Sustainable Cities Police Station Project Wins Architecture Prize

A public-private partnership that brought together the City of Salem, the University of Oregon and two architecture firms to design a new Salem police station has resulted in a $7,500 cash prize to UO from a national architecture organization. The UO’s Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) is being honored by the National Council of Architecture Registration Boards (NCARB), which gives out the yearly prize to projects that represent unique efforts to combine architecture education and practice.

NCARB, known for its intern development program and the Architectural Record Exam, has a strong interest in bridging the gap between students and professionals. The UO studio project was one of five awards with a $7,500 cash prize. The UO’s entry was chosen out of 45 submissions from 34 different colleges and universities and was the only prize given to an architecture program in the western United States.

The studio project was part of Sustainable City Year, the flagship program of SCI. SCI integrates research, education, service and public outreach around issues of sustainable city design. SCI works at a variety of scales, from regions to individual buildings, to actively seek solutions to sustainable city design problems.

The twenty-four students in the studio worked closely with Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects (ZGF) and CB Two Architects. These firms will take the student’s work and incorporate it into their own as the city seeks a bond measure to pay for a new public safety facility.

“We have been impressed with the diversity and originality of ideas produced by the students,” says Kirk Sund, an architect with CB Two Architects. “With all of these different options under consideration, the City of Salem is going to be able to create a stronger concept of the new public safety facility.”

This is one of several awards and honors the UO’s Sustainable Cities Initiative has received in the past year. Most recently, the founders of SCI were awarded the Bridge Builders award by the Partners for Livable Communities. The Bridge Builders award recognized the cross-disciplinary nature of SCI and its success integrating research, education, service, and public outreach.