Portland

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.

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.”

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.

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

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

Exhibitions that include work by UO art faculty members open this weekend in galleries in Portland as part of Portland2016 Biennial, a major survey of work by artists who are defining and advancing contemporary art practices.

Three alumni from the UO Department of Architecture and one adjunct faculty member have earned the highest professional honor granted by the prestigious American Institute of Architects (AIA). 

Amy Miller Dowell, Ron van der Veen, Jay Raskin, and William Murray were elevated to the College of Fellows in the AIA during an investiture ceremony at the organization’s national convention in Philadelphia in May.

Christoph Lindner, professor of media and culture at the University of Amsterdam, will join UO as the new A&AA dean beginning August 15. With a CV that includes research in globalization, sustainability, and creative practice, Lindner brings a unique roster of qualifications and perspective to lead A&AA. We caught up with him recently to ask a few questions via e-mail about how he envisions A&AA’s future.

Core77 is currently featuring not one but two stories about designs that two UO Product Design Program professors are showing during New York Design Week, starting Friday, May 13, in the exhibition Furnishing Utopia. Both stories feature Studio Gorm, the design firm of Associate Professor John Arndt and Assistant Professor Wonhee Arndt.

The State of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission gave its final program approval May 12 to launch the new master of science degree in sports product design offered by the UO’s Product Design Program.