University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts

University of Oregon College of Design

Lawrence Hall, the main building of UO Design
Type	Public
Established	1914
Dean	Christoph Lindner
Location	Eugene, Oregon, United States
Website	http://design.uoregon.edu/

The University of Oregon College of Design (UO Design) is a public college of architecture and visual arts in the U.S. state of Oregon. Founded in 1914 by Ellis F. Lawrence, the college is located on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, off the corner of 13th and University streets, and also has programs at the historic White Stag Block in Portland, Oregon.

At its inception in 1914, Ellis F. Lawrence envisioned that the School of Architecture and Allied Arts (now the College of Design) would incorporate architectural education with the arts as opposed to engineering, and became the first school to do so. The students would learn in an individual but collaborative environment instead of a fiercely competitive environment.

When Walter R. B. Willcox became the head of the architecture curriculum in 1922, the underlying idea became that architecture and the arts would reflect societal influences, which had remained alive through the decades.

After World War II, student enrollment in the school ballooned and separate departments for each curricular subject were created.

In the Spring of 2017 it was announced that the school would rename itself the College of Design.

The college is divided into three schools and one department: School of Architecture & Environment, School of Art + Design, School of Planning, Public Policy and Management, and the Department of the History of Art and Architecture.

The architecture program was in place since the inception of the school, though it didn’t become a department of the school until 1964. Just five years after its founding, in 1919, the school gained an early form of accreditation through the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Only twelve schools out of forty schools that applied obtained accreditation that year. Undergraduate and graduate degrees are accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board and had been the only school in the state of Oregon to be accredited until Portland State University earned its accreditation in 2013.

The landscape architecture program was first founded in Oregon Agricultural College, now known as Oregon State University in 1928. The program was moved to the University of Oregon in 1932, where it was expanded into a five-year program. The masters program was established a year later.