Willamette University Ford Hall

Ford Hall at Willamette University incorporates state-of-the-art technologies while harmonizing with neighboring historic academic buildings that date back to 1867. The building includes a film viewing theater, art studio/installation spaces, black box recording studio, music lab, multimedia production, video conferencing, computer labs, classrooms, seminar rooms, and faculty offices serving the rhetoric and media studies, math, computer science, and digital art programs.

An abundance of flexible collaboration spaces allow for personal and group interactions between faculty and students. Our design placed glass walls at hearth spaces, seminar rooms, faculty office re-lites, and on the exterior skin at the south-facing outdoor courtyard — inviting creativity and the sharing of ideas on informal marker boards and projection surfaces. Exposed wood-clad cable trays allow for easy access for the ever-changing technology and pedagogy needs of the university.

We designed Ford Hall to be a 100-year building, employing brick, limestone, and copper as its principal materials and embedding sustainable design strategies throughout. Ford Hall is certified LEED Gold, and received a first-ever 2030 Challenge Design Award from AIA Portland for meeting energy-reduction goals.

“Ford Hall has become an emblem, a manifestation, of our aspirations on campus. It really has proven to be more than we hoped for, in the sense that it’s a showpiece for our campus.”

— David Douglass,
former Associate Dean of Campus Life, Willamette University