MArch University of California, Berkeley, 1974
BA (Urban Studies) Vassar College, 1970

Registered Architect: Oregon

The research and creative work of Professor Jenny Young relates the well-being of a community to the design of public buildings. She teaches design studios and courses in the social and behavioral aspects of design, architectural programming, and the form of small towns.

Young’s investigations of the role of architecture in the development of the spatial structure of small towns have focused on rural Oregon and the island communities of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. She recently presented grant-funded research on the spatial structure and character of towns in Wheeler County, Oregon, at a conference in Sweden and was invited to speak on strategies for sustaining small town life at an international conference in Taipei, China. Her articles have also appeared in the journal Small Town.

Seeing health care and educational facilities as core institutions in small towns, Young has concentrated her professional practice in Oregon, as well as many design studios, on those institutions that define and repair the spatial structure of towns while providing settings for essential activities of the inhabitants. She has received grants from the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health to bring students to design charrettes in Los Angeles and Denver. She also received funding to form the UO Rural Health Design Group in 1994 to involve students in programming and schematic design for health clinics in rural Oregon. Before joining the faculty at the University of Oregon in 1982, Young was a designer with Perry, Dean, Stahl and Rogers in Boston, Massachusetts, where she worked on a new downtown facility for the Tufts-New England Medical Center.

As a project architect with Rowell Brokaw Architects, Young recently worked with fellow faculty member John Rowell on a plan to consolidate two public schools in Fossil, Oregon, and convert the emptied building into a paleontology center. Their work was recognized as an exemplary project by the Environmental Design Research Association and was featured in the journal Places in 2006. Her work with Rowell Brokaw also includes vision plans for the Oregon towns of Drain and Yoncalla, a prototype for new Head Start facilities, and the design of early childhood centers throughout rural Oregon. In 2008 Young received a UO Research Innovation award in honor of her community-oriented research and practice.

Young has an active residential practice on Martha’s Vineyard focused on additions to historic houses such as the Captain Jethro Ripley House in Edgartown which appeared in Patterns of Home (Taunton Press, 2002). After a decade leading studio programs on small town New England architecture in Martha’s Vineyard, Young recently developed a study program in Macerata, Italy, to study the history and culture of Italian hill town architecture and planning.

Young has also collaborated with Associate Professor Glenda Utsey on a competition entry for The Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca, New York, that was selected for publication. As a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, she participated in the Center for Environmental Structure’s Mexicali Project and was a recipient of the school’s AIA Gold Medal.

Young is a current member of the AIA Architecture for Health Council, Duke’s County (MA) Historical Society, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Oregon Paleo Lands Institute, and the Vernacular Architecture Forum.