FAU SOA WELCOMES DR. HEATHER LIGLER OUR NEW ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AND FOUNDATIONS COORDINATOR

FAU School of Architecture would like to welcome Dr. Heather Ligler as our new Assistant Professor and Foundation Coordinator. Dr. Ligler is an architect and design researcher, her teaching and research are in the areas of shape grammars, rule-based design, and design history/theory. Her research interests focus on how rule-based approaches and emergent technologies can help us imagine the future of architecture (and reimagine the past). Heather received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Design Computation from the School of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology and her dual Bachelor of Architecture / Bachelor of Interior Architecture degrees from Auburn University. Prior to joining FAU SoA, she was an Assistant Professor at Penn State University.

Delving into the world of the renowned Atlanta architect-developer John Portman, Professor Heather Ligler's research uncovers profound insights about the evolution of design principles. The Atlanta architect-developer John Portman claimed that his 1964 personal residence, Entelechy I, was a generator of design principles that were reworked and transformed in subsequent projects throughout his life. This research revisits that myth to reframe Portman’s work systematically. From this perspective, Entelechy I can be reinterpreted as a postmodern exaggeration of Le Corbusier’s Dom-Ino and studied in terms of its expressiveness and transformation at other scales. This is achieved by developing an implemented shape grammar for the house to study its potential for variation and then continuing to expand that ruleset through a series of transformation grammars to study how the logic of a house can relate to the design of interiors, atrium hotels, urban plans, and a beach house, Entelechy II. By employing a rule-based approach to interpretation, the research offers a constructive and algorithmic theory on Portman’s design narrative that is informed by Heather’s professional experience working as project architect in the office of John Portman and Associates.