The Oregon Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects awarded McMinnville, Oregon’s new festival street top honors on Friday. The joint project by SERA and HDR received a Transportation award for transforming five city blocks along Alpine Avenue in 2018. Since 1885, Alpine Avenue has served as a semi-improved access road to the Historic […]
The 8th annual Design Week Portland is next week, and again this year you can find our thinkers and designers in the mix of fantastic exhibits, discussions, parties and open houses across town. We hope to see you at the following events, so register now, before they fill up. And don’t forget to tag us @seraarchitects! […]
We’re envisioning downtown Beaverton’s revival and putting pedestrians first. Today, when you ask the average Beaverton resident “Where is downtown?” you’ll sometimes get a puzzled look and a return question: “Beaverton has a downtown?” But this is changing fast, and yesterday’s city approval of a new Urban Design Framework Plan, developed by a team led […]
I went to a lecture last week by Martha Schwartz, a world-renowned landscape architect who became famous for challenging the status quo by using purple aquarium gravel and shellacked bagels in the midst of a very formal, baroque garden setting. Also a Harvard professor, Schwartz discussed how her class at the Graduate School of Design […]
This week, the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) recognized our project, the Oregon State University Cascades Long Range Development Plan with the 2018 Honor Award of Excellence in Planning for a New Campus. The SCUP Excellence Awards program is a national “juried competition that showcases how using strategic, integrated planning can result in exemplary buildings, grounds, […]
In the Pixar movie Ratatouille, Chef Gusteau’s motto was “Anyone can cook.” Food critic Anton Ego initially viewed that sentiment with disdain but eventually came to the conclusion that “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.” In the architectural world, there are a number of barriers preventing […]
The term ‘resilience’ is increasingly being used in architecture and urban planning to describe the durability, adaptability and flexibility of our built environment. With the increasing threat of volatile weather due to climate change, the high probability of a large-magnitude earthquake striking the region, and the slower moving but equally transformative effects of economic changes […]
Yesterday, joined by the mayor, neighbors, and our partners at HDR, we broke ground on an exciting new chapter for the City of McMinnville’s Alpine Avenue. Alpine Avenue is the city’s first large project in the McMinnville Urban Renewal District. Once complete, the $4.3 million, quarter-mile streetscape project will enhance pedestrian accessibility and comfort along […]
SERA Architects, a Portland, Oregon-based leader in sustainable architecture and urban placemaking, has launched the Institute for Civic Ecology as an initiative supporting our commitment to helping communities and organizations nationally and internationally implement and manage resilience initiatives. Conceived in partnership with local business associations, non-profits, governments, developers, religious organizations and institutions, and spanning rural, […]
At SERA, a group of staff passionate about design created Design Interest Group Integrated Thursdays (DIG IT for the acronym-lovers in us) to strengthen our dialogue about how design fits into our practice. At each event, staff is presented with a topic, given background, and asked to create a well-designed experience that addresses the topic’s […]