Architecture trio sweeps national awards

May 28, 2014

Three UO architecture undergraduates won four team awards in the Royal Society of Arts U.S. awards in April, with one of the three also winning a three-month summer internship with a noted global architecture firm.

Carolyn Lieberman, Samuel Ridge, and Cody Tucker took home the RSA Leadership Award for Architecture, the Agnes Bourne Cash Award for interiors, and the Techmer PM Award for Sustainable Design. Each award comes with a $1,000 cash prize.

In addition, Tucker was offered one of just two coveted paid summer internships with Grimshaw Architects. Grimshaw’s practice covers all major sectors, from residential to racecourses, operating from offices in New York, London, Melbourne, Sydney, and Doha. Tucker will work in the New York office.
 

Cody Tucker (left), Carolyn Lieberman, and Samuel Ridge
Above: Cody Tucker (left), Carolyn Lieberman, and Samuel Ridge took home the RSA Leadership Award for Architecture, the Agnes Bourne Cash Award for interiors, and the Techmer PM Award for Sustainable Design. Each award comes with a $1,000 cash prize.

“Your team swept the board in the architecture section! Congratulations to you all,” David Turnbull, architecture professor at The Cooper Union and chair of the RSA student design awards, wrote to UO Associate Professor Brook Muller, notifying him of the results.

The students had all participated in Muller’s winter 2014 studio, which asked students to create intelligent designs for a parking garage in Portland’s South Waterfront district.

“Carolyn, Sam and Cody combine tenacity, humility and talent,” Muller said. “It was a delight to work with them in studio, and I am incredibly proud of their accomplishment. People from East Coast design culture and institutions often think Oregon lies at the end of the civilized world, so I relish the fact that this team would fly into the Big Apple, sweep the architecture awards, and also win an interior design award. They deployed evocative forms in the cause of human delight and ecological betterment, and needless to say the jury was very impressed.”

Co-winner Ridge was quick to extend thanks to his fellow winners and his school. “These [RSA] awards were exciting on a personal, group, and school level. They weren't just awards that the group and myself received, but the Oregon architecture program received,” Ridge said. “We are smart here and we know how to make great architecture, but sometimes we are quiet. This was a chance to be a little loud.”

Added Lieberman, “I couldn’t have asked for better teammates. The three of us worked well together, and trusted each other in giving critiques and pushed our limits on design. We all have similar aesthetics and similar goals in terms of sustainability and design. With every idea we came up with, we thought about the social, economic, and environmental implications, and the outcome was a developed design that we think gives a positive impact to the site.”
 

“Infiltrating the City” project
Above: “Infiltrating the City,” the project by Carolyn Lieberman, Samuel Ridge, and Cody Tucker, won the team the RSA Leadership Award for Architecture and the Techmer PM Award for Sustainable Design. Each award comes with a $1,000 cash prize.

The RSA competition initially assigned the students to teams with a specific research objective. Ridge was assigned to a group researching water collection and treatment, Tucker was on a team looking at artistic representation, and Lieberman was part of a group researching parking garage structure and materials. They were then assigned to their main project teams, each bringing their new expertise to the table.

“This knowledge prompted me to think about this project on a very large scale, which led us to this urban formula concept,” Ridge said. “In the formula we broke machine, treatment, and ecology into their specific parts that could be thought of in many locations, not just our site's location.”  

Lieberman noted that “We made a bold move in having a crazy looking design, but our goals toward creating a wetland and bringing a social gathering space was on the same level of grandiosity that fit. I think this award just means that we’re going in the right direction, and that we need to keep challenging ourselves to push the boundaries of design. Until one of our designs is actually built, we’ll never really make an impact in the built environment, but hopefully our ideas will catch on to perpetuate more critical thinking.”
 

"Infiltrating the City" project
Above: “In the formula we broke machine, treatment, and ecology into their specific parts that could be thought of in many locations, not just our site's location,” Ridge said of the team’s design.

UO assistant professor of architecture Mark Donofrio played a key role in the studio, Muller said, helping students integrate construction and structural considerations in their projects. In addition, Mark Wilson, a Portland-based restoration ecologist, worked with student teams, as did Josh Cerra, professor of landscape architecture at Cornell (via Skype), and Bob Hastings (BArch, ‘79) and Jeb Doran, both from TriMet.

The competition was limited to undergraduate students throughout the United States. The competition prefers that design work submitted be part of coursework in order to “maintain a high standard of work, encourage sharing of best practices [and] build relationships between schools and industry,” the contest website states. Final judging, the award ceremony, and reception were held on the same day in April and hosted by founding sponsor The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York.

“These awards mean a lot,” Tucker said. “They show that our sleepless nights paid off and that the work we are doing here at Oregon is very important to the future of architecture.”

More information is available at the RSA website.
 

"Infiltrating the City" project

 

"Infiltrating the City" project