UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Orsolya Gáspár, assistant professor of architecture in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School at Penn State, was named a recipient of the 2025 Brick in Architectural Education Prize by the Brick Industry Association (BSA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).
The award recognizes effective, innovative course proposals and curricula that create a stimulating environment for learning about brick. According to the ACSA website, the winning proposals will equip students with the knowledge and design skills to achieve sustainable design goals in a range of project types and will be taught at ACSA-member schools across the world in the coming years.
“It is an incredible honor to be selected for this award,” Gáspár said. “I love bricks, and it is such a joy that this award allows me to let our students experience the potential of this versatile building material, too.”
Titled “Bricklaying in Augmented Reality,” Gáspár’s proposal explores the theory, history and best practices of fired brick masonry construction. A high level of theoretical understanding is reinforced through hands-on exercises and seminar-style discussions. The course culminates in a collaborative design-build pavilion project, where participants will utilize augmented reality to explore and showcase its potential in brick masonry construction, according to the course proposal.
According to the jury’s comments, the course “…highlights construction technology, presenting a transformative approach that could redefine the labor of building with brick. Its innovative assembly methods highlight the potential for new efficiencies in construction and beyond.”
Winners of the BSA/ACSA prize receive a cash prize along with travel support for the course, to be used for students to visit a manufacturing facility and/or guest speakers for the class.
Gáspár, who is an affiliate researcher in the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing, works on the interface of structurally informed architectural design and construction history, with a keen interest in the interdependence of geometry, topology and structural performance of spatial structures. She said she seeks to support sustainable building practices by "clever" structural design, fueled by both vernacular and engineering tradition, in her research.
“Building with reclaimed bricks is a challenge as they are not uniform — neither their shape nor their material properties — but there is a great societal and environmental potential as their carbon footprint is half or less of new bricks,” Gáspár said. “But more than that, using reclaimed bricks is often an economic necessity in resource-scarce communities, especially during disaster relief. We are focusing on developing a computational design to construction workflow that leverages mixed reality and relies on widely available technology, like smartphones, to support safe, [do-it-yourself] masonry construction involving reclaimed bricks.”
An exhibition Gáspár co-organized, titled “Visionary Visuals Re:Vamped,” opened in the Stuckeman Family Building Rouse Gallery on Jan. 21. The mixed-reality exhibition, which looks at the future through the lens of a changing, modern architecture landscape, is open through March 6. A virtual tour of the exhibit is available on YouTube.
Learn more about the BSA/ACSA Brick in Architectural Education Prize and the winning proposals on the ACSA website.