Message from the UO Architecture Department Head

Michael Zaretsky, AIA
Architecture Department Head
University of Oregon

Hello AIA Oregon!

I am a new member of AIA Oregon, but not new to Oregon. I was a Master of Architecture student at the University of Oregon (UO) from 1994-1998. I then practiced architecture in Copenhagen, Denmark, San Francisco, California and Seattle, Washington before choosing to transition to academia. I taught one quarter at UO in spring 2004 and then two years at the Savannah College of Art and Design before taking a tenure-track position at the University of Cincinnati (UC). I taught for ten years and led the MetroLAB Community Design/Build program before transitioning to an Associate Dean role in the UC College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP). In 2018, my wife was offered a position as Dean of the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs (CAPPA) at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). We moved to Dallas, Texas where I became the Director of Architectural Engineering at UTA. However, when the opportunity came up to come back to the University of Oregon, we couldn’t resist. My wife, Adrian Parr, is the Dean of the College of Design and I am the Head of Architecture at UO.

It is an immense honor to return to UO Architecture to work with the faculty, staff and students of the Department of Architecture. My experience here set me on a path that embraces all forms of environmental sustainability, a critical integration of context and place as well as a deep appreciation of cultural specificity. I learned to collaborate with others to create meaningful buildings and places using appropriate materials and technologies. I learned to incorporate passive strategies and integrated systems through projects at all scales.

Upon returning last spring, I have discovered that the work of the faculty and the program has expanded to engage cutting-edge research in centers such as the Institute for Health in the Built Environment (IHBE), the Tallwood Design Institute (TDI), and Urbanism Next among many others. I have also learned that the department, and the School of Architecture and Environment (SAE), have embraced social justice as a critical component of sustainability. In the last three years, the Design for Spatial Justice Initiative (DSJI) program has brought 15 DSJI Fellows to UO from across the world to UO to integrate diverse perspectives from practice, academia and lived experience. These fellows have profoundly impacted our design and our dialogue.

We recently completed our accreditation visit from the National Architectural Accreditation Board (NAAB). The feedback was extremely positive overall. They noted our focus on collaboration and the commitment to high quality teaching among our faculty. We received national commendations for two areas – “Ecological Knowledge and Responsibility” and “Social Justice and Equity.” However, there is one area where we need to improve - preparation for Professional Practice. While all UO Architecture students take a course in Context of the Profession, we need to do more to engage our students with the profession throughout their academic experience. We are currently preparing to start offering Practicum again (following covid) as well as offering more opportunities for Internships and engagement with Practice in Eugene and Portland.

We are hoping to build our relationships with all of our AIA partners in Oregon, throughout the PNW and across the country. We are excited to work with all of you to create more bridges between our program and your firms.

Don’t hesitate to reach out or come visit us in Eugene or Portland.

Message from the AIA Eugene Section Director-Elect

Andrew Scheidt, AIA
Eugene Section Director-Elect

Member Re-engagement

As the new Section-Director Elect for the Eugene Section of AIAO, I would like to take this opportunity to give you some information about myself and my motivation for taking on this position.  I primarily strive to be an architect focusing on design respectful towards and reflective of place.  With that in mind, I have found the local AIA sections to be the best avenue for discovering the factors/persons affecting the design of the places where I find myself.

In my undergraduate experience at the University of Virginia (‘02), I learned to design buildings from an artistic standpoint.  We learned how to take an idea and translate it into a built form. In my graduate studies at the University of Oregon (‘06), I was first exposed towards critical regionalism, and those studies provided me with the technical skills to analyze a site and make an informed response with my design proposal to create a building that will have a benefit to its environment. 

I worked for 7 years post graduate school primarily with other architects and designers at The Sea Ranch in coastal CA, designing custom mid-sized single-family residences, both for owner occupied and rental use.  Ten years ago, I moved back to Eugene where I have worked in local offices doing small commercial/retail work.  In the past 2 years I have picked back up and reopened my full-service architectural firm working primarily in residential and low-rise commercial/retail. 

My design philosophy is based around two main influences: client and site.  The conditions and goals placed on the project by the client and the opportunities presented by the site allow the project design to take a unique form, which I view as my definition of the ‘Ecology of Place’.  I feel design projects that relate to the ecology of their place and quantify environmental variables and their influences on the design result in holistic structures.  Structures that maximize the available functions, energy efficiency, longevity, sense of appropriateness and the physical and mental well-being of the occupants.  I believe in passive design strategies as a solution to the issues of excessive energy consumption, indoor air sickness, and as a method to reconnect building inhabitants to the natural world.

Prior to COVID I was participating in various AIA-SWO activities, of note were my participation in the most recent re-envisioning of the Eugene COLA group circa 2012/13, acting as the local Design Spring (Emerging Professionals) lead for Eugene for 2 years, and participation in and hope to take on as leading, (then COVID) of the local Small Firms group. These experiences have helped me expand the knowledge, expertise, and awareness of the factors and possibilities of our local design community.

However, during my educational experience I was not involved in AIAS and my early professional carrier I did not see the value in participating in the local AIA chapters.  It was only upon coming to Eugene and looking for professional networking that I began to reach out.

It quickly became evident to me the value of the local AIA.  If I can convey one message today it is that your local Sections value is commiserate with the effort one puts into it.  This is a volunteer organization; it runs on local members giving of their time.

My vision and goal for my time as a future leader in this organization is for it to facilitate your needs.  This includes both being a resource, but also a venue for you to be able to make your ideas happen.  Do you wish there was more peer to peer networking, GREAT come help us make that happen for you and the community.  Do you wish you could have a discussion around what the local market is like for designers and who is the real competition for what you want to achieve, GREAT, come to the AIA with that idea and we will help you facilitate that gathering.  If you need information on a particular topic, I would like your local section to be your go to source.  If you want to know how to become licensed, I would like your local section to foster, support, and help to provide the resources for you to be able to succeed in that.   

What this vision requires is participation.  In the coming months I will be looking towards Member Re-engagement.  Coming out of COVID and all remote worlds, what does the AIA look like in a way that will get you to come out and participate?  What events would you like to see?  What resources should we focus on making locally available.  These are items I would like to focus on so that coming out of a statewide reorganization followed by a Pandemic we can focus on what will get members to make their own value out of AIAO

Message from the AIAO Executive Vice President/CEO

Heather Wilson
AIAO EVP/CEO

As I am writing this message, I am listening to the Honorable Judge Ketanji Brown defend her stellar resume and exceptional personal work ethic before a confirmation panel for the Supreme Court, and I am struck by the poised, calm, peaceful woman I see prevailing in front of me. She reminds me of another poised and peaceful soul I have had the pleasure to meet, Elizabeth Smart.

When I met Elizabeth Smart, her story of abduction and return had long passed; here she was a grown woman, ethereally beautiful, literally almost glowing as she entered the Utah State Legislative chambers. She gave testimony regarding her experience, and made a pointed argument: proper sexual education in Utah public schools may have saved her at least some of her anguish, and she asked the body to consider how important it might be to educate young girls – without attempting to sway them toward premature activity – to genuinely know their bodies, and perhaps their own value.

She was politely listened to, and when her testimony was finished, the room erupted in applause.

Then, after she left the room, they voted. Her measure failed, nearly unanimously. It did so each year I saw her present it to that body. I thought I was struck by her strength, by her beauty and poise while persisting despite the known outcome. Then I realized there was a much better word for it: resilience.

We – AIA, its practitioners, its allied partners, employees and colleagues – have been using this term now to start to explore what it means to persist despite the challenges of your environment. As I watch Ketanji, and remember Elizabeth, I am also thinking of my graduating senior son, headed out into a post-pandemic world that has not yet set itself back on a normalized course. What he and his graduating class have endured will be unique to them, and they are the lucky ones. There are hundreds of thousands of children who were both left without a caregiver and without a chance to say a proper goodbye who are in every age from preschool to senior year, and we’d better start thinking about how we design for their well-being.

Because I am blessed to have my grandmothers’ journals, I know that she was one of these pandemic children, left by a father who died in the 1919 flu epidemic before she was born. My Nana, as a result, carried a trauma that I can tell you reverberated her entire life. It linked her every step to the next. In fact, without the trauma, she would not have become the resilient and resourceful grandmother I knew her to be, and she told me that many times. Her strength laid in her continued gratitude for her supports - her neighbors, her church, her siblings, her children. Her community.

We are a community. We have agreements that we honor to create safe spaces for all of our members, and I hope you’ll take them with you wherever we meet; indeed, wherever you go. As we re-enter in person settings and gather in (hopefully well designed) spaces, let us remember what resilience really means: the ability to absorb or avoid damage without suffering complete failure – and continue to grow back toward something we can call normal, but will hopefully cherish in extraordinary ways.

Yours in Design,

Heather Wilson