College of Design

UO researchers recently completed a major national study on ways to best manage campus emergencies, the findings from which were spotlighted on The National Center for Campus Public Safety (NCCPS) website.

“The Umpqua Community College tragedy underscores the importance of campus emergency management programs,” said Robert Parker, director of the Community Service Center (CSC), the program in the UO’s Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management that completed the study.

The last time you flushed a toilet, you likely didn’t think twice about it, much less about possible ramifications. But a University of Oregon architecture studio is focused on virtually eliminating water waste within urban buildings to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

Tucked away in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, in a small alcove embraced by four oil paintings, are two glass cases displaying five objects from the 14th through 16th centuries. Some museum-goers walk right past the cases, not realizing they’ve just bypassed the chance to see original works of art on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded an Art Works grant of $20,000 to the UO’s Department of Product Design for “Unparalleled Oregon Product Design,” a week-long series of free educational workshops, lectures, and exhibitions in uniquely Oregonian design.

Some 40,000 people from 60 countries will see designs by two UO faculty members exhibiting at the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair in February. Because 80 percent of exhibitors at the fair come from Scandinavia, the invitation to the Americans is a coup.

Putting a brand on a sports product or an athlete is big business and requires careful consideration, Associate Professor Susan Sokolowski noted recently in an article on the Adobe Creative Cloud website. “The branding should be strong and recognizable to play up the benefit of being associated with a sports star, but people also should be able to understand the relationship between the parent company and athlete sub-brand,” she said. “Look at athletes who’ve had successful partnerships.

Erkki Huhtamo is an inquisitive man.

Professionally, he collects optical devices “such as magic lanterns, peep show boxes, phenakistiscopes, praxinoscopes, kinoras and other fascinating things,” he says. “I use them in my research and teaching and also to illustrate my books.”

Personally, he is absorbed by coffee. He roasts, grinds and even grows what he drinks (“something I could not even dream about doing in Finland,” the Finland native says).

A&AA Dean Christoph Lindner undertook a lecture tour in England and Ireland in January, exploring topics including urban renewal on Amsterdam’s waterfront, the “aesthetics of slowness” in global cities, New York’s High Line elevated park, and the urban politics of Brutalism.

Four Department of Product Design students recently won a competition to develop solutions for multi-use LED trail lighting for commercial use.

The two student teams — KeeAnna Turner and Andrew Zielinski, and Tin Le and Sarah Roner-Reiter — split the $5,000 award for their projects, which were developed in Assistant Professor Wonhee Arndt’s PD 410 Lighting Design course in fall 2016.

Turner and Zielinski aspired to create a light both unique in function and easy to manufacture.

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.