Education by 
Design
Organizing Committee: 
[co-organizers]
Professor Alison Kwok, Ph.D, FAIA, University of Oregon
Emeritus Professor John Reynolds, FAIA, University of Oregon
[Symposium coordinator]
Isabel Rivera, Ph.D., University of Oregon
Professor Walter Grondzik, P.E., Ball State University
Professor Bruce Haglund, AIA Assoc., University of Idaho
Assistant Professor Emily McGlohn, AIA, Auburn University
Associate Professor Ulrike Passe, Iowa State University
Assistant Professor Siobhan Rockcastle, Ph.D., University of Oregon
Sharon Refvem, FAIA, LEED Fellow, Senior Associate and Director, Sustainability Resource Group, 
Hawley Peterson Snyder
Reynolds Symposium: Education by Design 
Portland, Oregon, October 18–19, 2019
University of Oregon | College of Design School of Architecture & Environment
Promoting Interdisciplinary Integrated Design Education 
Through Mass Timber 
 
Judith Sheine Mark Donofrio Mikhail Gershfeld 
Professor Associate Professor Professor of Practice 
University of Oregon University of Oregon California State Polytechnic University 
Eugene, Oregon Eugene, Oregon Pomona, California 
jesheine@uoregon.edu donofrio@uoregon.edu mgershfeld@cpp.edu 
 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
An integrated design process ideally involves close coordination among the professionals designing 
architectural, structural, and mechanical systems, and with the construction team and manufacturers of 
building products; however, this process is not universally followed in practice, nor is it a common model 
for design education, either in architecture or in engineering. New developments in the United States in 
mass timber products present a unique opportunity to advance interdisciplinary integrated design 
processes both in practice and in schools. As architects and engineers explore this field, they are finding 
that in order to understand material possibilities and limitations and better manage project delivery 
schedules they need to work in integrated teams from the start, including close coordination with 
manufacturers, fabricators and construction professionals. Faculty in the University of Oregon (UO)’s 
Department of Architecture have modelled this integrated practice method in a series of design studios 
focused on mass timber systems in which student teams either work with architecture faculty and 
interdisciplinary consultants or with teams of structural engineering students and architecture and 
engineering faculty. To further this integrated practice model, an interdisciplinary MS degree in mass 
timber design is being developed by UO’s Architecture Department and Oregon State University (OSU)’s 
Department of Wood Science and Engineering for architecture, structural engineering and construction 
management students with a professional undergraduate degree. The students will be working on projects 
in interdisciplinary teams with interdisciplinary faculty teams, preparing the next generation of 
professionals to be well equipped for a future of integrated design practice. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
Ideally, an integrated design process, involving close coordination among design professionals, should be 
followed in professional practice and in professional design education, but it is far from the norm in either 
case. However, new developments in engineered wood in the United States that are outpacing their 
adoption into the design codes are leading professionals increasingly to embrace a performance-based 
approach to design using alternative means and methods provisions of the codes, which leads to the need 
for a collaborative design approach. This requires early and intentional coordination between design 
professionals, construction teams and manufacturers. In the absence of common codified standards that 
all team members can rely on, the performance-based approach requires the joint development of project 
goals and standards, in which interdisciplinary conflicts are identified and joint design decisions are 
made. This level of collaboration is essential, since designers can’t just make a decision and assume that 
other design professionals will be able to effectively resolve their issues within those parameters.  
 
Design education with an emphasis on interdisciplinary teamwork can play an important role in 
developing future design professionals with integrated design process experience. While this is becoming 
more common in design education, it is generally a very small part of a much larger number of 
disciplinary requirements for accredited architecture and engineering programs. While disciplinary 
competence is a core goal in professional degree programs, this paper will address some methods and 
models for integrating interdisciplinary courses into design curricula and will describe a fully integrated 
post-professional degree program. As in professional practice, wood, and mass timber in particular, can 
serve as an effective material vehicle for this interdisciplinary approach in both architectural and 
engineering education. While the basics of wood design are commonly included in the U.S. in architecture 
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programs and at least half of the U.S. engineering programs include some form of wood design as a 
required element of the curriculum, mass timber is new to both and can provide a path to demonstrating 
the benefits of interdisciplinary education for both disciplines. 
 
INTERDISCIPLINARY INTEGRATED DESIGN STUDIOS 
 
There are a number of models for architecture and structural engineering students and faculty to work 
together on integrated design projects. In all cases, it is useful to recognize that there are differences in 
architectural and engineering education approaches. The central focus of architectural education is the 
design studio, which is a relatively unstructured working environment with an emphasis on artistic vision, 
experimentation and individual creativity. The more technical content is largely provided through 
separate lecture courses, and integration and understanding of technology and building systems is often 
seen as a necessary, but troublesome, aspect of architecture that has to be dealt with to satisfy 
accreditation and licensing requirements. In structural engineering, the classes include both lectures and 
labs that focus on science-based problem solving and cooperative teamwork. Quizzes and tests emphasize 
gaining specific competencies and the focus in undergraduate structural engineering education is on 
components, rather than on systems. See Figure 1 below. 
 
     
Figure 1. Architecture studio on left, lecture class in Engineering on right. 
 
Architecture students are expected to create new solutions to design problems, although they frequently 
start with case studies of previous examples of the building types they are addressing in their studios. 
Engineering students are relatively unfamiliar with the case study method, which is, essentially, a form of 
reverse engineering in which previous built examples are analyzed for their form, systems and design 
approach. Public reviews with external professionals are the norm in architecture but are far less common 
in engineering education. The level of graphic presentation and physical model-making required in 
architecture is quite high compared to that in engineering classes, while the level of analytics and 
numerical modeling requiring precision and accuracy that is expected in engineering reports is directly 
reflected in grading.  
 
The authors have spent over a decade working on various models of integrated studios, with students in 
the middle or last year of their professional programs (both undergraduate and graduate). While Sheine, a 
professor in architecture, and Gershfeld, a professor in civil engineering with a specialization in wood 
design, were both teaching at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP), they taught a series of joint studios with their 
respective students working in interdisciplinary teams designing timber pedestrian bridges. When Sheine 
went to the University of Oregon (UO) in 2013, they developed several models for long-distance 
collaboration, and were joined in 2015 by UO’s Donofrio, who has a background in both architecture and 
engineering. With the development of the TallWood Design Institute (TDI), a collaboration between the 
UO’s College of Design and Oregon State University’s (OSU) Colleges of Forestry and Engineering focused 
on the advancement of timber manufacturing and design through research, testing, outreach and 
education, an opportunity was provided to develop a fully integrated Master’s degree for students with a 
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professional degree in architecture, engineering, architectural engineering or construction management, a 
degree focused on mass timber design with an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration. 
AE Studios at Cal Poly Pomona 
 
Our explorations in interdisciplinary education began in 2007 when the Dean of the College of 
Engineering (CoE) approached Sheine, the Architecture Department Chair, about teaching a joint studio 
on the design of a timber bridge connecting the two CoE buildings. This project had been approached in 
several senior capstone projects, but the results, while structurally sound, were not very attractive, leading 
Gershfeld to propose to the Dean that the project should be a collaboration with the Architecture 
Department. The choice of timber as the primary material choice was partly dictated by the identification 
of a potential timber donor, and also by the university sustainability goals and Gershfeld’s specialized 
expertise. Sheine volunteered to work with Gershfeld on this project with the first class offered in winter 
2008.  Sheine and Gershfeld experimented with several methods and structures for teaching this studio, 
and by the third one, in 2011, thought a workable model had been developed for the 10-week term.  
 
The CPP studios began with a case study project focused on timber bridges. Students worked in small 
teams, generally of two, with the architecture students presenting their work after a week, and with the 
engineering students continuing to study and analyze the structural systems for another week. This one- 
week gap allowed the architecture students to develop individual initial concepts – models and drawings 
– for their bridges and to present them at the beginning of week three. Depending on the size of the 
classes, similar design concepts were combined, with the goal of having eight to ten projects total, which 
were subjected to a competitive process, with only four to five projects proceeding past the midterm 
review. The engineering students were allowed to select the projects, with architecture students having a 
choice of engineering students for high-demand designs. The combined architecture and engineering 
student teams (3-4 students on each) worked together on a preliminary design until the mid-term in the 
sixth week. A series of lectures ran through the first four weeks of the studio, on structural systems for 
bridges, engineered wood types and properties, and structural connections, given by both the faculty and 
guest speakers. The mid-term review was conducted by invited external professional architects and 
engineers who were asked to formally rate the projects, based on structural, aesthetic and constructability 
criteria. The external ratings provided guidance for which projects would continue, with the faculty 
making the final determination based on pedagogic goals, almost always allowing one or two very 
experimental projects to go through if the team appeared to be strongly committed to working it through 
collaboratively. After the midterm, the teams were further combined so that larger groups of students 
would be working on the selected designs until the final review in the tenth week, another public review 
with external reviewers and rankings, and the selection of a “winning” design. 
 
Because the classes were conducted in the architecture design studio, architecture and engineering 
students worked side-by-side in their teams, with consultation from both Sheine and Gershfeld, largely at 
the same time. Engineering students quickly grew comfortable working with their architecture colleagues 
in this messy, noisy space, engaging in energetic dialogue and learning from each other. See Figure 2. 
   
      
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Figure 2. Gershfeld with engineering student Daniel Mourad (left) and architecture student Nathan 
Houck, (right); engineering student Alex Quinonez (left) and architecture student Eubie Han (right). 
 
The goal was to select a winning project each term, however it was not until the third iteration of the 
studio in 2010, that the designs seemed sufficiently developed that an actual winner was presented to the 
Dean of Engineering (due to changing college priorities, the project was not realized). See Figure 3.  
 
           
Figure 3. Space Truss Bridge (1st Place), Architecture students: Nathan Houck, Greg Sagherian, Robert 
Yamnitz, Elane Yiu, Engineering students: Bethany Lopez, Daniel Mourad, Ryan Turner, Samson Wong. 
Physical models at ¼” and 1”=1’-0”,left; digital structural model in RISA 3D, right. 
 
Following this project, the faculty spent two years focused on designing pedestrian bridges in the nearby 
Los Angeles National Forest, working with a U.S. Forest Service engineer. Although no longer compelled 
to work in timber, the faculty found a number of pedagogic advantages in doing so. First, Gershfeld had a 
special expertise in wood design, not common in engineering academics, and the engineering students in 
the studio were able to take an undergraduate timber design class with him early in their program. 
Secondly, we found that for the architecture students, if they had worked in steel or concrete, they could 
plausibly assume that almost any form they came up with could be built (however inefficiently), but 
timber introduced material form making limitations that required them to work closely with the 
engineering students on their sometimes very adventurous designs. While the challenge of the 
architectural designs required the engineering students to explore and design inventive structural systems 
and connections, far beyond the component level design they had previously experienced, for 
undergraduates with limited exposure to complex systems, the material limitations allowed control of the 
complexity of the projects to the level they were able to analyze. In addition, timber presented an 
opportunity for students to collaborate closely on the design of exposed structural connections, taking 
into consideration both aesthetic and structural issues. This studio project ran in 2011 and 2012 on two 
different sites, with the same format as the previous studios. In 2012, the studio produced some 
particularly sophisticated projects. The 1st place project from 2012 is shown in Figures 4-7.  
 
 
Figure 4. Truss Bridge (1st Place), Architecture students: Richard Delarosa, Candice Myers, Harold 
Ornelas, Leo Rodriguez, Johnny Tran; Engineering students: Kun Chang, Henry Chi, Huong Vu. 
 
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Figure 5. Connection details: truss web bottom and top, support top view and bottom view. 
 
 
Figure 6. Structural SAP model and vertical loads axial load diagram. 
 
 
Figure 7. Truss Bridge 3”=1’-0”scale model details 
 
University of Oregon Mass Timber Architecture Studios 
 
Sheine and Gershfeld tested several interdisciplinary studio models at UO, all focusing on mass timber as 
the primary structural material. These studios approached projects at a variety of scales and complexity 
and with varied amounts of collaboration.  
 
In 2013 the UO studio took on the first “Timber in the City” Association of Collegiate Schools of 
Architecture (ACSA) competition, focused on mid-rise CLT housing, while Gershfeld worked with a senior 
project group on a mid-rise mixed-use mass timber building in a high-seismicity area. There was one face-
to-face meeting of the student groups, with a joint field trip to wood manufacturing facilities in Oregon, 
and some web-based video consults for the studio with Gershfeld as technical advisor. Even with this 
limited interdisciplinary interaction on a large urban project (almost 200,000 sq. ft.), significant technical 
information was incorporated, with one of the UO teams taking first prize with a proposal for a modular 
CLT housing project, praised by the competition jury for the quality of its technical development. See 
Figure 8. 
 
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Figure 8. “Grow Your Own City” (First Prize) project renderings. Architecture students: Benjamin Bye, 
Alexander Kenton, Jason Evan Rood. 
In 2016, ACSA ran the “Timber in the City” competition for the second time; this time Sheine co-taught it 
with Donofrio, with Gershfeld acting as technical consultant; Gershfeld was on sabbatical, so no student 
interaction was involved, but he was able to come to the studio in person every other week. With this 
300,000 sq. ft. project, students working in teams, with input from both Donofrio and Gershfeld, were 
able to develop a large and complex program on two city blocks, with fairly significant structural 
development, resulting in one of the UO teams winning second prize. See Figure 9. 
 
            
Figure 9. “Hybrid Domains” (Second Prize) project rendering and detail of market hall. Architecture 
students: Alex Kendle, Michael Meer, Greg Stacy, Ben Wright. 
 
A similar model was followed in a spring 2015 studio, when the city of Springfield, Oregon, asked Sheine 
to teach a studio on the design of a mass timber parking garage for their new Glenwood development. 
Given the lack of precedents and the need for structural knowledge of timber systems in a seismic area, 
Sheine asked UO’s Donofrio to co-teach the studio, with Gershfeld, acting as a technical consultant, 
making several trips to UO as well as giving online consultations. Again, engineering students were not 
involved in the collaboration. The UO students worked in teams and with the assistance of Donofrio and 
Gershfeld, made use of new timber lateral-force resisting systems recently developed in New Zealand for 
the design of the structures. The studio also collaborated with DR Johnson Lumber, in Riddle, OR, which 
had just begun to produce the first structurally certified cross laminated timber (CLT) panels in the U.S. 
Nine team designs were produced and demonstrated sufficient structural development to convince the 
City of Springfield that the project was feasible and to engage architects SRG Partnership and engineers 
KPFF for the actual project. See Figure 10. 
 
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Figure 10. Student proposal by Krysten Gormly, David Lieberman, and Scott McClelland, left; SRG 
Partnership proposal, right. 
 
Two other studios involved direct, although virtual, collaboration, among architecture and engineering 
students. In 2014, Sheine and Gershfeld paired individual students in a UO studio with individuals in 
Gershfeld’s CPP graduate level Advanced Timber Design class on a project for a small retreat center in 
OSU’s College of Forestry’s McDonald-Dunn Forest. The students communicated remotely, with 
Gershfeld making several visits to UO. The results were mixed, depending on the individuals involved, 
and on the complexity of the architectural proposal. Additionally, increasing the number of projects in the 
studio meant that each had less time with the faculty. Nevertheless, several teams produced elegant and 
structurally sound projects. The most sophisticated project was the only one designed with a team of two 
graduate architecture students, who worked with a very strong undergraduate engineering student; the 
design employed a 48’ cantilever with a timber truss system. A second well-developed design was the 
result of a very effective collaboration between a graduate architecture student and a graduate engineering 
student who were both very strong. See Figure 11. 
 
               
Figure 11. Project by Efrain Vergara and Zach Vacovsky (architecture) and Austin Morgan (engineering), 
left; project by Kelsey McLaughlin (architecture) and Vicki Rogers (engineering), right. 
 
With the spring 2017 UO studio, Sheine and Gershfeld were able to once again have architecture and 
graduate engineering student teams collaborate, this time on the design of a new grandstand structure for 
UO’s Hayward Field. This project was closest in type to the bridge projects of the Cal Poly Pomona 
studios, in which very limited programming or site design was required. Teams communicated virtually, 
with Gershfeld making several in-person visits to UO. Engineering students were able to do structural 
analysis and architecture students developed details, as they did for the bridges. See Figure 12. 
 
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Figure 12. Folded Plate Team: Addison Estrada, Abe Kelso (architecture); Eric Cheung, Gregory Kato, 
Dana Robertson, Trung Tran (engineering). Section on top, left, detail of column base connection on top, 
right; Loading, Gravity and Bending diagrams, on bottom, left to right. 
 
Three UO studios taught in 2017-18 focused on buildings of very varied sizes, although all followed a 
similar format, with Gershfeld acting as technical consultant, and without involvement from engineering 
students. However, in two of them, the studio included consultants for environmental systems. The fall 
2017 studio, co-taught by Sheine and Donofrio, was focused on the design of a new mass timber 
courthouse for Lane County, a project initiated by the County. This was a 250,000 sq. ft. building with a 
complex program and students worked in teams of three and four. With generous funding from the 
County, the studio was able to include faculty consultants from our UO Energy Studies in Building Lab 
(ESBL) to help integrate natural ventilation and daylighting strategies into the projects. See Figure 13. 
 
   
Figure 13. Renderings of proposals by The Nest team (Spencer Boragine, David Moreno, Josh Rosenthal, 
Zach Sherrod) on left and the Civic Resilience team (Westin Hill, Russell Regulinski, Tim Walsh) on right. 
 
In spring 2018, Sheine’s UO studio focused on modular mass timber classroom design, with Gershfeld 
acting as consultant and with faculty from ESBL consulting on daylight analysis, with the use of the 
Artificial Sky. Students worked in teams of two, developing mass timber classroom modules, and applied 
them to existing school plans, designing long-span timber systems for the larger spaces. See Figure 14. 
 
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Figure 14. Payton Narancic and Simone O’Halloran. Classroom module for ground floor on left, 
rendering of upper level classroom on right. 
 
In winter 2018, Sheine taught a studio focused on the design of very small mass timber houses, 
coordinated with Alex Olsen, an instructor in a construction vocational program for high school students, 
Freres Lumber, the manufacturer of Mass Plywood Panels (MPP), and with Gershfeld acting as structural 
consultant. This studio mirrored integrated practice, with a team of architect, engineer, contractor and 
manufacturer all working together using the new MPP material. Students were able to explore the 
potential of MPP and develop individual detailed designs in this very small project. See Figure 15. 
 
 
Figure 15. Projects, left to right, by Andrea Li, Hayden Rensch, and Konrad Stuebgen. 
LESSONS LEARNED 
 
Each of these studios and interdisciplinary models taught us something about the various pedagogies and 
project types. Ideally, interdisciplinary integration should be in person, but, as in practice, virtual 
communication can work, although it’s best if the number of projects is limited and close faculty 
supervision is available, which is challenging in a lecture-style engineering class. One note is that all of 
these studios were taught in 10-week terms, which makes them particularly challenging. From the studio 
types discussed here, three primary models can be derived. These models generally have distinct 
advantages when students work in teams, either in interdisciplinary teams or even just in teams of 
architecture students. Clearly, there is an advantage in having a number of students able to produce more 
work than one can, but there is also a benefit to having students work in teams and finding different ways 
each can contribute to support the team and project – as is typical in practice. Additionally, less 
experienced students can work with stronger ones, giving opportunities for both leadership and peer-to-
peer learning. And, critically, the importance of having faculty leading these efforts who have experience 
in hands-on design and can demonstrate productive collaborative interaction cannot be overestimated. 
 
Structurally-driven projects 
 
Projects that have very limited program, such as bridges, grandstands, and parking garages, are best 
suited to a 10-week fully integrated design process with architecture and engineering students working 
together from the beginning of a project. These projects can create interesting new challenges for both 
architecture and engineering students; architecture students rarely address designs that require serious 
structural analysis to establish feasibility and engineering students rarely tackle in-class analysis and 
design of an entire structural system that is not a simple box. The progressive competition format has 
advantages in establishing high standards in both design and collaboration that must be met in order for a 
design to proceed to a further stage of development and in having students work in teams where they 
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learn how to make contributions even when they are not the primary author of the design idea. 
Considerable development and a relatively high level of resolution can be achieved with these kinds of 
projects, with or without the progressive competition model.  
 
Buildings 
 
Depending on the size of the building program, these are generally much more architecturally driven at 
the beginning of the design project. Architecture students take the lead on site design and conceptual 
design, which in a large, complex building can take some weeks. The challenge in these cases is how to 
integrate technical team members early enough to be involved in the entire design process. This applies to 
both structural engineering students and to the integration of environmental systems, whether this input 
is provided by consulting faculty and professionals or also by students. In these projects, case studies can 
form a critical part of the teamwork. Engineering students can analyze past examples of structural 
systems and present alternates to the architecture students as they develop conceptual designs. Similarly, 
standards and systems for analysis of ventilation, cooling, heating and daylighting strategies can be 
investigated and presented for consideration. In general, projects that have some standard, repetitive 
parts – offices, residences, schools –combined with one or two long-span spaces give both architects and 
engineers a good variety of types of spaces to design and learn from, one lending itself to a fairly standard 
solution and one allowing for more creative exploration. Lectures from faculty as well as external design, 
construction and manufacturing professionals, along with field trips, can provide supplemental 
knowledge for students and give them direct insight and understanding of projects.  
 
However, with more complex projects, early integration of technical team members can be particularly 
challenging, especially in a 10-week term. These projects, such as the “Timber in the City” competitions, 
are architecturally driven and are better suited to technical integration provided by faculty and 
professional consultants. Of course, on a small project, a single residence or similar size structure, it is 
possible to have individual students work on projects, as is also typical in practice. Finding a building of 
just the right size and complexity for successful teamwork and interdisciplinary collaboration is part of 
the challenge for faculty instructors. 
 
INTERDISCIPLINARY MASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAM 
 
From the launch of the TallWood Design Institute (TDI) in 2015, an interdisciplinary MS degree was 
envisioned focused on mass timber design, taking advantage of Oregon’s position as the epicenter of mass 
timber manufacture and application in the U.S., the role of  TDI in this development, and the disciplinary 
strengths of UO and OSU faculty in architecture, wood science and engineering. While the goal is to 
eventually offer the MS as a joint degree from both universities (addressing the logistical challenges of 
creating a joint degree from two public universities will take some time and effort to accomplish), we are 
planning to initiate it in fall 2020 as a one-year UO Department of Architecture Master of Science degree, 
with classes taught at both universities. The program is designed for students with a professional degree 
in architecture, structural engineering, architectural engineering, construction management or other 
allied fields.  
 
Based on the experiences described above, Sheine, Gershfeld and Donofrio worked with Eric Hansen, 
Professor and Head of the OSU Department of Wood Science and Engineering (WSE), to develop the MS 
program. All students will be required to take all courses. The fall term will include three courses 
introducing students to forestry, wood markets, wood science, wood manufacturing and structural wood 
design; these will be taught by OSU WSE faculty at OSU. A fourth course, a studio focused on wood design 
with digital tools, will be taught at UO with faculty from Architecture and WSE. In the winter students will 
be offered an option to travel to Europe for the annual Holzbau in Innsbruck, Austria and a tour of 
significant timber structures and wood manufacturing facilities. 
 
The winter and spring terms will be centered on a capstone studio project, in which students will work in 
interdisciplinary teams on the design of a building with repetitive elements and a long-span space. As 
indicated above, the architecture students will begin with brief case-study projects, while the engineering 
and construction students will spend more time on case study analysis for the first four weeks. This will 
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give the architecture students time for site planning and conceptual design while interacting with their 
technical team members, who will be providing feedback on the design approaches. After this initial 
phase, the team members will work together to develop the project, with each team member taking major 
responsibility for the aspects of the project that correspond with their discipline. This studio will be jointly 
led by an architecture faculty member and an engineering faculty member, with guest consultants.  
 
In the winter term, a lecture course will be taught by the lead studio faculty, covering aspects of timber 
design relevant to all disciplines. There will also be a two-term seminar, sponsored by TDI, with guest 
lectures and workshops given by UO and OSU faculty with specialized expertise and by external 
professionals. Topics will include: manufacturing processes, digital fabrication, adhesives, fire resistance, 
durability/moisture protection, LCA, net-zero design/carbon negative design, acoustics, constructability 
and economics, construction methods/design-build, modular and off-site construction, and case studies 
of contemporary mass timber buildings. These guests will also serve as consultants in the studio, advising 
on their particular areas of expertise. In addition, small interdisciplinary teams will be required to take on 
a research project of their choice, working with UO and OSU faculty members. 
 
This degree path is designed to prepare students with a professional degree specifically for integrated 
mass timber practice. However, given that timber buildings require the use of concrete and steel and there 
are a number of models for hybrid structural models, we believe this degree will prepare students for 
integrated practice in general. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
There are many models for interdisciplinary design education. While virtual interaction is second to in- 
person collaboration, the reality of current practice – and education – sometimes necessitates 
communication at a distance and it can be made to work. The authors are looking forward to expanding 
the scope of their previous interdisciplinary integrated studios to a year-long program with multiple 
courses and multiple faculty and visitors, both in-person and communicating virtually, and to continuing 
to refine and develop the degree and the integrated design process. 
 
REFERENCES 
 
Cramer, Steven and Dan Wheat, 2011. “Education in Wood Structural Design: Who Needs It?” In: 
STRUCTURE Magazine, June 2011: 5. 
 
Donofrio, Mark, Judith Sheine, and Mikhail Gershfeld. 2016. “The R&D (Research and Design) Studio: A 
Model for Integrated Design Studios Fostering Material Innovation.” In: World Conference on Timber 
Engineering Proceedings, 2016. 
 
Gupta, Rakesh, and Vijaya Gopu. 2005. “Wood Engineering Education – Trends and Challenges.” In: 
Proceedings of the Structures Congress, 2005. 
 
Gershfeld, Mikhail, Judith Sheine, and Gary McGavin. 2011. “AE Studio – Beyond Pedestrian Access: 
Creating Bridges for Learning.” In: ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings, 2011.  
  
Gershfeld, Mikhail, and Judith Sheine. 2013. “Design of Timber Bridges in an AE Studio.” In: Proceedings 
of the International Timber Bridge Conference, 2013. 
 
Riggio, Mariapaola, Nancy Cheng. 2019. “Timber tectonics in the digital age: interdisciplinary learning for 
data-driven wood architecture.” In: Proceedings of the ICSA 2019 International Conference on Structures 
and Architecture. July 24-26, 2019, Lisbon, Portugal. 
 
Riggio, Mariapaola, Jan Helge Siem, Judith Sheine, Laurence Schimleck, Bjorn Otto Braaten, and 
Arnstein Olav Gilberg. 2016. “What Can Architecture Students Learn About Wood and Wood Science and 
Engineering Students Learn About Architecture.’ In: World Conference on Timber Engineering 
Proceedings, 2016. 
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Sheine, Judith, and Mikhail Gershfeld. 2014. “Case Study: Models for Architecture and Engineering 
Collaboration in Higher Education Using Mass Timber, a Modern Sustainable Material.” In: Sustainable 
Structures Symposium Proceedings, 2014. 
 
Sheine, Judith, and Mikhail Gershfeld. 2018. “Hayward Field Mass Timber Grandstands: Promoting 
Innovative Design Through Interdisciplinary Education.” In: World Conference on Timber Engineering 
Proceedings, 2018. 
 
 
 
 
 
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