Thank you, Architectural Record, for featuring LEVER’s project at the University of Oregon’s new Portland campus. The College of Design’s Portland architecture school selected a 1950s gym, later converted into a theater, as its new home, Highland Hall. The 8,640-square-foot brick building faces an adjacent residential neighborhood. Simple glass entries inserted at each end create gracious front doors and a visual portal between the community and the campus.

Inside, LEVER replaced boarded-over clerestories with a glazing system that bathes the space in sunlight. Eleven new ground-level windows anchor the interior to its surroundings, and reversible fans with ceiling vents moderate temperatures. Now exposed and steel-reinforced bowstring trusses shape a barrel-vaulted ceiling, 32 feet high at the peak. Seminar rooms, pinup spaces, restrooms, a kitchenette, and a gallery near the front entrance organize the perimeter and buffer studios for lectures and reviews.

A series of 7-inch-thick mass-plywood slabs—reused floor panels from the TallWood Design Institute’s Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory at Oregon State University—frame the vestibules and serve as partial-height partitions dividing four studios and enclosing seminar rooms. The panels surround 36 workstations sized to reuse tables from the program’s former home and are arranged into pods. White paint applied to the trusses, together with exposed wood and masonry structural elements, unifies the space. The symmetrical rooms and pinup areas recall side chapels lining the nave of a church. For more information about LEVER's project, please visit University of Oregon, Highland Hall.