OSU-Cascades Academic Building 2
We, in collaboration with YGH Architecture, were one of five teams selected to submit a design proposal in an invited competition for the OSU-Cascades Academic Building 2—a new net-zero building for OSU’s innovative campus in Bend.
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.
Location
Bend, OR
Size
50,000 sf
Completion
Unbuilt (competition entry)
Collaborators
YGH Architecture
Lango Hansen Landscape Architecture
KPFF Structural
PAE
Renderings
Scott Baumberger