Architecture

A team of UO architecture scholars has won a global prize for research into how daylight affects us at work and how window blind design can provide a more comfortable, productive workplace.

UO architecture PhD student Amir Nezamdoost and research assistant Alen Mahic won the Regional Award for The Americas in the International VELUX Award for Students of Architecture competition, presented recently at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin.

University of Oregon undergraduate student Cameron Yegge is among the Top 60 architecture students nationally, the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) announced. The new honor showcases the top 60 AIAS members and invites winners to engage with Walt Disney Imagineers from May 19 to May 21, 2017, in Orlando, Florida.

A recent exhibit in the Wallace and Grace Hayden Gallery was notable not just for the artwork itself—folio pages from a rare design book by color master Josef Albers—but also for the framework that displayed the art.

Architecture Pro Tem Instructor Landry Smith designed the innovative panel system, which is also intended for staging future art exhibits in Lawrence Hall’s Hayden Gallery as well as elsewhere on campus and beyond.

Erin Moore makes a regular practice of melding architectural design with science. She has taught architecture classes at UO in collaboration with a chemist and a wood scientist. A practicing architect and teacher, she emphasizes the role of natural systems and environmental ethics in design processes.

Two UO professors are helping to organize an inaugural gathering to develop a healthy-building certification process similar to LEED, which advocates for green-building programs. Architecture Associate Professor Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg and biology Professor Jessica Green are working on the 2017 Health and Energy Consortium, which hopes to strike a balance between the greenest and healthiest technologies.

A&AA Dean Christoph Lindner moved from The Netherlands to Eugene in summer 2016 partly due to a program established at the UO. 

“One reason I uprooted my life from Amsterdam and came to Eugene included the Sustainable Cities Initiative,” Lindner told a crowd gathered in the Jaqua Academic Center for Student Athletes to kick off the SCI’s 2016–17 collaboration with the City of Albany, Oregon.

The University of Oregon in Portland’s Randy Gragg is collaborating with Oregon Public Broadcasting’s show ‘State of Wonder’ for a year-long look at Portland architecture. Gragg, the executive director of the John Yeon Center for Architecture and Landscape at the UO, is a former architecture critic at The Oregonian and editor-in-chief of Portland Monthly. “No one is more thoroughly steeped in the design character of Portland,” the State of Wonder website stated.

An estimated $5 million real estate pledge from architect Jim Rothwell, BArch ’80, and his wife, Mary, will advance the UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts and help grow the school’s endowment. “This was a way to help out in return for what the school gave me,” says Rothwell.

A house built by University of Oregon students has won the 2016 Golden Key Award for Most Innovative Homeownership project in the state, an honor presented by the Oregon Opportunity Network.

The house, constructed during a three-term UO architecture class called OregonBILDS, is part of a multi-year effort to build nine houses on Hope Loop in west Eugene using sustainable design and construction methods. This is the third home the students have completed for income-qualified buyers.

A project at Yellowstone National Park designed and managed by A&AA alumni at Hennebery Eddy Architects will expand the park’s green footprint while encouraging kids to explore the outdoors.

The Yellowstone Youth Campus aims to be the first building complex in a national park to achieve Living Building Challenge Certification. Such buildings integrate ecology, heritage, stewardship, sustainability, and leadership across all aspects of design, construction, and operation.