Laserfiche WebLink
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON <br />a School of Architecture and Allied Arts <br />June 13, 2013 <br />Dear Mayor Piercy and Members of the City Council, <br />This past year, I had the opportunity to guide seventeen students earning professional <br />architecture degrees through their senior thesis /comprehensive studio projects. Each <br />year, instructors select a site for a studio that is sufficiently complex in terms of <br />architectural, programmatic, environmental and socio - political aspects to require <br />students to demonstrate deep, integrative learning throughout the design process. We <br />look for projects that allow students to be visionary and explore their personal design <br />sensibilities while attending to public concerns, site constraints and other realities of <br />making architecture. <br />The EWEB riverfront master plan and property met the criteria and had the added <br />advantage of being in our backyard. There has been an incredible body of design and <br />planning work and a regulatory framework to build from, as well as local expertise <br />available to students. It represents a once in a century opportunity for the city to take <br />an industrial condition and transform it into an urban /civic place next to the water. Its <br />redevelopment encourages a project that is a "performance of an urban nature" where <br />human and natural systems meet in a theatrical sort of way: design in this sense is a <br />series of staged events that are the life of a river city. <br />This industrial property is ripe for retrofit, and there is an active and ongoing effort to <br />realize this transition. The studio attempted to add value to the process in having <br />seventeen very different design proposals demonstrate the inherent flexibility of the <br />master plan. Attached are a few examples from the studio that I hope help express the <br />enormous potential before us and inspire action to move forward. <br />With respect and hope for a great future for the site and city! <br />Brook Muller <br />Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, School of Architecture and Allied Arts <br />Associate Professor, Architecture <br />Director, Graduate Certificate Program in Ecological Design <br />University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 <br />DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE <br />210 Lawrence Hall, 1206 University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403 -1206 <br />T (541) 346 -3656 F (541) 346 -3626 http: / /architecture.uoregon.edu <br />