Update - the Certificate is now available! For more information, go to the AAA Certificate website.
In order to achieve a balance with our own habitat, designers need to recognize and begin designing in a sustainable and holistic fashion. Practicing a sustainable, holistic design process means taking a critical look at current conditions, recognizing and clearly articulating our relationship with nature, learning from it, reconnecting with it, and creating a new culture of sustainability.
The Ecological Design Certificate emphasizes the recognition of the earths natural processes and designing within and congruent with those parameters. It will prepare students to become designers with the ability to:
- think and act at all scales
- design with environmentally benign materials and processes
- change existing hazardous paradigms
- synthesize design with the natural and human condition
- promote knowledge and awareness of ecological issues
- provide a coherent theme as an augmentation of ones design education.
Students will gain the technical tools and theoretical ideas necessary to achieve these abilities and carry them out into the practicing world.
The School of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon has a reputation throughout the country as a leader in sustainable and ecologically sensitive design, yet currently has no organized system of course selection to provide and structure such an education. This certificate will provide this structure, and solidify the commitment of the school towards ecological design. This will have the effect of further promoting and establishing our reputation of leadership in the field.
The program is primarily a design based program, covering the departments of architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, and planning & public policy management. It is conceivable that in the future it can be adapted to provide for a wider range of design related fields in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. The proposed certificate also draws from related fields outside of AAA in order to supplement the core requirements. The certificate program is for motivated students to supplement and focus the education provided by their degree program. students will be required to develop an in depth understanding of how natural and cultural sustainability is nurtured by the designed realm.
Faculty Questionnaire
This questionnaire is for faculty of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Please send responses to ascheidt@uoregon.edu or place them in Andrew Schiedt's grad mailbox.
