Department of Architecture - University of Oregon

Alison B. Snyder

M.Arch. Columbia University, 1987
BA (Architecture) Washington University, St. Louis, 1982
Registered Architect: New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey

Biography

The expansive approach that Associate Professor Alison Snyder brings to the discipline of architecture draws on both archaeological and anthropological investigations to reveal how places, buildings, and interiors transform over time. She teaches interior and architectural design studios, preparation for the interior architecture comprehensive design project, and seminars. She is the director of the interior architecture program and co-director of the product design program at the University of Oregon.

Snyderﾒs research dismantles settings, structures, and cultural systems - monumental and mundane - for interpretation and analysis. Her work as architect for archaeological excavations in Israel and Turkey has led Snyder to investigate the effect of modernization on settlement patterns in Middle Eastern contemporary village vernacular. Her writing on this topic has appeared in the journals Anatolica, The Chamber of Architects of Turkey's Mimarlar Odasi, and the Middle East Technical University's Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, andin the forthcoming book On Global Grounds: the specificities of urban change within globalization (Nova, 2008). Her archaeological renderings have appeared in both the Journal of Field Archaeology and the catalog of the Miho Museum in Japan. She also served as architectural consultant for a CAD reconstruction rendering of the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal mounted for permanent exhibition in the Assyrian Room at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and published in Rendering Real and Imagined Buildings (Rockport, 1998).

Previous research by Snyder includes explorations of the role of light in determining structure and form in ancient and modern religious buildings, initially through research and surveys of Ottoman mosques in five citiesas Columbia University's William Kinne fellow, and later in essays including "Transformations, Readings and Visions of the Ottoman Mosque" in A Historical Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire (Klewer Academic Press/Plenum Press, 2000) and "Daylighting by Two Modernists and an Old Master" in Architectural Record.

Snyder is currently the associate editor of art, architecture, and archaeology for the international journal of the Middle East Studies Association. Her list of publications also includes "Adequate Shelter For All," a cover story in Metropolis Magazine reflecting on the UN HABITAT II conference in Istanbul.

With professional experience in residential, religious, and commercial architecture as well as lighting and furniture design, Snyder maintains a small practice that provides design services for small institutions primarily pro bono. Construction was recently completed on her adaptive reuse design for the first synagogue in Juneau, Alaska. She also advised the Hand2Mouth Theatre Company in Portland, Oregon, during their selection of a new performance space. Before moving to Oregon, she worked in New York City as a project architect for Architecture + Furniture, BumpZoid, and Byrns, Kendall & Schieferdecker, and as a lighting designer with Jules Fisher and Paul Marantz. She also participated in a workshop on light and movement with lighting designer Jennifer Tipton and choreographer Dana Reitz. She is currently president of the board of directors of the Van Ummersen Dance Companyin Eugene.

Snyder has held teaching positions at Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi in Ankara, Turkey, the New York Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, and Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science.



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