University of Oregon Department of Landscape Architecture

A student, a videographer, a painter and an old man teamed up to save a street tree in the Whiteaker. Here's how. See link below ⬇️

📸 Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard

More alumni doing good!

Duck entrepreneur launches Oregon business with a green mission UO experiences led to Bend company that produces, installs plant-driven water reclamation systems

Two of our students (not pictured here, but in linked announcement) have big news to share! Congratulations to Alejando Bechtle for being named a 2026 LAF Graduate National Olmsted Scholar Finalist and to Josie Paik for being named a 2026 LAF Undergraduate Olmsted Scholar. We appreciate all of your contributions to the department.

Learn more at the link below:

Announcing the 2026 LAF Olmsted Scholars The Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) is pleased to recognize 97 exceptional student leaders, including the two national winners and six finalists.Named for Frederick Law Olmsted, the LAF Olmsted Scholars Program is the premier leadership recognition program for landscape architecture students...

Alpha-Chem Signal Debuts at McKenzie River Trust’s Green Island as Joyful Community-Empowered Art for Public Water Stewardship

Eugene, OR
April 13, 2026

The Alpha-Chem Signal project will make its debut at McKenzie River Trust’s Green Island (31799 Green Island Rd, Eugene, OR 97408) in Eugene on Saturday, May 9 (8 AM–4 PM) as part of McKenzie River Trust’s monthly Living River Exploration Day. Community artist David Buckley Borden and collaborators invite the public to explore how floodplain restoration helps rivers slow, filter, and clean water—and to spell out personal messages using more than thirty large-format signal flags. The one-day pop-up event is both outdoor art exhibition and interactive community art happening. The event is free, accessible, and open to all ages.

The colorful 4x4 foot fabric flags are playful mash-ups of traditional nautical flags and the periodic table of chemical elements. The project highlights common water-quality issues found throughout North America. The tactical public art project is designed to tour North America and will travel to Cape Cod Massachusetts for it’s next public installation.

"Community agency, stewardship, and activism starts with education, and I believe education should be accessible, wonderful, and most importantly fun. This public activism project took over two years to create and the team and I are beyond excited to debut it at Green Island and share it with the folks in the greater Eugene area.”
- David Buckley Borden, lead artist

About the Artist
David Buckley Borden is an Oregon-based interdisciplinary designer, artist, and educator working at the intersection of art, design, and ecology. Informed by research and community engagement, David promotes a shared environmental awareness and heightened cultural value of ecology. David’s collaborative work highlights both pressing environmental issues and everyday phenomena. Using an accessible, often humorous, combination of visual art and landscape design, David’s work manifests in a variety of forms, ranging from site-specific landscape installations in the woods to data-driven cartography in the gallery. Learn more at https://www.davidbuckleyborden.com/alpha-chem-signal

About McKenzie River Trust
McKenzie River Trust is a regional nonprofit land trust with offices in Eugene and Newport, Oregon. Our mission is to help people protect and care for the lands and rivers they cherish across western Oregon. Since 1989, we have worked with landowners and partners to protect more than 10,000 acres—safeguarding clean, free-flowing rivers, supporting salmon runs, and sustaining the farms and forests that provide both habitat and livelihoods.

Each month, we invite community members to experience this work firsthand through our Living River Exploration Days at Green Island. This 1,100-acre conservation area, located at the confluence of the Willamette and McKenzie Rivers, offers a place to connect with the land, learn about restoration, and witness the seasonal rhythms of a living river system. Learn more at www.mckenzieriver.org

Reminder Kenneth L. Helphand Endowed Lecture THIS FRIDAY, April 3rd, 1pm PST, Pacific Hall 123! Chip Sullivan and Elizabeth Boults present Wisdom of Place.

Throughout time people have shaped their environments according to their first-hand experiences and instinctive understandings of natural phenomena; landscape design was informed by the concept of genius loci, or “spirit of place.” Sullivan and Boults maintain that recognizing and honoring the genius loci is the first step in preserving the social and ecological integrity of place when creating spaces for human use and enjoyment. Their research presents a survey of global myths, legends and folklore that are based on a deep understanding of the genius, or spirit, of the land, and presents a new framework for their application and interpretation.

Chip Sullivan is an artist and professor emeritus of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at University of California, Berkeley, who has devoted his career to promoting landscape architecture as an art form. Chip has earned national and international recognition for his expertise in landscape representation as well as innovative energy-conserving design. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.

Elizabeth Boults is a licensed landscape architect and educator with over 25 years of professional and academic experience. Her areas of focus are environmental design history, landscape representation, and site design. She is a SITES Accredited Professional who maintains a landscape design practice founded on promoting environmental consciousness and ecological narratives. She is senior lecturer in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at University of California, Davis.