Hallgeir Homstvedt once competed as a professional snowboarder in Norway—a career that seamlessly transitioned into his prolific career as a product designer. He’s now teaching a furniture design studio in the UO Interior Architecture Program.
The University of Oregon Department of Architecture was recognized in January as among the finest in the country for its housing design education.
UO architecture faculty members Michael Fifield, Peter Keyes, and Rob Thallon, who spearhead the University of Oregon Housing Specialization Program, received the “Housing Design Education Award-Excellence in Housing Education Course or Activity.” The accolade is given jointly by Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the American Institute of Architecture (AIA).
University of Oregon President Michael Schill on Tuesday told a gathering including US Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, how research by the UO’s Department of Architecture helps highlight the role that education and research can have in creating jobs and boosting the economy. Schill’s comments came during opening remarks to a roundtable discussion about wood products manufacturing and design.
When Haley Davis boarded a plane headed to Singapore last summer, “I left knowing very little about what I was getting myself into and ended up having one of the most exciting, memorable, and educational summers I could have asked for. “
The standard model for urban design and city growth, some A&AA professors argue, neglects a sizeable number of its residents.
Gentrification and makeovers within distressed neighborhoods can push out low-income communities by increasing property values; disabled, elderly, and handicapped populations are marginalized; and others, including children, are consistently sidelined, all in the name of progress that affects developing cities.
The UO Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) has launched a two-year research initiative called "Framing Livability.” The project is partnering with the City of Portland, Portland Metro, Transportation for America, and the Natural Resources Defense Council on two grants from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities. The project seeks to answer how sustainability-focused community development efforts can best be communicated to gain public support.
Department of Architecture Head Judith Sheine is quoted in a The Guardian story about an innovative wood product poised to change how high-rises are built. A twelve-story building in Portland is being constructed with the product, cross-laminated timber, or CLT, which is “lighter, so it goes up easier and faster than concrete does … it’s also quieter in construction,” Sheine told The Guardian.
National engine of change. Making the most with the least. A ground-breaking nexus of innovation.
Those are just a few of the descriptions attached to the new Oregon Center for a Regenerative Future, a theoretical Portland site intended to house collaborative incubator spaces for the development of sustainable products, tech shops for public use, urban farms, and maker fairs, among a diverse list of other aspirations.
Department of Architecture Professor Alison Kwok is among the 25 Most Admired Educators for 2016, DesignIntelligence reports.
A lecture Professor Marc Schlossberg gave during his Fulbright year at Technion Israel Institute of Technology was highlighted on the school’s home page recently. Schlossberg spoke about the Sustainable City Year Program (SCYP), which he and UO colleague Associate Professor Nico Larco founded at UO and which Technion has adopted under the name The Urban Laboratory. It’s the first such project at an Israeli university.
