Architect and alumna Gwen Howard’s civic projects have included designing the Buffalo Zoo's Rainforest Falls habitat.
Architect Gwen Howard’s clients include one of Buffalo’s civic jewels: the city’s 135-year-old zoo.
As an associate and project manager at the Foit-Albert Associates architectural firm, Howard, an alumna of the UB School of Architecture and Planning, has renovated the zoo’s elephant house and designed the institution’s newest habitats, Rainforest Falls and Heritage Farm.
The work reflects Howard’s devotion to civic causes.
Her first post-UB job was in community planning, launching a not-for-profit youth hostel in Downtown Buffalo. Next, she served as a city official, helping to make sure building restorations met code. Today, she sits on Buffalo’s Preservation Board, lending her expertise to discussions on how to deal with aging architecture.
“I truly enjoy what I do because even the simplest thing affects our community in some way,” she says.
UB played a central role in launching Howard’s community-oriented career.
“I got my first job with Buffalo Place because of UB,” she says. “They called me as a result of an urban-design studio project I’d been involved in. They wouldn’t have known about me otherwise.”
I took a number of Bob Shibley’s classes. He allowed us to work like professionals; our studio group ran like a small architectural practice. We did community-based projects and made presentations to the public. In other groups, you’d work for days and make your presentation without sleeping, bathing or dressing professionally, but not in his.
I miss the time in the studio with my friends. We really did live there, in large rooms with 15 drafting tables. You don’t leave—you might eat there or even sleep there on a couch. I miss the sense of “we’re in this together,” of growing together in a very sleep-deprived way! It was fun—exhausting, but fun.
Yes. The studio experience is really familial; you spend days on end in a room with your classmates. There’s a core of us who still stick together.
Integrate yourself into your community as much as you can. You’re entering a competitive marketplace where in addition to what you know, it’s who you know. You need those connections.
