The 2015-16 Sustainable Cities Year Program (SCYP) with the City of Redmond officially kicked off with a gala celebration at the UO’s Ford Alumni Center October 1. During the yearlong partnership between UO and Redmond, hundreds of students and faculty members will pour 50,000 hours of work into applied projects with sustainability-focused solutions.
A University of Oregon landscape architecture student team defeated professional competitors to take first prize in a global innovation challenge to improve the food system, winning $10,000 and advancement to a prototype round. The team now will be provided business incubation support and an opportunity to win $100,000 and move their design to production.
The UO team’s design, which would help farmers retain nutrients in soil while decreasing fertilizer use, was based in part on the earthworm’s digestive system and would improve soil health over time.
The American Society of Landscape Architects has elevated Robert Ribe, professor in the UO Department of Landscape Architecture, to the ASLA Council of Fellows for 2015. Fellowship is among the highest honors the ASLA bestows on members and recognizes the contributions of these individuals to their profession and society at large based on their works, leadership, management, knowledge, and service.
It was a dream come true for 14 students and a landscape architecture instructor when the UO Campus Operations staff asked them to design and build a garden this spring.
Arica Duhrkoop-Galas, instructor for the Department of Landscape Architecture Plants course, was delighted when “campus operations approached our class to design a garden for the central courtyard of Lawrence Hall,” she said. “It was an amazing opportunity.”
A&AA is wrapping up its 100th anniversary this month after a full year of events, exhibitions, and celebrations. The school is now embarking on a capital campaign to imagine the future of art and design education and facilities for the next 100 years. In envisioning the school’s future, the A&AA Building Project Work Group in January issued a request for proposals (RFP) from student teams for a competition to design a transformative learning environment for A&AA. In May, the finalists were announced.
Five of the 11 University of Oregon students awarded Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships to fund their summer 2015 study abroad programs are students in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts.
Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000 to apply toward study abroad costs. The A&AA students are:
• Halley Anderson — Japan, architecture
• Josie Christensen — Palau, art and anthropology
• Alfredo Gonzalez-Cruz — Italy, architecture
• Zak Johnson — Japan, landscape architecture
• Amanda Oliver — Palau, digital arts and anthropology
In the fall of 1987, the Oregon Legislature approved $8.03 million for a long-awaited “Architecture and Allied Arts Addition and Alteration” project at UO. The move marked the fulfillment of a twenty-two year commitment to expand the school that began in 1965.
The project was direly needed, as Wilmot “Bill” Gilland, then dean of the school, said during the dedication of the project after it was completed, in 1991:
Architecture students Annie Chiang, Ryan Dirks, Lindsay Rasmussen, Eric Schmidt, and Ashly Tuffo won the poster competition at the recent Graduate Student Research Forum for their project, "An Energy Analysis of The Stellar Apartments."
Architecture students Roxanne Robles, Gilberto Villalobos, and Omar Hason, landscape architecture student Andrew Jepson-Sullivan, and PPPM students Nestor Guevara and Evelyn Perdomo received an honorable mention in the 2015 Hines/Urban Land Institute design competition for their project titled "Urban Groves."
The jury recognized the UO submission for “the diagrammatic visualization, a good optimization of real estate in plan, as well as the outlined cross section, and general presentation board design.”
The annual Holistic Options for Planet Earth Sustainability (HOPES) conference sponsored by the Ecological Design Center will be held on the UO campus April 9-11. This is the 21st year of the student-run conference, an opportunity for students, visiting scholars, and faculty and community members to discuss the relationship between ecology and design and how this connection can produce sustainable buildings.
