Four recent graduates from Portland State University School of Architecture earned recognition in the American Institute of Architects Northwest and Pacific Region Student Design Awards for 2021. 

PSU Master of Architecture graduates Randi Lacy and Xander Sligh (‘21) received Citation Awards, and Danette Papke and Nichole Wetle, also in the M.Arch class of 2021, took home Honorable Mentions.

This year’s awards mark the ninth consecutive time that PSU architecture students have been honored in the competition, winning awards every single year since the inception of the program. PSU students have been given the top prize, the Honor Award, seven out of the nine years of the competition. This year, PSU students took home four out of the nine awards in the design competition, which is open to students from the architecture schools in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Hawaii. 

"We really value this competition because many of the judges are practicing architects,” said Jeff Schnabel, director of the School of Architecture. “It is important for our students and the School to know how our work is being perceived by the profession."

About the winners

Citation Awards

Student: Randi Lacy
Project: “Flux Yard: Layering Public Place in Rural Missouri”

Flux Yard addresses the condition of sustainable public infrastructure in the rural community of Dexter, Missouri. Lacy’s design proposal is intended to enhance regional connections, diversify culture and provide viable social and creative opportunities to the public. Flux Yard builds upon existing institutions and seasonal events, such as the local farmers market and craft fairs, which severely lack year-round accessibility. The design is proposed on a site near the historic downtown corridor and on top of an active Union Pacific railroad line, which is significant to the city of Dexter since it divides the town in half multiple times a day. Flux Yard wraps itself over this active train line to safely conceal it, and visually reveal its passage throughout the design, while activating the abandoned historic downtown. 

Stratified programming elements are oriented on site to optimize environmental, pedestrian, and process flow, with open recreational areas in between. Local community members will come from all sides of the site to access the community exchange and climate responsive amphitheatre. Mobile vendors will pass through the site, stopping temporarily under the pedestrian ramp to engage with the community. The design encompasses routes for pedestrians, parades and market vendors, as well as space for pop-up markets in a solar- and rain-harvesting marketplace pavilion. Pop-up vendors and local entrepreneurs will enter on the lower industrial side of the site, where they will design and fabricate a unique storefront and interior, then place it within the eco-kinetic infrastructure provided. This climate-adaptive hub is dedicated to expanding rural horizons and condensing public space into a unique and ever-changing architectural experience that provides accessible and sustainable infrastructure, creative opportunity, and cultural diversity.

Student: Xander Sligh
Project: “Projective Ecologies of Postcapitalist Architecture: The Rewilding of the Human Habitat in the Anthropocene”

This project imagines a not-too-distant future in which humans have been forced to reconcile with the consequences of industrialism and the commodification of our earth’s natural resources, and in that process a new culture has emerged, a culture of repair and connection. This culture has learned from the past and, once again, re-centers the human’s interdependent relationship with nature, viewing the necessities of our existence, such as water, plants, animals, and the cosmos, as sacred elements deserving of acknowledgment and deep respect.

Sligh designed within the parameters of a post-capitalist projection, exploring material as a means of empowerment, building within closed-loop systems and resourcing materials using environmentally ethical methods. With an eye toward construction modalities that refuse planned obsolescence, dependency on fossil fuels and other environmental harms, Sligh envisioned the role that the art of architecture would play in nourishing and restoring the earth. 

Honorable Mentions

Student: Danette Papke
Project: “Untitled, 2021: Reimagining the 21st-century Art Museum through the Lens of Mark Rothko”

In this project, Danette Papke created what she calls “a wild, one-of-a-kind proposal for a decentralized [counter] art museum located in and around the suburbs of Portland, Oregon,” inspired by the legacy of Mark Rothko, who fought to change the paradigm of what art means and how it gets presented to the public. He worked to change the perception of art’s value by elevating the artwork of young artists. The Rothko Block acknowledges the reality that contemporary art museums continue to exclude marginalized groups, in part due to a social framework that creates barriers to inclusion for many. This project questions how architecture is complicit in this condition and explores counter-design strategies with the intent of dismantling those barriers and reaching communities traditionally left out of the museum experience. 

In addition to testing counter-design strategies, this proposal recognizes that barriers also exist for any institution to draw people downtown, where many art museums are located in cities around the country.  In this proposal, part of the museum leaves the Rothko Block and travels to rural communities inside “art seeds.” Through a two-way exchange that involves rotating art and fabric murals around a network of Community Seed Blocks, people in outlying communities experience the actual art and the actual museum itself because the museum is designed to be deconstructed and reconstituted. Rothko’s work is displayed alongside the work of young artists from the neighboring areas, further integrating the museum into the community.

Student: Nichole Wetle
Project: “Unbuilding Taboo”

Sex workers, writes Nichole Wetle, often have difficulty obtaining housing, finding healthcare that takes their needs seriously, and securing or maintaining other work if their status is disclosed. This discrimination is deeply rooted in a societal stigma and shame surrounding sex and sex work.

“Unbuilding Taboo” asks how architecture can help address the stigmas surrounding sex work and in turn lessen internalized stressors while ensuring workers feel comfortable accessing

health, safety, and other necessary services. This project proposes decentralized support sites throughout the city, and a centralized site developed on a Portland city block. The block provides a coworking office for the legal varieties of sex work, in addition to housing, 24-7 childcare, a sexual health center, a plaza filled with programmed pods, and acrylic umbrellas that paint the ground with color as the sun shines through them. The design of the buildings and plaza is intentionally whimsical, to reframe perceptions of sex work as something that occurs in seedy places and create a positive association with the site and the people engaging with it.

The jury was composed of practicing architects and professors from participating schools:

Nicole Becker, ZGF Architects
Scott Clarke, PIVOT Architecture
Charles Kaneshiro, G70
Chere LeClair, Montana State University
Brittany Porter, Weber Thompson
Philip Speranza, University of Oregon

View the winning projects at the AIA Northwest & Pacific Region website.