In the fall of 1987, the Oregon Legislature approved $8.03 million for a long-awaited “Architecture and Allied Arts Addition and Alteration” project at UO. The move marked the fulfillment of a twenty-two year commitment to expand the school that began in 1965.

The project was direly needed, as Wilmot “Bill” Gilland, then dean of the school, said during the dedication of the project after it was completed, in 1991:

The art and design village across from Franklin Boulevard has been the home to many programs of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts since the 1960s and is still an active hub for creative practice. Seven media areas for the Department of Art have studios, faculty offices, and graduate student workspaces on the Northsite. These media areas are sculpture, ceramics, painting, photography, digital arts, fibers, and metals and jewelry.

Each decade of our review of the important events, spaces, and people of the school's one hundred years strengthens our appreciation of the constant change that is part of life in a vibrant and responsive campus. This month shares the story of three memorable spaces no longer visible on campus today, and one that rises like a phoenix every few years to support student creative work in the arts. All of these were formative and transformative in their own right for the students and faculty members in the school during the 1970s.

When architect-inventor-visionary R. Buckminster Fuller visited the UO in 1962, he was better known for developing the neo-futuristic geodesic dome than for his Dymaxion Chronofile, a project to document his life every 15 minutes. As he told a gathering at UO about why he devised the Chronofile:  

The 1950s was a transformative era for the School of Architecture and Allied Arts and its facilities. As the school moved ahead to engage with the modern movement of design, art, and architecture, it was proposed to create a new addition in the International style to reflect these ideas. 

As we mark the 100th anniversary year of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, each e-news will include a photograph of one of the school’s many memorable spaces through the decades since 1914. Because the buildings that have housed the school over the years have undergone many iterations—with major changes in 1923, 1958, 1971, and 1991—in this e-news we’ll begin with several photos and a bit of history.