LEVER Architecture selected to design new home for School of Art + Design

Portland-based LEVER Architecture has been selected as the architecture firm to design a new home for Portland State University’s School of Art + Design. LEVER was selected from among 11 firms competing for the project.

“Portland State is thrilled to be working with LEVER on this important new building for our campus,” said PSU President Stephen Percy. “The new home for the School of Art + Design will serve as a beacon for the important role our creative community plays in the Portland region, and for the arts that add so much to the daily lives of our students and employees.” 

LEVER is a multiple-award-winning firm that has designed innovative projects including Meyer Memorial Trust, Adidas North American Headquarters, Artists Repertory Theatre renovation, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and many others. Recently named one of Fast Company’s “Ten Most Innovative Architecture Firms in 2022,” LEVER is known for its pioneering use of mass timber as an environmentally friendly building material, its research focus and its client-centered design approach.

As Oregon’s largest and most diverse art school, where more than 40 percent of its 1,100 students identify as BIPOC, the School of Art + Design’s request for proposals called for a visionary, equity-focused approach encompassing the ideals of creativity and social justice. 

The selection process included meetings with faculty and listening sessions with art and design students, in which community members shared their hopes and needs for the new structure. Throughout the process, the importance of creating a physical space that values and includes students from all backgrounds and identities was emphasized.

Lisa Jarrett, associate professor of community and context arts, served on the selection committee. “Working with LEVER will be a true collaboration, one that engages all of the stakeholders, most importantly our future students and colleagues in the School of Art + Design,” she said. “LEVER shares so many of our values. It’s exciting to imagine what we can create together.”

Chandra Robinson, principal at LEVER, brought a personal enthusiasm to the proposal. As a child, she lived on the PSU campus while her mother attended college there. She recalls playing in the Park Blocks, going to the Portland Art Museum and attending ballets and operas in Lincoln Hall. She went on to attend PSU herself, earning an undergraduate degree in physics and geology, before pursuing a professional degree in architecture.

“My experience at PSU was formative, instilling in me an appreciation not only for art, but a true love for Portland,” Robinson says. “I loved the vibrant community of students at PSU, and working with today’s PSU community to create an arts and design center that serves as a new model for equity in the arts, and that uplifts the School and Portland is exactly the kind of project that motivates my work as an architect.” 

The diverse team of specialty consultants will include Portland-based landscape architecture firm PLACE, as well as New York-based Once-Future Office, which will create signage and wayfinding, and will also work to holistically integrate art and design into the project from the start.  

Located along the South Park Blocks between College and Jackson streets, the approximately 80,000-foot structure will include collaborative spaces, classrooms, studios for sculpture, printmaking, textile arts, photography and videography, critique spaces, graphic design labs, Art History teaching spaces and offices. The new home for the art school will create a central, welcoming space for all students and faculty, who currently operate in several separate locations across campus.

Oregon legislators approved $50 million for the project in 2021 and PSU is seeking an additional $27 million in 2023. State funds are being matched with over $5 million in philanthropy. To date, $1.84 million in philanthropic support has been committed to the project.

The design work will begin this spring, once the contracting process is complete. Construction is slated to start in 2023, and the building is expected to open in fall 2025.