School of Architecture & Environment News

Two teams of Portland architecture students from the College of Design took top honors in the Pacific Northwest DREAMS Single-Stair Design Competition, organized by Portland: Neighbors Welcome and Strong Towns PDX. These students were part of a winter architecture studio class, led by the Director of the Portland Architecture Program Justin Fowler, that competed in the competition. The organizers were able to get all the working submissions in front of a number of people and employed a strong jury of housing designers, developers, and journalists. Seattle's new social housing lead, Mike Eliason, and Councilor Mitch Green gave the introduction at the awards ceremony.  The other competitors included a UO team from Eugene, a non-studio team from UO Portland who submitted independently, and two other projects from Fowler's studio. Congratulations!

As wildfires burn across Oregon, the University of Oregon caught up with Mark Fretz, codirector of the UO Institute for Health in the Built Environment and Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory, both based in the College of Design, to talk about indoor air pollution. He outlined some essential steps you can take to stay healthy when smoke blankets the region.

SAE Students Colin Keiner and Destiny Martinez both won awards in this year's AIA National Photography Competition, with Keiner winning the Fuller Award for the most outstanding photograph for a subject in the United States. Michael Wilkes, BArch '71, earned 5 honorable mentions in the main competition. The full ceremony is online on YouTube.

Nancy Cheng, professor emerita in the School of Architecture and Environment, spent six weeks last winter sharing her expertise in timber building design and architectural education as a Fulbright Specialist at Universidad Cientifica del Sur in Lima, Peru.

LArch graduate student, Alejandro Bechtle, was recognized as one of six 2026 Olmsted Scholar finalists! Named for Frederick Law Olmsted, the LAF Olmsted Scholars Program is the premier leadership recognition program for landscape architecture students. Now in its 19th year, the program honors students who are using ideas, influence, communication, service, and leadership to advance sustainable design and foster human and societal benefits. Undergraduate LArch student, Josie Paik, was recognized as one of thirty-seven 2026 LAF Olmsted Scholars (undergraduate), which denotes distinguished student leadership in landscape architecture.

UO alumnus, Adam DeHeer, attributes the seeds of his Bend company, Waterleaf, and sustainable entrepreneurship was first planted as a University of Oregon graduate student researching public sanitation in South America. Kory Russel, assistant professor in the Landscape Architecture Department and the Environmental Studies Program, and the whole department was credited by DeHeer for supporting his individual aspirations and letting him go beyond academics. The work and passion led DeHeer to a patent, a business and a novel environmental technology.

University of Oregon architecture students created 14 seperate presentations to present their ideas for the City of Tualatin. The voluminous materials stemming from each presentation grew out of seeds of community feedback that the city collected to envision and influence the future of downtown Tualatin.

Last term, a partnership with Bora Architecture & Interiors put students at the center of one of civic architecture’s most complex design challenges. This special partnership between the Library Design Studio with Bora Architecture and Interiors, a prominent Portland-based firm working to reimagine community-centered civic design, challenged graduate and upper-level bachelor students to design community libraries from the inside out, working alongside industry professionals on questions that go far beyond aesthetics.

The Planning Magazine profiles how "The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook", published by Routledge in 2024, is being used to help demystify sustainability in the built environment. Co-authored by Nico Larco, AIA, professor of architecture and urban design at the School of Architecture & Environment at the University of Oregon and principal of the consulting firm ELEMENT Urban Design, and Kaarin Knudson, AIA, a licensed architect, urban designer, instructor and non-tenured staff at the College of Design at the University of Oregon, and the mayor of Eugene, Oregon, the handbook organizes 50-plus elements into five core sustainability topics and four project scales.

Sixteen UO juniors wielding tape measures and sketchbooks trudge through a grassy field with the property owner, taking in and jotting down all they survey. That 3-acre site will serve as a blank canvas for the students in assistant professor Christina Bollo’s architecture studio as they work to solve pressing housing problems facing the city. Bollo’s studio is one course of many in the UO’s Sustainable City Year Program, an idea spawned at the College of Design in 2009.

The Institute for Health and the Built Environment at the University of Oregon is on the cutting edge of making sure healthy microbes are in our buildings. Co-Director Mark Fretz speaks with Oregon Grapevine host, Barbara Dellenback, about the connection between buildings and nature. What is beyond framing and windows? He emphasizes the importance of fresh air and light to our health.