University at Buffalo (UB)
October 7, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Erin Moore, professor, University of Oregon
Lou C. Kurtz Memorial Lecture
October 07, 2026 • 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm • Crosby Hall - Room 116 • Virtual option
Haynes Inlet Portal. Photo: David Paul Bayles.
Erin Moore, AIA, is a professor of architecture and environmental studies at the University of Oregon. Her research and design explore the intersections of architecture, climate justice, fossil fuel infrastructures, multispecies design and ideas of nature. Through her critical spatial practice, FLOAT Architectural Research and Design, she investigates how buildings can cultivate explicit relationships with their material and ecological contexts.
Critical Spatial Ecologies: Design with the More-than-Human
Drawing on a series of built projects and speculative installations, Erin Moore examines more-than-human design approaches that position ecological processes, temporal cycles, and material agency as central drivers of architectural form. Through experiments in multispecies habitat, biodegradable construction, and landscape representation, the work asks how architecture might reimagine value beyond extraction and toward reciprocity, stewardship, and ecological interdependence with living systems.
Makai (Outside House). Photo credit: Olivier Koning.
Moore's work has received international recognition. Her Pipeline Portals project was a finalist for the Architizer A+Awards (Architecture + Landscape), and Outside House received the Building Voices Award for environmental, social and economic sustainability. Her installations and writings have been featured internationally, including Topography: Remapping the Space of Fossil Fuel Transportation at the European Cultural Centre in Venice; the essay Four Lessons on Land, Space, and Resistance in Survivance for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and e-flux Architecture; and the OUR: Collective Future Project under UNESCO's Management of Social Transformations (MOST) program. She also contributed to the United Nations Experts' Report on Harmony with Nature.
Headshot of Erin Moore.
Her work has been published in Protest Architecture (RIBA), Metropolis, Architectural Record, Dwell, The Site Magazine, and numerous international books on architecture and sustainable design. Her projects have also received honors from Kengo Kuma and the Lexus Design Awards.
Moore previously served as director of the University of Oregon School of Architecture & Environment and associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Design. She holds a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, a BA from Smith College, and is a registered architect in Oregon and Arizona.
The School of Architecture and Planning is an AIA CES Approved Provider. This course is AIA CES Registered and approved for 1.5 Learning Unit (LU) | Health Safety and Welfare Unit (HSW)