The University of Oregon Department of Architecture is pleased to welcome Assistant Professors Daisy-O’lice Williams and Philip Speranza, new faculty in design communications.

The 2011 Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor in Architectural Design is John Paul Jones, FAIA, principal of Jones and Jones, Seattle. Johnpaul Jones earned his bachelor of architecture from the UO in 1967. His firm received the ASLA Firm Award in 2003. Johnpaul is a Fellow in the AIA and his honors also include the AIA Seattle Medal of Honor, the Executive Excellence Award from the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and the 1998 Elis F. Lawrence Medal from the UO School of Architecture & Allied Arts.

Professor Howard Davis was the recipient of the Thomas F. Herman  Award, the highest teaching honor for senior faculty members at the University of Oregon.

Professor Kevin Nute’s chapter on ‘Japanese Art as a Means to Organic Architecture’ will appear in a forthcoming book published by the French School of Far Eastern Studies in Paris, Reception et diffusion en Occident de l’espace architectural et de l’art des jardins du Japon, Paris, 2012. His paper ‘Frank Lloyd Wright and the Woodblock Print’ will appear in the Bulletin de l’Association Franco-Japonaise, Paris, in March 2012.

Professor Gerald Gast’s design thesis students at the University of Oregon’s Portland Program are working on a two-year project with the City of Portland’s Office of Healthy Working Rivers.  2011 projects focused on the Willamette River North Reach, the city’s industrial waterfront.  This year’s work addresses the Willamette Central Reach, Portland’s Downtown Riverfront. An exhibit of the first year of work was opened by Mayor Sam Adams at City Hall in June, with a second event planned for June ’12.