Erin Moore, Assistant Professor

Email: moore2@uoregon.edu

B.A., 1996, Smith
M.Arch., 2003, California, Berkeley
reg. architect, Arizona

“Buildings should be measured by what they contribute to functioning ecosystems, rather than by what resources they use up. By making buildings that establish reciprocal relationships with their contexts, designers can move from taking steps to try to slow down the depletion of non-renewable resources towards learning to thrive without them, living to regenerate and renew the functioning ecosystems that share the same boat—that are our boat.

The sustainability of ecosystems rests on functions of cyclical change and interconnection. To meet this description of sustainability, buildings must be functionally interconnected with broader systems and their lifetimes must be cyclical (with the end just as purposeful as the beginning).”

Moore uses her research practice, FLOAT, as a testing ground for ideas about how to build with explicit intentions for the lives and life spans of materials and so of the buildings. One such project, a writing studio that she designed as part of a watershed restoration, is recently completed. Moore also works—in teaching and research—on topics related to the end of the lives of buildings, particularly in terms of material and ecological transformation, building demolition and design for deconstruction. Moore is co-founder of Floodspace, a partnership in research on design innovations for communities subject to climate change-related flooding in Bangladesh. She is currently writing on environmental ethics in metrics of architectural sustainability.