University of Oregon’s College of Design welcomes transpecies design concept

In May 2019, the United Nations released the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services warning that human activities will drive nearly one million species to extinction in a few decades. The primary reasons for this are habitat loss and biodiversity demise caused by a changing climate, pollution, non-indigenous species, land clearing, overpopulation, and consumption. The College of Design transpecies design initiative puts design to work in an effort to address the challenges species extinction presents all life on earth.

The College of Design is committed to reversing the ecological harms human activities create for a myriad number of life forms. In response to the rapid loss of species, that currently sits between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural baseline rate, faculty and students across the college have been working to harness our strengths in environmental and sustainable design to create built environments wherein a variety of species can flourish.

Confluence Land Bridge over State Highway 14 Land Bridge Confluence art landscapes along the Columbia River system, created by Architect Johnpaul Jones, FAIA, BArch ’67, with artist Maya Lin, courtesy of Confluence Project.
In the inaugural Bruton Design Intensive students were tasked with designing a new building façade system that could be home to Oregon’s endangered indigenous bumblebees. Product Design students have been studying how to create infrastructure that supports other-than-human species habitats. Meanwhile, faculty from the Institute for Health and the Built Environment conduct research on how microbes proliferate and distribute throughout buildings. Faculty and students working in mass timber construction study how the mass timber industry provides a valuable platform for sustainable forest management and accordingly reduces habitat loss from wildfires. The Department of Landscape Architecture hosted a transpecies design retreat in July 2022 at the Overlook Field School, bringing together renowned scientists, artists, and architects from across the United States to collectively grapple with the challenge species extinction presents the design disciplines. For the 2021-2022 academic year, the Department of the History of Art and Architecture transpecies design lecture series presented a broad spectrum of notable writers, thinkers, and art practitioners, exploring topics such as interspecies communication in art, to exhibitions featuring live animals and taxidermy.


Work from the College of Design transpecies design initiative will be featured in an exhibition of the same name at the upcoming European Cultural Center’s 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. The Venice Architecture Biennale attracts approximately 600,000 visitors from all sectors of the design community over the course of six months. The exhibition will run from end of May 2023 through to the beginning of November 2023. In addition, the College of Design and transpecies design will be featured on public television on the Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid program.

What is Transpecies Design?
Transpecies design is described by Dean Adrian Parr as “an other-than-anthropocentric
approach to regenerating, restoring, reinvigorating, and replenishing the natural environment.
Rather than presenting the human experience and flourishing as the goal of design, transpecies
design takes the inextricable linkages connecting animals and plants as both the point of
departure and the end goal of design.”

As such, transpecies design moves beyond human experience and behavior serving as the
fundamental ingredient for how design decisions are made, and the direction design processes
take. Transpecies design engages the substantive realities of a multiplicity of species as both
design content and form, harnessing the affective capacity of design to maximize deep flourishing.

This reconciliatory design philosophy ensures positive design outcomes in an ever-changing world
by embracing human and nature to create designs for multiple species and ecosystems and continues
to build on the expertise and history of the College of Design.

The University of Oregon’s College of Design has always led its contemporaries when it comes to leveraging and building expertise with environmentally-focused design philosophies. With the addition of transpecies design to its curriculum, the college continues to build on its storied history.

Since the college’s inception in 1914, the visionary leadership of UO and the college have always strived to deliver dynamic, creative, innovative, and highly-regarded educational outcomes for its students. The College of Design has consistently been at the forefront of addressing climate change, environmental degradation, and social inequities through design thinking and practices through its program offerings in architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, historic preservation, product design, sports product design, fine art, art and technology, non-profit management, planning, public affairs, and the history of art and architecture.

Pairing a reconciliatory way of designing with the University of Oregon’s robust Environment Initiative’s goal to work toward a just and livable future, shows the College of Design continues its storied legacy in ecological design to help address global problems created by climate change and environmental degradation. This is accomplished by hiring future-focused faculty who help produce innovative alumni.

Previous faculty members who challenge and engage popular design modalities include lauded individuals such as:

Edward Mazria
FAIA. Mazria developed the think-tank Architecture 2030 and issued the 2030 Challenge, an initiative to meet incremental carbon reduction goals called for by the global scientific community.

Alison Kwok
A stalwart presence in the School of Architecture & Environment at the College of Design, Kwok’s research areas include adaptive and mitigation strategies for climate change, materials and carbon, thermal comfort, zero net energy strategies, building energy metrics, and more. Pedagogy and curriculum innovation is a pressing interest because of the pressing challenges of the environment and a strong belief that architects can make a difference.

Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg
Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg wore many hats at the College of Design including the roles of Associate Dean of Research and Director of the School of Architecture & Environment while he was with the University of Oregon. He founded the Institute for Health in the Built Environment (IHBE) and directed the Biology and the Built Environment Center (BioBE Center) and the Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory (ESBL) in Portland and Eugene and his work seeks to facilitate integration amongst a broad network of researchers and practitioners on issues concerning health, comfort, and sustainability in the human ecosystem in order to support human, community, and planetary health. He has secured over $15M in funded research on topics of energy and indoor environmental quality for organizations.

GZ “Charlie” Brown
FAIA, created the world-renowned, university-based architectural research labs, Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory, over 40 years at the UO. Additionally, Brown helped found what is now the Society of Building Science Educators. In 1985, he provided the foundation for modern passive design principles with his book, Sun, Wind, and Light: Architectural Design Strategies.

Carla Bengtson
Carla Bengtson is an emeritus art professor who has lectured on environmental thought at international environmental philosophy conferences and biodiversity conservation conferences in the US, Canada, and South America. Her site-responsive projects, situated in wild, domestic, and liminal spaces, create possible/impossible situations in which to attempt interspecies communication. She has received numerous awards, including a Hallie Ford Foundation residency award, an Oregon Arts Commission grant, and an NEA Individual Grant for Artists. She has participated in multiple residencies, including Mass Moca, Djerassi, Ucross, a Signal Fire Outpost residency at the US/Mexico border, and thirteen residencies at the Tiputini Biodiversity Research Station in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

John Reynolds
FAIA, established the Reynolds Symposium and co-authored four editions of Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, now the most widely used text on the design of environmental control systems for buildings that is used in many schools of architecture and for the architecture licensing exam.

Mitch Joachim
One of the primary instructors at the inaugural Bruton Design Intensive, a weeklong summer course where students were tasked with designing a new building façade system that could be home to Oregon’s endangered indigenous bumblebees Mitch is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and Associate Professor of Practice at NYU. Mitchell upholds noteworthy leadership roles as a University Senator and Co-Chair of Global Design NYU. He has won many awards including Fulbright Scholarship, LafargeHolcim Acknowledgement Prize, Ove Arup Foundation Grant, and many more! He is a TED Senior Fellow and has been awarded fellowships with Safdie Architects, and the Martin Society for Sustainability at MIT.