S ou t hw e s t e r n
O r e g on
UO architecture department strengthens residential design research, education
By Nick Venezia
Professors Michael Fifield and Peter Keyes earn $12,000 Burkes Awards to address social issues in housing
T
he University of Oregon’s architecture department
has bolstered its commitment to housing education by awarding two professors with the first and second annual Burkes Faculty Awards. Prof. Michael Fifield and Assoc. Prof. Peter Keyes have received $12,000 to support their continued work in housing. Fifield is the 2009–10 award recipient and Keyes will be the 2010–11 recipient. The Burkes Fund has been established to enhance the architecture department’s teaching and research of social issues in housing. The awards were made by Christine Theodoropoulos, department head, who thanked the two professors for their dedication to the students and their contributions to the curriculum. Fifield and Keyes are passionate about their work and speak strongly about the impact of housing within architectural education. They have preliminary plans to collaborate on a book about housing types and typologies, a subject of their work for many years. The two also have tackled issues such as plot size, planned neighborhoods, land use and the role of community involvement in the design process. Broadening the university’s well-known emphasis on sustainability, the two have
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Michael Fifield
Peter Keyes
addressed the less glamorous side of the green building movement. As Fifield put it, “I firmly believe that, in addition to ‘green building’ practices, unit size and appropriate land-use planning can address issues of sustainability in an equally important manner.” Fifield and Keyes, along with Rob Thallon, associate professor, have worked together in recent years to structure a housing concentration that will be offered to students interested in the focused study of residential housing design principles. The professors have set up a tag team operation to cover specific housing courses on a regular basis
in both Eugene and Portland. Every fall term, the professors alternate campuses to teach their primary courses, Fifield’s “Housing Protot y pes” and Keyes’ “Housing Design.” When one is teaching in Eugene, the other is in Portland. The concentration goes beyond the fall term. Fifield alternates between two winter courses, “Community Design” and “Minimal Dwelling.” The former covers the active role community members play in neighborhood design, especially issues associated with “smart growth,” while the latter focuses on reducing the ecological and financial impacts of residential work. Keyes is also considering
teaching a seminar on housing types and typologies during the spring term. Beyond their commitment to education, Fifield and Keyes continue to work on their own research and creative endeavors to enrich the housing conversation in the Northwest. In 2007, Fifield joined Assoc. Prof. Mark Gillem as administrators and coeditors of the competition catalog for the Portland Courtyard Housing Design Competition. Keyes entered the contest with his own team of former students and won second place for their proposal that featured ecological building strategies, courtyard flexibility and modular design for “future proofing.” Fifield acts as principal of the firm Fifield Architecture + Urban Design. His recent work includes a 269-squarefoot dwelling in Eugene for an artist. The project was featured in the Annual Houses issue of Fine Homebuilding this past summer, alongside work by a fellow faculty member, Asst. Professor Erin Moore, who designed a writing studio in Central Oregon with a minimal ecological footprint. Fifield’s project was also published in the October issue of Residential Architect, and it also received an AIA Merit Design Award this past year.