The Sustainable Cities Initiative was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education on May 20. The story shares the UO’s innovative community engagement model with the nation's higher education community. SCI is a cross-disciplinary program at UO involving architecture, landscape architecture, planning, product design, art, law, journalism and business. While the Sustainable City Year Program (SCYP) pioneered in Oregon, SCI has been training other universities interested in adopting the model and implementing a version of it in their local communities.

Two of the four finalists in an international design competition to foster nontoxic building products are University of Oregon students. The competition was open to both professional and student designers. The Red List Design Challenge carries $15,000 in cash prizes. The UO finalists are Zander Eckblad and Yin Yu. Eckblad’s submission proposes a nontoxic, plant-based cellulose nano fiber alternative to traditional fiberglass insulation.

The connection between Oregon and the United Kingdom just lost a champion. Architect Rick Mather, 75, who sponsored six UO students as interns in his award-winning firm, Rick Mather Architects (RMA), passed away April 20 after a short illness. Classmates, former faculty members, and colleagues were stunned as news spread.

Think Nike in Beaverton. Google in Palo Alto. Urban Outfitters in Philadelphia. Corporate campuses aren’t unique, but having one downtown is. Helping design such a campus in a dynamic city like Portland is an even rarer opportunity, but that’s precisely what a cadre of University of Oregon graduate students are doing.

Architecture Adjunct Instructor Jolie Kerns has been awarded a $6,000 research grant from the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society for her project "Interrogating Public Space: Architecture of Women's Health Centers."

The new Facade Integrated Technologies (FIT) Testing Facility celebrated its completion April 15 with a “soft opening” that showcased the laboratory’s presence on the entire south face of Onyx Bridge. An "envelope" on the building’s façade is wired with sensors measuring light intensity, solar radiation, wind speed, acoustics and more — all part of an effort to study building performance and how design and systems affect occupants.

“I barely consider what I do a job,” says Seattle architect Ron van der Veen, BArch ’81, principal and design leader for DLR Group (named the No. 1 design firm in the U.S. by Architect in 2012). Along with architectural design, van der Veen writes a humor column for ARCADE magazine and plays in a band—and once turned down an offer to play professional basketball in Spain.

“Technology and Environment: The Postwar House in Southern California,” an exhibition curated by University of Oregon Department of Architecture Head Judith Scheine, will be at the Kellogg Gallery at California State Polytechnic University April 11 - July 12. An opening reception will take place Thursday, April 11, from 4 - 7 p.m. Sheine will present the curator’s gallery lecture Saturday, May 18, at 11 a.m.