College of Design

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.

Saint-Gobain, a manufacturer of sustainable building products, is partnering with Associate Professor Ihab Elzeyadi, who directs the UO’s HiPE lab, to assess the impact of building design on occupant experience, measuring factors such as indoor air quality and thermal, acoustical, and visual comfort. The test site is Saint-Gobain’s new headquarters, which was designed to function as a “living laboratory” where the performance of its products can be measured and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Competing against professional design firms, a UO student team placed second in the international Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) competition to design a civic artwork that also generates carbon-free electricity and water.

The award for their project, “Cetacea,” was presented Thursday, October 6, at the Greenbuild conference in Los Angeles, California. Smithsonian.com featured the project Oct. 5.

Most Americans haven’t heard of Kansei design, which studies how emotion drives consumer choices. For example, designers of the Mazda Miata sports car used Kansei engineering in developing the car’s gear shift. Their analysis spurred designers to change the throw between each gear so it’s shorter than most manual transmission shift lengths—leading the driver to feel more “powerful.”

A&AA welcomes these new tenure-track faculty members for the 2016–17 academic year.

Architect magazine named ZGF Architects, founded in Portland, Oregon, the No. 1 design firm nationwide—both overall and in sustainable design. Five of the firm’s current partners are graduates of the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts and more than 70 A&AA alumni work for ZGF globally.

A University of Oregon team of landscape architecture students has defeated professional competitors again, this time by winning the Living Product Prize in the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge.

Wheelchair rugby athletes at the Rio 2016 Paralympics this month are getting an edge from gear designed in part by students in a University of Oregon product design studio. A story in the October 2016 Portland Monthly shows how the US national team worked with UO in Portland students to create performance-boosting wearable designs, including arm guards and gloves.

“I felt like there was something missing,” Tinker Hatfield, BArch ’77, tells Sneakernews in its September 12 issue, remembering how he has helped design Duck athletes’ traveling gear since 2011. “I felt like there could be this excitement driven by leveraging the history of the Jordan Brand.” In the Sneakernews story, Hatfield looks back at the entire line of Air Jordan shoes from 2011 to today’s Air Jordan XIV, including a peek at his design sketches.