Hannah O’Leary/OSU-Cascades
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AT LEFT Portland State’s Karl Miller Center emphasized places for students to congregate. ABOVE OSU-Cascades’ Tykeson Hall is an all-purpose building.
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY-CASCADES
Brad Feinknopf
Tykeson Hall WHEN BORA ARCHITECTS DESIGNED the first academic building on Oregon State University’s new Cascades campus in Bend in 2014, the firm drew inspiration from an efficient, and uber-handy, object: the Swiss Army knife. Why? The footprint of the new building, Tykeson Hall, is relatively small–just 45,000 square feet–yet it would accommodate many academic and programming needs on the growing campus. (A dorm and dining hall were built simultaneously.) Requirements included classrooms of all sizes, from science labs to an eighty-person auditorium, a library and computer lab, student council space and administrative offices. Equally important and ambitious is OSU’s goal to ensure future Cascades campus operations will be net-zero, meaning it produces as much energy as it consumes, balances water supply and demand, and eliminates landfill waste. Toward that end, Bora specified Tykeson Hall to be net-zero ready, with a robust building envelope that reduces energy consumption and loss, and a roof primed for solar panels.
As this was the campus’s inaugural building, the Bora team could take liberties with the aesthetic. “We knew they did not need it to look like it was a building from Corvallis. It could be different. So, with that in mind, we looked to the landscape,” architect Brad Demby said. The bulk of the three-story exterior is covered in sandy-hued cement panels with recycled content. Cedar cladding distinguishes the ground floor entrances and a third-floor deck and trellis. Much like the peeling bark of a Ponderosa pine, the cedar appears revealed from beneath the cement panel skin, and the wood’s orange hue is a subtle reference to the school colors. Inside, artful wall installations of acoustic panels, custom plywood furniture and bright orange wayfinding signs warm the industrial character of exposed structural steel. “The idea was to set the tone, so to speak–not dictate 100 percent of everything [that followed]–but to maybe define a sort of Central Oregon modernist approach toward building that is a little different from other parts of the state,” Demby said. MARCH | APRIL 2020
1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE 35
