There is always something happening in the School of Architecture & Environment. You can join our list join our email list to receive our announcements and news to stay in the know about the latest happenings. You can also join the college email list for everything going on in the College of Design.
6:00–7:30 p.m.
Some people aren’t meant for corporate architecture practice. The launch of Chandra Robinson's new firm chromatográfica is a call to action for all of those who want to make change in the world. In this event you will hear from Chandra about her path in architecture and the amazing projects she has been a part of in the last 7 years. Chandra will be joined on stage by 3 friends and colleagues in the Portland design world who have very different perspectives and all of whom know there is a better way to impact the world through design.
Panelists Audrey Alverson, Jimmy Gantz, and Jonathan Heppner will share their journeys of leaving traditional architecture firms to pursue alternative paths, and how they’re exploring what it means to go solo by building their own intentional practices. Expect a lively, no holds barred conversation with interactive Q&A – exploring themes of lifestyle choices, labor/life balance, doing work you actually care about, and finding the source of creative freedom. Don’t miss this opportunity to rethink the future of architecture!
Hosted by the UO Portland Architecture Program in the School of Architecture & Environment.
Chandra Robinson is a licensed architect in Oregon with 20 years of practice dedicated to creating beautiful, welcoming spaces that are accessible to everyone. Her design philosophy is rooted in a deep commitment to community engagement and the authentic expression of culture in the built environment, working closely with clients to translate their unique vision and values into tangible design elements.
A recognized expert in her field, Chandra is a trusted voice in mass timber building technology and the integration of cultural narratives into design. Her ability to challenge the status quo and advocate for communities has led to significant professional recognition, including being honored by Architectural Record as one of the 2025 Top Women in Architecture for her significant contributions to design innovation. Chandra’s portfolio showcases her commitment to innovative and culturally resonant design. She led her team to win an international competition for a museum, an innovative mass timber art school, and two vital library projects within Portland, Oregon’s Black Community.
Beyond her practice, Chandra is a dedicated civic leader, serving on the Portland Design Commission since 2019 and as the 2026 Vice President of the Oregon Black Pioneers. Her intellectual foundation is informed by her focus on Soft Space—the experiential, temporal, and imagined qualities of environment that define spaces. Qualities like temperature, color, energy, and sightlines continue to be central elements of experimentation and exploration in her work today.
1:00–2:00 p.m.
Lecture - just practice; practicing process
1 hour
just practice is a collaborative practice started by Amanda Ugorji and Sophie Weston Chien. They will be lecturing on their process and how their experiences and values shape their work as built environment professionals, educators, and textile designers. In addition to sharing their most recent pieces intersecting ideas of environmental justice, the built world, and narrative, they will be sharing how they have navigated collaboration, funding, and working sustainably. They hope for this lecture to serve as a case study for young practitioners imagining what is next.
Workshop - practicing process with just practice
75 minutes
In this workshop with just practice, we ask you to bring a project you feel most excited about being realized and imagine how to make it real with us. So much of what we do in school is framed as an exercise, but we are interested in thinking about how the ideas (and sometimes derivatives) can show up in your work outside of school. For roughly an hour, we will talk through embedded values, potential collaborators, design agency, and what success would look like to you. We hope to foster a broader conversation with peers. Please submit an image associated with the project and a three-sentence description in advance.
Bio
just practice (Amanda Ugorji and Sophie Weston Chien) spans architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, community engagement, textile, and graphic design, as well as activist and organizing work within the design field. We think about modes of practice, the spatialization of memory, Black feminist practices, the historical role of women in architecture, and strategies for collective care. just practice has exhibited at Northeastern University, Mills College, MIT Museum, Boston Public Library Leventhal Map Center, MIT Rotch Architecture Gallery, Yale School of Art and Boston Society of Architects, and our work is in private collections and in the permanent collection at the MIT Museum. Our piece Soft City was awarded the inaugural City Talks Digital Gallery Award from the Spatial Analysis Lab at USC, and we were finalists for the Harvard University Radcliffe Institute Public Art Competition.
Sophie is from North Carolina, and Amanda is from Massachusetts.
This memorial lecture was created by friends and family members of our department’s alumna, Mary Kim McKeown. She received her bachelor of landscape architecture from the University of Oregon in 1982 and was working in Mill Valley, California in the offices of Royston, Hanamoto, Alley and Abey (now RHAA). McKeown was considered one of the bright ones, and an up-and-coming leader for the firm. She lost her life when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area on October 17, 1989.
To honor her memory, McKeown’s family and her associates at RHAA dedicated themselves to establishing this memorial lecture fund. An endowment fund at the UO Foundation was created, and in 1992 the department hosted Robert Royston of RHAA as the inaugural speaker in this lecture series.