Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact at the University of Oregon

The Phil & Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact (KCASI) is a new initiative to expand the University of Oregon’s strengths in interdisciplinary scientific research and dramatically shorten the timeline between discovery and societal impact.  Made possible by a $500 million lead gift from Penny and Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, who earned a business degree at the UO in 1959, the first phase of this ambitious project is a 160,000-sf world-class facility embracing research, training, and entrepreneurship in a nimble scientific enterprise.

The design features two L-shaped towers that face each other as “clasped hands,” cradling an elevated terrace and courtyard, and are joined above by a transparent connector. On the southern façade, a skin of folded glass panels emulates water cascading over rock formations and provides shading for the glass curtain wall behind. Counterbalancing the activity of the public-facing façade, the northern sides of the two towers embrace simplicity in an unadorned glass curtain wall system that reveals the building structure. The design emphasizes transparency, exposing the impact of science to the community.

Inside, the building program is hyper-flexible, enabling research groups to shift focus depending on where discoveries lead, with innovation spaces, collaborative spaces, core labs, research labs and work areas. Double-height research floors allow for a floating faculty office mezzanine, offering an opportunity for greater interdisciplinary exchange, and glass storefronts under deep overhangs at the ground level invite passers-by to approach. A glass-enclosed pedestrian bridge across Franklin Boulevard connects the core campus to this new district, making an elegantly impactful announcement of the campus across this busy thoroughfare.

Mass timber is featured in the circulation spaces particularly in two stair elements.