Architecture Professor Michael Fifield Elected to Prestigious National Fellowship
Department of Architecture Professor Michael Fifield has been elected to the College of Fellows in the American Institute of Architects. Fellowship is one of the highest honors the AIA bestows and is intended to recognize “a model architect who has made a significant contribution to architecture and society on a national level.” Fewer than 2 percent of all AIA members of the current 80,000 AIA membership have been distinguished with the honor.
Fifield was nominated in the education category for advancing design excellence through teaching, administration, mentorship, applied research, writing, lecturing, architecture and urban design practice, and for leadership to the university, community and profession.
As a Fellow, Fifield joins the likes of Frank Gehry (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao), Louis Kahn (Salk Institute), Richard Meier (Getty Center), Julia Morgan (Hearst Residence San Simeon), and Daniel Burnham (Flatiron Building). Other UO architecture faculty members who are FAIA include G.Z. “Charlie” Brown, Bill Gilland, Otto Poticha and John Reynolds. Fifield has been tenured at three architectural schools. He served as director of the architecture departments at UO and Pennsylvania State University and at the urban design program at Arizona State University.
“As a result of teaching in three geographical regions, he has had a significant national impact on both students and faculty as well as to the profession and community,” notes John Reynolds, ACSA Distinguished Professor Emeritus at UO.
Fifield has served as a national peer reviewer for the General Services Administration; helped develop an architecture program at Frederick University in Nicosia, Cyprus; has conducted housing need assessments in post-tsunami Sri Lanka; and is immediate past president of the AIA Southwest Oregon. He currently serves as co-director, with Associate Professor Peter Keyes, of the Housing Concentration in the Department of Architecture.
“While an insightful architectural administrator, he has focused on the formation of students as critical thinkers and future leaders,” Reynolds says. “In academic positions, he extended his educational role beyond the classroom to that of providing outstanding design assistance to a wide range of governmental organizations.”
Fifield is also an accomplished practicing architect. His Live/Work Studio, a project he completed in Eugene in 2007 through his private practice (Fifield Architecture + Urban Design), is featured in a new book, "The New 100 Top Houses," which showcases outstanding residential buildings constructed around the world since 2005. It is due out in May by German publisher Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, a Random House affiliate. Fifield received a Merit Award from AIA Southwestern Oregon/AIA Southern Oregon for the project in a joint awards program, which as been widely publicized in the media, with stories in Residential Architect Magazine (2009), Fine Homebuilding Magazine (2009), and in a 2011 book, "in-laws, outlaws, and granny flats," by Michael Litchfield (Taunton Press).
Fifield holds a M.Arch from the University of California, Los Angeles (’80) and a B.A. in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley (’73). He is a registered architect in Oregon, Arizona and Idaho, holds an NCARB Certificate, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.
He also was recently named recipient, along with UO Associate Professor Mark Gillem, of the 2011 Certificate of Merit for Special Achievement in Planning from the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association for their administration and management of the “Portland Courtyard Housing Design Competition.” In this competition, Fifield and Gillem established Design Principles as one of the major criteria for evaluation of the projects.
Fifield and other new Fellows will be honored at an investiture ceremony at the 2011 National AIA Convention in New Orleans on May 13. The College of Fellows, founded in 1952, is composed of members of the Institute who are elected to Fellowship by their peers.