Mission
The mission of the Northwest Center for Architecture is to raise public awareness of how architecture impacts our lives. We maintain an archive as an educational resource and produce public exhibitions and publications.
Board of Directors
Abraham Kelso, Board President is a designer and educator based in Eugene, OR. He teaches as a Studio Instructor in Design Media in the Department of Architecture at the University of Oregon and is founding principle of the local design firm Marinbow.
Abraham received a Bachelors in printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Masters in Architecture from the University of Oregon.
He previously taught at Cornish College for the Arts in Seattle and worked as an intern architect for the award-winning Canadian firm MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects and as a project designer for Susan Jones’ innovative Seattle firm atelierjones. He is currently working on a comprehensive monograph about the Eugene-based firm of Unthank Seder Poticha Architects
Serena Lim, AIA, NOMA PDX, ILFI, Secretary is a licensed architect in Portland, Oregon. She works remotely at Rowell Brokaw Architects, where she takes on diverse roles in a range of academic, commercial, residential, and institutional projects.
Serena earned a B/A in Liberal Arts with a focus on Visual Art from The Evergreen State College in 2008 and a M/Arch with a focus on Sustainable Technologies from the University of Oregon in 2018. Serena’s love of the outdoors and interdisciplinary background in visual arts and humanities fundamentally shape her perspective and approach to architecture. She constantly reflects on how the built environment impacts people and nature, and advocates for higher standards of socially and ecologically responsible design.
Prior to pursuing a career in architecture, Serena worked as a freelance animator and graphic designer, substitute teacher, antique textile restorationist, and junior designer at Goring & Straja Architects, while living in Oakland, CA. She is a co-founder of Oxtail Studio & Gallery and co-manages the 1905 brick building where her father once ran his architecture firm in Berkeley, CA.
Serena loves making art, tackling home improvement projects, dancing, gardening, camping, swimming, volunteering, and enjoying meals with friends.
David Lieberman, AIA, Treasurer is a licensed architect and design-oriented real estate developer based in Seattle, Washington. Deeply committed to the architectural profession, David pursues the highest design standards within real-world constraints, collaborating closely with architects to foster creativity and excellence.
He co-founded DRS, a real estate development firm, and Tsuga Studio, an architecture practice, and previously served as a project architect at the Miller Hull Partnership, contributing to notable projects in Seattle and abroad. His portfolio spans mixed-use affordable housing, single-family homes, Class-A offices, and cultural spaces. David currently leads real estate development efforts for ACHD.
David earned a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Vermont and a Master of Architecture from the University of Oregon. As Treasurer of the Northwest Center for Architecture, he advocates for preserving the Pacific Northwest’s architectural legacy.
In his personal life, David finds inspiration in photography, music, painting, snowboarding, and time with his family and friends.
Doug Streeter studied architecture at the University of Oregon from 1978 to 1980. He is a designer and nephew of DeNorval Unthank, Jr. FAIA and son of Mel Streeter AIA, a Seattle architect, AAA Graduate, and All-American University of Oregon college basketball player in the 1950s.
From the beginning, his interest was in architectural history and urbanism. This interest led him to London, where he continued to study at the AA under the founding members of Archigram: Peter Cook, Ron Herron, and Christine Hawley. He spent 21 years leading design at UK practices on projects in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, before being recruited by Perkins+Will for their Seattle office.
His design background is broad and diverse, including building types unique to their foreign contexts, climates, scales, and urban environments. His practice and professional success led to design opportunities on large-scale urban projects in Hong Kong and Asia, where international airport transport hubs kept pace with the immense growth of Asian economies in the 1980s and 1990s.
Returning to the UK extended his design opportunities and projects to corporate offices and workplace design, as well as three major public aquariums. He then moved to Dubai where he lived with his family and worked on a new urban scale of city design and development, high-rises, mixed-use and planning projects. The financial crisis 2008 brought a return to the USA as a Design Leader and Principal at Perkins + Will, Seattle; during which time the firm completed several award-winning higher education, science, and technology buildings.
Howard Davis is Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, where he teaches design studios and courses in the social and geographic contexts of architecture. He is co-author of The Production of Houses (Oxford, 1985, written with Christopher Alexander and others) and sole author of three books: The Culture of Building (Oxford, 1999), Living Over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life (Routledge, 2012) and Working Cities: Architecture, Place and Production (Routledge, 2020). He is editor of the compendium Early and Unpublished Work of Christopher Alexander (Routledge, 2022) and of the four-volume reference work Vernacular Architecture: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury, 2023). Davis was on the editorial boards of the Journal of Architectural Education and Urban Morphology, and was founding co-editor of Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. He was named Distinguished Professor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and was awarded the Thomas F. Herman Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Oregon.
Virginia Cartwright is an Associate Professor Emerita of Architecture at the University of Oregon. Her research has long focused on the relationship between light and form in the work of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Since 1998 she has developed a small architectural practice and continues to work as a daylighting consultant; past projects include the award-winning Emerald People’s Utility District Headquarters Building, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, the Portland Art Museum, and the Springfield Metropolitan Waste Management Facility.
Before the University of Oregon, Virginia taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie and Kansas State University. She was a visiting professor at Cornell University in 1995. She is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America and the Society of Building Science Educators.
David Hilton is a community leader and art collector based in Eugene.
Robert Hutchison is a Rome Prize fellow whose interests and practice overlap the fields of architecture, art, and photography. He teaches design studios at the University of Washington and Washington State University. Through his practice and classes, Hutchison has forged deep connections to Mexico and Japan, where he has completed several projects. He is the founder of Robert Hutchison Architecture in Seattle. RHA is an award-winning studio designing contemporary projects that balance beauty with pragmatism, and elegance with efficiency, all in concert with nature.