News
Good design for all
MOST NEW ARCHITECTURE designs—from mansions to museums—are for society’s wealthiest five percent. But as architecture professor Sergio Palleroni explains, that approach defaults on civic obligation and ignores some of society’s most interesting challenges. He looks for ways to include PSU architecture students in public interest projects, building “million-dollar ideas with $100 in parts from Home Depot.”
The irony is that this selfless, public approach has brought Palleroni accolades from such people as Jane Goodall, Richard Gere, Prince Charles, and Richard Branson. Recently, the American Institute of Architects awarded Palleroni and three collaborators its 2011 Latrobe Prize. Their winning proposal, selected from nearly 500, will look at how architects do and could play a role in public interest projects. It is the first Latrobe Prize winner to address an issue other than a technical architecture challenge.
Palleroni includes students from Portland State and other schools on his public interest projects. They’ve built an outdoor solar kitchen for squatter communities in Mexico using focused sunlight rather than wood burning to cook the day’s meals, accomplished with inexpensive and readily available materials.
In Tunisia, they built solar bakeries for a community with a 7,000-year history of bread baking. And in Ladakh, India, they constructed an off-the-grid school with internationally renowned architectural engineering firm ARUP Associates, at the request of the Dalai Lama.
Closer to home, Palleroni’s students worked with Habitat for Humanity to design a community center for families permanently displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. In Austin, Texas, they built affordable and energy efficient “Alley Flats” for low-income families. And for schools in Oregon and elsewhere, they have come up with a new design for modular, portable classrooms.
When Palleroni joined the PSU Department of Architecture in 2008, it had long offered a bachelor’s degree program. This past June, he saw the first group of students graduate from Architecture’s new master’s program. Some of their projects, including orphanages and classrooms in Haiti, will keep current students busy for years to come.
Photo: Architecture professor Sergio Palleroni takes students around the world to design and build public projects. In Ladakh, India, students worked with local pupils and Buddhist nuns stitching together military parachutes for a pavilion that symbolizes peace and unity amidst the chaos of war.
Green wineries uncorked
FOR GENERATIONS, the only thing that mattered when it came to wine was taste.
Not anymore, according to Northwest wineries, leaders in sustainable practices. Today, connoisseurs want to know how the grapes are grown, whether wineries treat the land respectfully, and how much waste the industry produces.
To that end, business professor Mellie Pullman and her students conducted interviews of 25 Oregon and Washington wineries about their eco-friendly practices and why they’re important. They found wineries that limit pesticide and herbicide use, make use of bio-fuel in their equipment, and distribute wine in 2.5-gallon reusable mini kegs rather than individual bottles. Their study results were published in the Journal of Wine Research.
“There’s definitely an Oregon ethos in terms of believing in the natural world and trying to enhance the production of grapes,” Pullman says.
She found that taking care of the land is intricately linked to producing excellent wine. Oregon winery Sokol Blosser, for example, uses cover crops rather than herbicides to control weeds, and those cover crops provide nutrients when worked back into the soil. Sokol Blosser was also the first winery in the country to earn prestigious LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for a building on its property.
Other Oregon wineries are pushing to reduce waste in packaging, such as switching to screw caps and skipping the lead foil that wraps around bottle necks. While Pacific Northwest wineries produce 90 percent of U.S. wine not made in California, their relatively small size allows them to make sustainable changes, says Pullman.
Photo: All aspects of the Northwest wine business—from grape growing to distribution—was the focus of a study conducted by business students under professor Mellie Pullman.
The scoop on the new Ben & Jerry’s
COME TO CAMPUS for a Ben & Jerry’s Triple Caramel Chunk ice cream cone and know you are helping young people in Portland.
This summer New Avenues for Youth opened its second Ben & Jerry’s PartnerShop in the PSU Urban Center Plaza at Southwest Sixth and Mill. New Avenues uses the shops to give young people work experience and entrepreneurial skills. The new shop’s assistant manager, Charlyn Neal, was homeless when she first came to New Avenues. Today she is a 21-year-old mother with her own apartment.
New Avenues also expects the close proximity to Portland State to spark new educational ambitions for its ice cream scoopers. PSU’s School of Social Work is helping by developing graduate internships and a work-study mentor program with New Avenues as well as scholarships for the young people it serves.
Photo: This summer, New Avenues for Youth opened a Ben & Jerry’s scoop shop on campus in partnership with PSU and the School of Social Work.
Banner fund-raising year
Portland State experienced a 22 percent increase in philanthropic support, making the 2010-11 fiscal year the best ever in gifts received by the University. Private donors and organizations contributed more than $15.7 million to PSU people, programs, and research.
“We are extremely grateful for this unprecedented level of giving, particularly during these tough economic times,” says PSU President Wim Wiewel. “These donations directly support students and help PSU keep the cost of a quality education within reach of Oregonians.