Veritas, Vol. 38, No. 07, April 1996

              VERITAS
For the Faculty and Staff of the University of Miami
April 1996 Volume 38 Number 7
Architecture team wins Williamsburg courthouse design competition
When School of Architecture Associate Dean Jorge Hernandez won a Max Orovitz Award in Arts and Humanities seven years ago, he traveled to Williamsburg, Virginia, to study the colonial city’s civic spaces. Now, he has returned to the same area with his colleague, adjunct professor Francis Lyn, to lead a team of University alumni in winning the prestigious Williamsburg Design Competition for a new county courthouse.
“Our winning design is an outgrowth of our study of the region and its architectural culture,” Hernandez says. “We couldn’t have done it without the support of our associates at the School of Architecture and the University over the years.”
Nearly 200 professionals in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, and urban design from around the country entered the twin design competitions, which ultimately will provide Williamsburg and James City County with a new courthouse and surrounding town plan.
Four finalists from the courthouse competition and four from the town plan competition were selected by jury panels composed of architects, design journalists, and other related professionals. Hernandez’s team won the
courthouse design competition.
“This is a very exciting confirmation of the quality of work being produced by the School of Architecture faculty and students. We’re all very pleased with this recognition,” says Dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk.
The 75,000-square-foot courthouse


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The winning design for Williamsburg’s new county courthouse. The plan combines elements of the region’s distinctive architecture with modern design.
building, expected to be completed by 1998, will be located on a 10-acre site within the 600-acre site designated for the new town plan. Judges were impressed by the University team’s ability to present a design for a completely modem building that combines elements of that region’s distinctive architectural character.
“One of the design requirements provided a paradoxical challenge,
which was to include natural light in each of the five courtrooms while discouraging—for security purposes—the use of windows,” Hernandez explains. “In response, we gave the courtrooms very high ceilings and administered light through the use of four cupolas (large glass lanterns), typical of Williamsburg’s civic edifices. The cupolas serve as light wells, directing light in from the ceilings.”
Two other design elements set the Miami team’s design apart from the rest. One is the use of Williamsburg’s unique Flemish bond brickwork, a particular style of bricklaying in which red clay bricks alternate with shiny, black glazed brick ends, forming a checkerboard pattern.
“We intend to use the same style of continued on page 5
Damselfish in distress offer hope to humans suffering from nerve disease
People who suffer from a common neurological disorder may be encouraged by recent studies of damselfish, a reef fish prevalent throughout South Florida, the Caribbean, and the Bahamas. Like humans, the fish can be afflicted with Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF-l), a disfiguring ailment causing the unchecked growth of tumors inside the body and in the skin.
Now, after years of groundbreaking research, Associate Professor of Marine Biology and Fisheries Michael Schmale has isolated a retrovirus that he believes is the agent responsible for damselfish neurofibromatosis. It is the first known case of a retrovirus causing a tumor of the nervous system, he reports.
“This is exciting beyond the scope of NF,” says Schmale, who was the first to discover that the fish were prone to the disease. “The virus could be extremely useful in cancer research.” The NF-l gene has been implicated in the development of several of the
most common and serious human cancers. It has also been connected with learning disabilities.
Schmale first observed odd tumors plaguing the colorful reef	wf
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fish while checking on damselfish
populations in 1980 as part of his master’s degree work in their behavioral ecology. He brought the specimens to George Hensley, professor of pathology, who identified the tumors as neurofibromas. Damselfish are the only known naturally occuring animal model for the disease.
More common in humans than cystic fibrosis and other hereditary" disorders, NF occurs in various forms once in every" 3,000 births, crossing all racial and ethnic boundaries. Previously considered “Elephant Man’s Disease," scientists now believe that person
suffered from a different syndrome.
Typically, environmental pollutants trigger tumors in fish. But after observ-ing that cases were clustered and not random, among other things, he concluded “this was a classic infectious Mi distribution.” r Prevalence of disease varied ** between reefs, affecting up to 24 percent of the adult fish. “Thriving reefs have a higher population density-of these damselfish thereby creating the highest potential for transmission, like measles,” he says.
“The next question was,” continues Schmale, who learned pathology, epidemiology, and immunology in order to pursue his research, “what was the agent that transmitted it?
“In the lab, I’ve put healthy and tumored fish together in the same tank
and the healthy fish develop tumors,” says Schmale. “This virus should provide the tools needed to dissect the mechanisms of tumor formation,” he explains.
Even though human NF-l is genetically transmitted, some disease features are similar, with several shared characteristics at the cellular level.
“Having the retrovirus in hand is just the next step,” he says. “The ultimate goal is to use it as a route to understanding the disease mechanisms.” Schmale, who receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, predicts another decade of work ahead to unravel that puzzle.
“I’ve been lucky,” says Schmale. “This model system has been so interesting that even when experiments haven’t worked out, the results have led to other studies that needed to be done.”
For more information on the disease, call the National NF Foundation at 1-800-323-7938.
—Leslie Stemlieb
Colonial Photography