Award which recognizes an
architect under 40 who practices within the seven
counties around Tampa Bay. In 2007, the
University of Florida honored him with the Young
Architect Award. Since starting Halflants
Pichette in 2006, his firm was the recipient of
seven AIA awards.
BIOGRAPHY
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AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award
MichaelHalflants, AIA
New Courses Developed o Critical Reconstruction
graduate urban design elective Graduate urban
design elective course to examine the fundamental
urban responsibility of buildings as they shape
the spaces of the city. The intention is to
define and reinforce the genius loci of a city.
o Tropical Design The course examines the
technical use of passive cooling strategies
through precedent research. Students investigate
the design implications of sound passive cooling
in a residential assignment. In the designs,
every effort is made to engage the senses and
limit the need for conditioning. o Modern
Housing Prototypes The course prompts the student
to investigate the interaction between user
requirements, urban context, environmental
factors, and design intentions in the development
of design solutions for housing projects in warm
climates. Particular emphasis is placed on access
and degrees of privacy. Redesigned Course o
Materials and Methods of Construction graduate
required course Introduced a collaborative
hands-on full-scale construction project to
encourage students understanding of the weight
of the materials, their connection, and the
processes of design and fabrication.
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AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award
MichaelHalflants, AIA
Study Abroad Program Director, Spain Summer
2010 Students will start in Madrid and will visit
in turn Cordoba, Seville, Granada, Bilbao, and
Barcelona with an emphasis on contemporary and
Moorish architecture. Study Abroad Program
Director, Mexico City Spring 2008 Led students
through Teotihuacan, the Spanish colonial city of
Puebla, early 20th century work of Barragan and
OGerman, the 1960s avant-garde of UNAM, and
Alberto Kalachs National Library. Study Abroad
Program Director, Northern Europe Summer 2005 The
itinerary focused on urban infill projects in
Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Breda, Berlin, Lille,
and Maastricht. Study Abroad, Yucatan, Mexico
Fall 2004 Led two studios on a tour of Haciendas,
Mayan Ruins, and through the urban fabric of
Merida. Studio Field Study in the US o
Vancouver / Seattle / Portland, Spring 2010 o
San Francisco , Spring 2009 o Los Angeles,
Spring 2007 o Phoenix, Spring 2006 o Chicago,
Fall 2005 o New York, Fall 2003 o Houston,
Spring 2003
FIELD STUDIES
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AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award
Select Service Responsibilities and initiatives
that have significantly contributed to the life,
visibility, and growth of the School of
Architecture 2010 gt Created the USFs first
publication of students work to showcase 5 years
of work across the curriculum. 2010 gt
Initiated the USF Alumni Awards (Emerging
Architect Distinguished Alumni Award) 2009 gt
Set up an international lecture series Will
Bruder (Phoenix) - Brian MacKay-Lyons (Halifax) -
Wendell Burnett (Phoenix) - Wong Mun Summ
(Singapore) - Anne Fougeron (San Francisco) -
Greg Pasquarelli (New York) 2009 gt Organized
USFs first wide lecture series reception
following Will Bruders lecture 2007 gt Initiated
and organized USFs first school wide exhibit at
the Tampa Bay AIAs downtown gallery
starting 2007 gt Set up the first exhibit of
outside work at USFMies van Des Rohe Tugendhat
House exhibit 2004 gt Organized the first
international lecture series featuring Kristin
Jarmund of Oslo and Christian Kandzia from
Stuttgart 2004 gt Initiated the Student
Portfolio Award 2002 gt Initiated and organized
the first lecture series with prominent Florida
practitioners Including Mark Hampton, Gene Leedy,
Carl Abbott, William Morgan, and Dwight Holmes
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDAGRADUATE DESIGN
STUDIO
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
Students are expected to be as rigorous in the
formulation of their concepts as in the
resolution of the projects though precise models
and orthographic drawings, to be motivate by
their parti but also by the desire to resolve the
construction. Designs are constrained or
liberated by the medium we use. Over the
duration of an assignment, both the medium and
the scale of the investigations are constantly
changed. While modeling software is an
invaluable tool in developing a design in any
phase of the process, the students must rely
heavily on physical model making with an emphasis
on craft.
DESIGN STUDIO
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
Students are encouraged to take advantage of
digital fabrication available in and out of the
school to span the gap between the physical and
the digital realm. The studios strive to
bridge the Schools insular situation with the
larger community and other research fields.
Participation and reviews of experts outside the
field of architecture allows the students to
ground their project in the current research of a
specific assigned program.
DESIGN STUDIO
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
Large Scale Section Models
DESIGN STUDIO
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
Instead of relegating planning exercises to the
urban studio in the design curriculum, it is
integrated in short focused master planning and
urban design projects in each studio, while
bringing students and their work to the
neighborhoods for presentations and feedback.
DESIGN STUDIO
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
Students participated in a conference on
childrens environments co-chaired by Michael
Halflants and Dr. Stan Graven. They interacted
around large conference tables with world-class
architects, educational experts, architecture
professors from across the country to generate
plans for an experimental preschool for an
impoverished Tampa Bay community. The intent
of the conference was to bring together and
incorporate concepts of early child development
including social, emotional and cognitive
development, the concepts of proximal environment
of the child, the understanding of the concepts
of neighborhood, community and social learning as
a basis for the architecture and design of
preschools.

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MichaelHalflants, AIA
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDAMATERIALS METHODS
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MichaelHalflants, AIA

Illustrated in the following slides are the
materials investigations completed in 2004, 2006,
and 2008. The 16x16x30 series of assignments
marked the first time that a material study was
introduced in the MM course at the University of
South Florida.
MATERIALS METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
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MichaelHalflants, AIA

Students worked in pairs to complete 3"1'-0"
scaled model and orthographic drawings to
describe their design proposals. Half of the
proposals were selected to be built by teams of
four students who did not work on the initial
design. The four builders could coordinate with
the initial designers throughout the process, but
retained full responsibility of the final
product. The success of the project lies in
part in the demarcation between the builders and
the designers. This division sharpened the
students understanding of the relationship
between what is drawn and what is built, and in
the design opportunities discovered at the full
scale of the material.
MATERIALS METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
Concrete Studies Fall 2004
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MichaelHalflants, AIA

In the end, the most successful projects were not
be the careful renditions of the initial
designers' drawings, but rather constructions
that evolved in a collaborative effort through
the lessons learned at full scale. The
projects were evaluated for their craft and
precision, and for the inventiveness in the
selection of materials and connections. Spatial
considerations, though secondary to the
connections, were also examined.
MATERIALS METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
Wood Laminations Fall 2006
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MichaelHalflants, AIA


MATERIALS METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
Investigations in Glass Fall 2008
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDATROPICAL DESIGN
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
The course examines the technical use of passive
cooling strategies through precedent research.
Students investigate the design implications of
sound passive cooling in a residential
assignment. In the designs, every effort is made
to engage the senses and limit the need for
conditioning.
TROPICAL DESIGN
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
TROPICAL DESIGN
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
TROPICAL DESIGN
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
USF, like most architectural programs, will
recognize practice as research, so long as the
work is recognized by the profession.
Halflants Pichette, a firm in which Michael
is the acting design principal was awarded 8 AIA
awards in the last 4 years. In addition,
Michael presents his research at conferences,
most recently in November, at the International
Tropical Architecture (InTA) conference in
Bangkok.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDARESEARCH PRACTICE
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AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award
MichaelHalflants, AIA
2010 AWARDS 2010 Florida Gulf Coast American
Institute of Architects Soltice Residence, Honor
Award 2010 Florida Gulf Coast American Institute
of Architects Wilson Residence, Honor Award 2010
Florida Gulf Coast American Institute of
Architects Popper Addition, Merit Award 2010
Florida Gulf Coast American Institute of
Architects Howe Residence, Merit Award 2010
Florida Gulf Coast American Institute of
Architects Schickler Addition, Citation
Award In April 2010, the firm Halflants
Pichette was awarded an unprecedented 5 AIA
awards from the Gulf Coast Chapter of the AIA.
PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
The projects are extremely well conceived both
formally and environmentally. Their contribution
to the profession is to be found in the
application of well-understood formal ordering
system and spatial development that is married to
an understanding of (green) design. David
Cronrath, Dean, College of Art Design Louisiana
State University HalflantsPichettes design
work is both strongly influenced by international
modernism and profoundly rooted in the
subtropical vernacular of South Florida with its
courtyards and covered terraces, producing high
quality design work that is responsive to
context, function, and programmatic constraints.
Rene Davids, Professor, University of
California, Berkeley The Solstice House
presents their exceptional ability to interpret
the conditions of the site in such a way that the
house mediates between the land and the sea, and
the land and the sky, while satisfying the
programmatic needs as a residence. Jin Baek, Ph.
D. Department of Architecture, Pennsylvania State
University Michael Halflants draws upon
precedents of significant modern icons of the
Sarasota School and bring to the work a broader
international sensibility. The projects deftly
build on the Sarasota traditions without
mimicking the modern masters that came before,
engaging the broader architectural discourse that
transcends this region. I have no doubt that the
work that comes out of this partnership will be
of the highest quality. Craig Borum, Associate
Professor, University of Michigan What
impresses me the most about Halflants
Pichettes work in general is that it clearly
builds upon the modern tradition without reducing
it to a collection of tricks and signs. The
Schrock House seems to pick up where Rudolph left
off in 1960. It also synthesizes the
architectural promenade of Le Corbusier, the
inhabitable stepped roof of Liberas Casa
Malaparte. Ron Dulaney, Division of Design,
University of West Virginia The work produced
by the firm exhibits insight and elegance, as
well as a keen understanding of regional context
and sustainable practices. Marilys Nepomechie,
Associate Professor, Florida International
University
PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
BAY
Crowded View
CURRENT PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
The house looks to the Bay over the neighboring
property in the direction of the summer solstice.

The entire roof is habitable surface.
CURRENT PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
CURRENT PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
CURRENT PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
CURRENT PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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MichaelHalflants, AIA
CURRENT PRACTICE / RESEARCH
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AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award
MichaelHalflants, AIA
Please include a minimum of 5 images of the
nominee. The images can be action shots and/or
portrait-style shots and should have a high
resolution.
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AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award
MichaelHalflants, AIA
Please include a minimum of 5 images of the
nominee. The images can be action shots and/or
portrait-style shots and should have a high
resolution.
34
AIA Florida William McMinn Honor Award
MichaelHalflants, AIA
Please include a minimum of 5 images of the
nominee. The images can be action shots and/or
portrait-style shots and should have a high
resolution.
Yucatan 2004