Laura Levenberg, a graduate student in the Department of Architecture, has received the Senator Mark O. Hatfield Architectural Award from the Architecture Foundation of Oregon (afo).  The award, announced in February 2014 for the 2013 award year, includes a $2,000 scholarship.


The award honors both architectural design and community service, two fields of “elemental importance” to Mark O. Hatfield, former U.S. senator and Oregon governor, the afo website states.

Professor Kingston W. Heath, director of the UO Historic Preservation Program, will be keynote speaker at “The River and The Rail: A Symposium on Enterprise and Industry in New Bedford,” February 15-16 at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

The conference addresses the historical evolution of the port of New Bedford as a manufacturing and commercial center. Heath’s talk is entitled “Whalers to Weavers: New Bedford’s Promoted and Neglected Legacies.”

Michael E. Walsh was on track to teach English as a second language in Kenya on a Peace Corps mission when the Vietnam War took his career on an unexpected detour in 1966. He was at Columbia University, training for the Peace Corps at the Institute for Education in Africa, Teachers College, when his draft number came up.

THA Architecture has been named the 2013 Region Firm Award winner by the American Institute of Architects Northwest & Pacific Region. The award recognizes one firm in the region that has made extraordinary contributions to the architectural profession and continuously elevates the quality of the built environment in the community.

“A machine is a wetland for parking in.”

The name for the winter 2014 term’s ARCH 484/584 course plays on the aphorism “A house is a machine for living in,” coined by 20th century Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier.

“It’s sort of an inside joke for architects,” said Brook Muller, A&AA associate dean and associate professor in the Department of Architecture.

Two exhibits currently on display through winter term at libraries on the UO campus are of special interest to the A&AA community.

“Drawn to Design: Selections from the UO Architecture Student Drawing Collection” is at the Knight Library. In honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, this exhibit displays student drawings created during the first years of the UO school. Selected from A&AA Library holdings, different drawings will be exhibited throughout winter term.

Several research projects under way by University of Oregon faculty members have been slated for funding by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities.

These include public transit research programs created by UO faculty members in the Department of Architecture, the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management, and the Community Service Center.

Six students from the Product Design Program recently took home $5,000 in prize money from a “Shark-Tank”-style competition—dubbed “Duck Tank”—open to students across campus to develop a new mobile app. A total of $15,000 was handed out to four interdisciplinary teams to help them take their ideas to the next level.

University of Oregon Professor Craig Hickman's tinkering to create a computer drawing program that his 3-year-old son could use has landed him a prominent niche in the 30th anniversary celebration of the Macintosh computer.

Bulging bags of used condoms adorned tables less than an hour after students arrived. Comments including “Oh wow, that is really gross, it looks like a worm,” and “That’s, like, no lubrication, it’s already dry” could be heard as forty-five students clustered in small groups, laptops open to spreadsheets, iPhone stopwatches primed, cobalt blue plastic phalluses upright on tables before them.