I thought all 3-year M.Arch. students had to spend the first year in Eugene before they had the option to continue their studies in Portland. Or have they changed it?

I lived in Eugene briefly in 2004-05, and became pretty familiar with the UO campus... I may be applying there for my M.Arch. next year.

I think you're right about the 3-years being in Eugene for the first year. I was accepted to the 2-year program (since I already have an architecture degree) in portland right off the bat.

I've been accepted to the U of O two year program in Portland. Very doubtful I will be attending the open house...long distance for me.

I got into the M.Arch I program at the U of O in Eugene. I was just there this last week visiting the school since i wont be able to make it for open house. lmnop15... wat program did u get into to?

I was accepted to option II in Portland - pretty sure i'm going to be going this fall

yup ... 2 year program in portland - about 80% sure i'll be there this fall

i can't go to the open house though... i'm on the other side of the world at the moment. but i'd love to hear from anyone who would like to share :)

I'll be going to the open house next week, but the one in Eugene. I'm in the M.Arch III program. I'm like 90% sure I'll be attending.

It'll be good to get back to Oregon (I'm living in Wisconsin now)!

I'm 100% sure I'll be attending U of O this upcoming Fall, the 2 year program in Portland. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the open house either, but am trying to get a visit scheduled for a later date. So anyone that is going I'm interested in hearing about afterward!

Cricket - hey, another fellow Wisconsinite! (I'm living in Madison right now)

So, being completely unfamiliar with Portland, where do students typically live? Relatively close to downtown, or a bus line would be nice as I won't have a car. Any good neighborhoods/communities I should know about?

There's a thread somewhere back in the Archinect ether that has a good description of various Portland neighborhoods. You may be able to find it by doing a search.

Portland has an excellent light rail system that makes commuting to downtown pretty easy.

I heard when I visited UO Portland early last year that there's a student housing/apartment in goose hollow neighborhood which is relatively pretty close to downtown and the UO Arch building(within walking distance). sounded like it's pretty cheap but also pretty hard to get as well.

SE and NW area are nice neighborhood with tons of apartments. I personally prefer these two areas :)

Hey Sourdough, I'm up in Appleton.

I lived in PDX for a couple years, both in the NW and SE neighborhoods and I'd recommend them both. NW Portland, especially in The Pearl and near 21st and 23rd Aves are very trendy and can be pricey. I had a small one bedroom in NW Portland for $650/month, which was a steal. I was eventually kicked out because they were turning the place into condos. My 400 sqft place was being sold for $180,000!

I then moved to SE, near 39th and Belmont. The Belmont/Hawthorne corridor in SE is really great -- lots of shopping, apartments, duplexes, and homes. I took an express bus on Belmont that got me downtown in 15 minutes. I got a unit in a fourplex with a tiny backyard and basement for $700/month.

In general, I've had friend that have lived in almost all parts of Portland. There are great neighborhoods everywhere and good transportation is plentiful. If you have any questions about living in PDX (one of the best cities in the world!), email me. I think my email is in my profile.

Thanks for the pointers and information everyone, that will definitely be helpful!

Hey! I am an Option II student that has been admitted to the Portland Program for this fall...just stumbled upon this thread.

I went out to the Open House last week. At first I felt very overwhelmed. I was exhausted from the last few weeks of school and rushing to the Open House as quickly as I could from Indiana that morning. Friday they told us a lot of information, and I was trying to get a million different questions answered. I was choosing between that and one other program, and the other program needed to know just a few days after Portland's open house. So I felt a lot of pressure that Friday and started to get anxious about moving so far from home/living in a city/starting at a different program. After a good night's sleep (which was much needed) and meeting some great, friendly students of the program, I calmed down and realized of the 2 programs I was looking at, U Oregon in Portland was definitely the place for me. So I've sent in my deposit and declined my other offers this week. I am very excited to move to Portland in the fall!

Some things I heard at the Open House that you may or may not already know:
There are about 3-4 full-time U Oregon faculty at the Portland program at once, the rest of the positions are filled by local practitioners teaching as adjunct faculty. The students seem to love this. They say that the teaching style is very practical/reality-based rather than theoretical. On review days, typically a large number of practitioners show up and provide great reviews, which the students say can sometimes be more useful than typical reviews from other professors/other graduate students.

With just a few full-time faculty and I believe around 30 students/incoming class, the students seem like a close-knit group. Several people mentioned to me that its like a big family. One woman told me that she visited for grad day and was surprised that when she arrived for school the director of the program remembered her name.

In good economic times, a lot of students are able to find part-time internships with local firms during school. The school has a great relationship with the design community, and that community is fairly large and active for a city of its size.

In a nutshell, the program was described to me as having access to the great resources of the University of Oregon's School of Architecture while having the benefits from living in Portland. I hear that the opportunities are quite different between Eugene and Portland, but that one is not necessarily better than the other. If someone is hoping spend some time at both, they must careful that they are able to get the courses they need. It sounds like certain required courses are only offered once every two years at Portland.

And I also heard, similar to a previous comment, that students do live all over the city. I will definitely be new to the area and would appreciate any other tips about housing, but I think I'll probably just have to get there a little before school starts to figure that out.

Thanks for starting this thread! I've enjoyed reading the comments, and I hope some more pop up too!

Thanks for the comments and summary jamillikan, glad to hear you enjoyed it! I'll finally be heading out there next week or so to visit the school and hopefully start looking for a place to live.

How was the student work? Thesis projects?

Thanks for the info jamillikan! So you are from Indiana? I am also from Indiana and have been accepted into the Portland program for the fall. I couldn't attend the Open House but am planning on going out there in about a week to check things out for myself. I am definitely leaning towards UO over some of my other options at this point.

I didn't see a ton of student work while I was there, but what I did see seemed like what I expected. It seems like typical work from an MArch program that is based more in reality than the theoretical realm. The thesis did not seem super-formal, but I thought the quality of work that I saw looked good. They had a few different options for thesis students this year:

1. pick your site/shape your own project
2. A group of students is work with Professor Lars Bleher. His students are all completely a submission for a design competition. I believe the project and competition are based out of Sweden. The students have had the chance to visit travel to Sweden, visit the site, and present their works-in-progress to local city officials for feedback.
3. Students are working with Professor Don Genasci on a project based in Portland. I don't remember the specifics, but I remember that this professor works mostly with projects centered on Portland's urban design. A studio might examine a whole neighborhood at the beginning of a term and do some work with a masterplan and then move into the design of a specific architectural component of the neighborhood.

The students working with Professors Bleher and Genasci are in those studios for 2 quarters (winter and spring), while the students shaping their own projects began working with Professor Hajo Neis (current director of the program) in the fall term to plan out their work for the next two terms.

That's great bucks07. Be sure to talk to students while you're there. (i'm sure that's a no-brainer...of course it can be awkward sometimes to try to strike up a conversation, but i always get the most useful information from doing that.) They also offered an "advising session" during the open house that I found really useful. Basically I sat down with a professor, specifically I spoke to Professor Bleher, and had a candid conversation about what I want out of graduate school. He was very open to answer any questions I had, and he told me what U Oregon Portland had to offer me.

I'll look forward to meeting all the new people in Portland in the fall!