OSU-Cascades Academic Building 2

Our design concept was inspired by the character of the project’s magnificent site at the edge of a reclaimed pumice mine. The scheme engages the hillside and creates a dialogue between above and below, heavy and light. It contrasts the lower floor, expressed as an extension of the excavated bowl, with the upper floors, characterized by repetitive timber structure. The massing creates a gateway between the existing campus and future heart of campus life by hinging at its west end to align with the existing pedestrian spine of campus and extending the walkway under the building and down a broad exterior stair into the bowl.

On the interior, the scheme celebrates the campus’s spirit of innovation by strategically showcasing signature program areas, such as Maker Spaces and Flex Labs, and treating the building’s central gathering space, a vibrant two-story lobby, as an extension of the central gathering space of the new campus, the bowl formed by the former mine.