PSU's $25 million green grant

As numerous outlets have reported today, Portland State University will be given $25 million over the next decade (contingent upon the school generating matching grants) from the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation of Portland. The grant is for additional investments in research and teaching about sustainable environmental practices. 

The $25 million grant is by far the largest in PSU's history; the largest previous amount was $8 million. By comparison, the 27,000 student university's entire operating budget last year, according to Bill Graves' Oregonian report, was $346 million.

Graves also was told by PSU provost Roy Koch that the money will be used to support studies and research on sustainable practices in transportation, business, architecture and other areas. 

Thinking about architecture in particular, what might this mean for Portland State? The school only recently attained an accreditation for master's degree programs. If the school is to be a leader in sustainability, as the grant intends, shouldn't they have an accredited undergraduate degree program in architecture?

[Update 9/12: A commenter writes, "NAAB (the accredidation folks) have closed the door on any new undergraduate programs. so PSU and any other schol seeking accreditation for a new professional degree has no choice but to seek the graduate designation."]

Also, there are numerous colleges whose environmental studies departments and/or buildings comprise some ambitious architecture, perhaps most notably architect Will McDonough's Lewis Center at Oberlin College (pictured) and Mahlum Architects' Seminar II building at Evergreen State College. Might Portland State University eventually have a landmark center for environmental studies?

If so, although I often argue for bringing in talented outside firms for big signature landmark projects, there are plenty of local firms that could compete well given their first rate green design credentials: SERA Architects, Opsis Architecture, and of course GBD Architects. But countless firms, from Zimmer Gunsul Frasca to BOORA to Thomas Hacker Architects, know how to make a LEED gold or platinum building these days as well. GBD has already done it for another school tied to PSU: Oregon Health & Science University.

What else might those in the design community like to see done with this $25 million to forward the cause of sustainability in Portland at at PSU in particular? Oh, and one other thought: Apparently this foundation has been in operation since 2002. Where have they been before this? And is the $25 million the end of their donations, or the beginning? James and Marion Miller have both passed away, but one wonders if their foundation might be interested in future benefaction -- like, for example, towards a contemporary art museum?

Comments

[Peter S.]

Actually, since PSU's program is not yet accredited but rather in candidacy this grant could be even more crucial to the school. By the time the NAAB makes their return visit in 2010 the school could have a real selling point for the board.

[Clive Knights]

The Department of Architecture is looking forward to contributing to the further development of PSU's green agenda. In our recent, successful, NAAB accreditation candidacy visit, sustainability was one of several dimensions of our existing pedagogy noted as especially successful.

This Fall we welcome a new Associate Professor with an established international reputation in the field, Sergio Palleroni, and we begin searches for 3 new full-time faculty, one of whom will be a specialist in sustainable practices.

I should also add that one of the reasons local practice SRG were chosen to re-model the Department of Architecture's home, Shattuck Hall, was because of their established green credentials. The new facility opens next week on the evening of September 25th.

The Department will soon begin promoting the new 2-year Master of Architecture, for a Fall 2009 intake. We welcome enquiries from all those interested in learning more. Contact architecture@pdx.edu

[Ethan]

LEED Gold, or even Platinum, would not be appropriate for a project of this stature and intent. The relevant benchmark would be the Living Building Challenge. See: http://www.cascadiagbc.org/lbc

[garrett]

brian,
it might be nice if a little bit of research was done before blanket opinions were posted.
a bit of fact-checking here: NAAB (the accreditation-folks) have closed the door on any new undergraduate programs. so PSU and any other school seeking accreditation for a new professional degree has no choice but to seek the graduate designation.
the logic is that an undergraduate professional degree in architecture requires so much more time and so many more course credits than a non-professional bachelor's that it is--for all intents and purposes equivalent to a master's degree. and there is so much confusion out there between the equivalency of a B-arch. (undergraduate) and an M-arch. (graduate) that they're trying to clean things up a bit for all new programs.
confused yet?

[Brian Libby]

Garrett,

I appreciate the informational component of your comment.

Also, I apologize to all readers in general for the unfortunate errors that sometimes come up in posts, be they grammatical or having to do with the story itself. I and am always happy to have help from people in getting the right info out there. If the posts seem hasty sometimes, it's because I think of blogging as having in addition to journalism an aspect of talk-radio to it, where one is thinking out lout. I'm most concerned with expressing ideas, and part of what I like about blogging--and am victim to as well--is that it can be make for much more rapid dialogue. Having a newspaper or magazine's editors and copy editors go over your work makes for real journalism of a tighter, more succinct kind than I can completely offer you here. However, through the magic of the Internet, blog posts are a fluid thing and not rigid like regular journalism. I can fix anything that's been written at any time. Ideally, I'd love it if people with corrections to suggest would email me, at brianlibby@hotmail.com. And lots of people are great about that. When I detect a hint of a judgmental attitude, I can also get defensive. But I understand that more or less everyone, including Garrett, is just trying to help, and I appreciate that.

[jason]

Brian.
In lieu of no new undergraduate programs for Architecture at PSU (grad only) + Portland's international reputation for innovative landscape architecture - perhaps it's time for a serious discussion of Portland State as the locus of sustainable landscape urbanism...

The time is right, with the Architecture program recently gaining prominence, the Urban Studies program staying strong, and I dare say (with extreme bias) a shift towards landscape as a basic element the future of sustainability worldwide... why not PSU as a way to galvanize our reputation?

Without UofO stepping up with any serious presence of landscape architecture in Portland... there will always be this dichotomy of innovation with insularity - keeping us, as always, tres provincial.