News

University of Oregon product design undergraduate student Derek Sackmann is one of just three national award winners in a design competition to develop a lifting device made from zinc, winning $2,000 for himself and $1,000 for the Product Design Program at the UO’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

The 2014-5 Interzinc Design Challenge attracted entries from schools across the United States and Canada. The annual competition, which requires zinc for the main component, challenged students this year to develop a lifting device designed to be produced in die-cast zinc.

The Lincoln Center Art Galleries in Fort Collins, Colorado, will present “Surface Tension,” a photographic series by UO Professor Terri Warpinski with poetry by Laura Winter, September 12 through November 1, 2014.

“Surface Tension” is a series of photographs by Warpinski exploring the political borderlands along the U.S.-Mexico border and the Occupied Palestinian Territories juxtaposed against images of present-day Berlin, Germany.

A shoe designed by Product Design Program student Stefan Cristobal will be produced for shoe brand Android Homme in 2015 after Cristobal won the 2014 Pensole World Sneaker Championship.

WIRED has featured Assistant Professor Rick Silva’s futuristic bird project in a recent issue. Silva teaches animation in the UO Department of Art’s Digital Arts Program.

Faculty members in business and product design are crafting new master’s degree programs. The Sports Products Initiative will offer two new degrees. The first to launch in fall 2015 will be sports product management and will be offered by the Lundquist College of Business.

Transitions that began last week at the UO ripple through the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. With leadership changes at the top in the appointment of an interim president, Frances Bronet is now the Acting Senior Vice President and Provost for the university. For the school’s top post, current associate dean Brook Muller will serve as Acting Dean effective August 25.

Oregon Public Broadcasting featured Product Design Program Assistant Professor Trygve Faste on Saturday’s OPB "State of Wonder" radio program. Faste spoke with host April Baer about the intersection of studio art and design. Faste’s comments on OPB previewed a speech he’ll deliver this week at the international Industrial Designers Society of America conference in Austin, Texas.

Online voting ends August 2 for The Bike Design Project, a national competition intended to develop the “next-wave urban bike.” One of the five finalist teams includes University of Oregon graduates whose “key influencers” include A&AA alumnus Tinker Hatfield of Nike, Inc.

A story in the current Men’s Journal features research by a UO Product Design Program class on how to design a next-generation condom. In a classroom laboratory, the students tested seventy different condoms on twenty attributes.