College of Design

After nearly two decades of field research in Mongolia’s rugged backcountry to document the region’s archaeology, Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, UO professor emerita of art history, was recently honored by the Mongolian government for her leadership in preserving that nation’s cultural heritage. Around the O recently featured an extensive profile about her work, which integrates human culture and landscape.

UO Department of Product Design undergraduates won two of three possible $3,000 awards in the 2015-2016 INTERZINC Challenge, a theme-based competition which this year asked engineering and design students nationwide to design camping products made from zinc.

Four UO architecture students—Alex Kendle, Michael Meer, Greg Stacy, and Benjamin Wright—garnered second place in the 2015–16 Timber in the City: Urban Habitat Competition, as reported in the Portland Business Journal. The four competed against 846 students with their project called Hybrid Domains. The UO’s second-place win earned them $7,500. Their faculty sponsors, who included Judith Sheine and Mark Donofrio, received $5,000.

For Christoph Lindner, the new dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, "university life-research, education, teaching-connects to everything." Lindner shares his enthusiasm about making those connections at the University of Oregon and A&AA's growing global reach. He brings his own far-reaching global experience to the table as well, having most recently come from Amsterdam. Read more at AroundtheO

Incoming UO architecture PhD student Amir Nezamdoost joins A&AA after winning two recent competitions: the International VELUX Award 2016 for students of architecture in the Americas region for his investigations into automated blinds in daylight investigations; and best student paper at SimBuild 2016 for his research on daylighting simulation.

Findings by UO researchers including Gwynne Mhuireach, a doctoral student in landscape architecture at the UO, and landscape architecture Professor Bart Johnson are featured in the August 2 edition of Phys.org and will appear in print in the journal Science of the Total Environment. The researchers determined that airborne bacterial communities differ in subtle but potentially important ways. “I am looking for mechanisms that explain why vegetation helps people and how we can design for it,” Mhuireach says.

Associate Professor Susan Sokolowski published an article, “A Visual History of Women’s Olympic Uniforms (1900-2016),” in For Her on August 2.

A story in the July 27 issue of the Woodburn Independent features the UO Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management’s course “Green Cities,” where a UO class is providing ideas for the City of Gervais to improve its efforts in sustainability. Several dozen students are participating in the summer class, learning about sustainability topics ranging from water conservation to economics. The class is taught by Instructor Ric Stephens.

The 2016 Summer Craft Forum @ University of Oregon is underway through August 6 as artists and curators from around the country occupy UO studio spaces to work and think together. Focusing on ceramics, print media, fibers, and jewelry & metalsmithing, participants represent ways of thinking and making that revolve around notions of craft. The intent is to facilitate discourse representing a diverse range of concerns that form fluidly as the group coalesces.

The event schedule:

Media outlets are highlighting an award for a City of Springfield parking garage concept developed in part by UO architecture students.