Events and Lectures
Upcoming Events
"Firsts" Lecture Series
The Department of Architecture, Portland State University, is proud to host its inaugural lecture series, titled “Firsts.” The series spans the 2011-2012 academic year with presentations by six notable academics, artists and professionals in architectural practice worldwide: Petra Kempf, John Ochsendorf, Gilles Saucier, Jeremy Till, Sarah Wigglesworth and Paul Pfeiffer.
The concepts of origins and beginnings, long a subject of interest among architects, will be explored throughout the series of lectures. As the Greek word Arche (meaning “first cause”) is at the root of the word architecture, the guest lecturers will discuss their own “first causes”—the spark that led them to follow their career path—as part of their presentations.
Petra Kempf
Thursday, October 6, 2011, 7pm
Petra Kempf, Ph.D., is a practicing architect and urban designer based in New York. She is the founder of URBANTRANSITS, an interdisciplinary research initiative focusing on the transient nature of cities. She has worked with the Department of City Planning in New York City, the Project for Public Spaces and Richard Meier and Partners. She currently teaches at Columbia University and has taught at Cornell University, Parsons School of Design and the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany. She is the author of You Are the City (2009) and (K)ein Ort Nirgends—Der Transitraum im urbanen Netzwerk (2010).
John Ochsendorf
Thursday, October 20, 2011, 7pm
John Ochsendorf is an engineer and educator specializing in the history and technology of historic structures. He has studied a variety of alternative engineering traditions, induding Guastavino thin tile vaulting and the hand-woven, fiber suspension bridges of the Inca Empire. He is the first engineer to be awarded a Rome Prize (2007) and the first structural engineer to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (2008). He currently teaches architecture and civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gilles Saucier
Thursday, February 23, 2012, 7pm
Gilles Saucier is Design Partner of Saucier + Perrotte Architects and an invited professor and critic at a number of Canadian and American universities, most recently at MIT in 2011. Saucier + Perrotte Architects, founded in 1988, is an internationally renowned multidisciplinary design practice that has been honored with numerous awards and published worldwide. From the beginning, Saucier + Perrotte Architects has integrally linked its architecture to geology and the landscape, stressing the physical and symbolic importance of site. The firm represented Canada at the Architecture Biennale of Venice in 2004, and in 2009 it received the RAIC Award of Excellence for Best Architectural Firm in Canada.
Jeremy Till
Thursday, April 19, 2012, 7pm
Jeremy Till has pursued a dual life as an architect and an educator. Till curated the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale and is the only person to be twice awarded the RIBA President's Award for Research. He is the author of Architecture Depends (2009), a series of polemics and reflections that call attention to the gap between what architecture actually is—contingent on many outside forces—and what architects seem to want it to be—autonomous and pure. As Till succinctly puts it: "Architecture, in all its dependency, has to remain open."
Sarah Wigglesworth
Friday, April 20, 2012, 7pm
Sarah Wigglesworth founded Sarah Wigglesworth Architects in London in 1994. As an architect, Wigglesworth strives to amplify the representation of women—as clients, users and architects—in the shaping of the built environment. Her work has been published and exhibited internationally, and she has lectured worldwide. Wigglesworth's work is acknowledged as a rising influence in British architecture: in 2004 she was awarded an MBE for services to architecture, the same year that the firm's "Straw House" at 9 Stock Orchard Street in London won two RIBA awards for its innovative sustainability technologies—many of which were being used in an urban context for the first time. She is Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield.
Paul Pfeiffer
Thursday, May 17, 2012, 7pm
Paul Pfeiffer is a New York–based artist whose groundbreaking work in video, sculpture and photography uses recent computer technologies to examine the role that the mass media plays in shaping consciousness. Pfeiffer prompts audiences to reconsider attitudes about the body, race, identity, faith and architectural space in contemporary society. His work has been exhibited internationally at renowned museums and galleries and is in private and public collections worldwide. He is the recipient of numerous awards and, notably, he is the inaugural recipient of the Bucksbaum Award, given by the Whitney Museum of American Art (2000).
The lectures by Petra Kempf and John Ochsendorf are part of the American Institute of Architects' Portland Architecture + Design Festival, which runs September 29 - October 31 and features tours, film screenings, exhibitions and lectures on design and our built environment.
All "Firsts" lectures take place in the Shattuck Hall Annex, SW Broadway & Hall Streets, Portland, Oregon and are free and open to the public.
Fridays@4 Lectures
Join us for informal conversations inspired by guest presenters from within and beyond the Department of Architecture. Events take place Fridays at 4 p.m. in the Shattuck Hall Annex, SW Broadway and Hall. Lectures are free and open to the public.
Winter 2012 Term
January 13: Rebecca Hamilton, RetROW (Rethinking the Right of Way) - RetROW has been involved in creating mini temporary parks in parking spaces, folowing the model begun in San Francisco.
January 20: Thomas C. Hubka, "Eighteenth-Century Polish Wooden Synagogues: Multi-Culturalism in Architecture at Art" - A presentation by Thomas C. Hubka, Professor Emeritus of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Adjunct Professor at Portland State University
January 27: Portland State University Master of Architecture Students' Thesis Presentations (Part 1)
February 3: Portland State University Master of Architecture Students' Thesis Presentations (Part 2)
February 10: Andy Cao, Cao | Perrot Studio, "Incidental Placemaking: Beauty and Dreams" - Vietnamese-born landscape artist Andy Cao is the founder and design partner of Cao | Perrot Studio, Los Angeles and Paris. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship in Landscape Architecture at the American Academy in Rome and a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Drawing on diverse cultural backgrounds, Cao | Perrot Studio creates hybrid environments, blending art and landscape to make a place for dreaming. The projects, both temporary and permanent, cross commercial, artistic and residential boundaries, and vary in size from intimate courtyards to large-scale public parks. Presented with support from Atelier Dreseitl + PLACE.
February 17: Andrew Pulliam, Department of Architecture Student Travel Award Winner (Chile)
March 2: Alex Anderson, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Washington
March 9: Margarette Leite, Portable School Classrooms Initiative
Fall 2011 Term
September 30: Argentina 2011 - Report from Buenos Aires by students from the Argentina summer program
October 7: Communicating Rural Studio - Graphic designer Clifton Burt discusses his work for Rural Studio
October 14: Human Factors in Buildings - Introducing new faculty member Kyle Konis
October 21: Portland's Peculiar Orientation - A stroll through the streets, buildings and spaces of Portland's queer history: Recent research by graduate students Dustin Buzzard and Klara Jolesz
October 28: Introducing the Profession - A discussion with the Oregon Board of Architectural Examiners
November 4: Barcelona 2011 - Report from Spain by students from the Barcelona summer program
November 11: To be announced
For more information on future events or to get more details, contact the Department at 503.725.8405.
Past Events
Design Charrette for mat [lab] pdx
Saturday, March 3, 2012, 11am to 2pm
Shattuck Annex, SW Broadway & Hall Streets
RSVP to elliott.arch@gmail.com
Materialize | Student Work 2010 - 2011
End-of-Year Exhibition of Department of Architecture Students' Work 
Opening Reception: First Thursday, June 2, 2011, 5:30pm to 8:30pm
Exhibition runs from June 1 through June 30
AIA Portland/Center for Architecture, 403 NW 11th Avenue, Portland, Oregon
Graduation 2011
Graduation Dinner and Awards Ceremony
Wednesday, June 8, 2011, 6 to 9pm, by invitation only
School of Fine and Performing Arts Hooding Ceremony
Friday, June 10, 4pm, Lincoln Hall
2011 Spring Commencement Ceremony
Sunday, June 12, 2pm, Rose Garden Arena
For more information on the Commencement Ceremony, visit the university's Commencement page.
Illuminated City: A Light with Content Symposium, April 9, 2011
The Portland State University Department of Architecture organized an international group of speakers to explore the experiential, spatial, technical, political and interactive qualities of projected light media. Speakers included Leni Schwendinger, Thomas Schielke, Ali Momeni, and individuals from URBANSCREEN and Spitball Media. The symposium included light installations on campus buildings and in Portland galleries featuring the work of designers, artists and students. The Illuminated City Symposium took place April 9 in the Shattuck Hall Annex.
For more details please visit www.illuminated-city.com.
2011 Oregon ASLA Symposium: Landscape Fusion, April 15-16, 2011
The Portland State University Department of Architecture was pleased to serve as a host for the Oregon ASLA Symposium. The event, scheduled for April 15-16, featured Walter Hood as the keynote speaker. Hood is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Landscape Architecture and Environmental Design Department. His early projects, such as Lafayette Square and Splash Pad Park, are regarded as transformative designs in the field of landscape architecture. Hood is the designer for the gardens and landscapes of the De Young Museum in San Francisco and the California African American Museum in Los Angeles.
For additional information on the event please visit www.aslaoregon.org/events/articles/symposium.
Past Fridays @ 4
2010-2011 Academic Year
June 3: Michael Curry, kinetic theatrical designer
May 27: Farm Research and Design
May 20: Fletcher Farr Ayotte, Inc.
May 6: opsis architecture
April 29: to be announced
February 18: Will Bruder
"From Head, to Heart, to Hand: Architecture in the Digital Age"
Bruder Lecture from Ryan Fagre on Vimeo.
January 21, 2011: Sergio Palleroni & Margarette Leite
