PNCA Student Designs and Builds New Student Bicycle Parking Facility

Release date: 01/07/13

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 3, 2013

Contact:
Lisa Radon, Communications Specialist
Pacific Northwest College of Art
lradon@pnca.edu, 971 255 5528

Becca Biggs, Director of Communications
Pacific Northwest College of Art
bbiggs@pnca.edu, 971 255 5511

PNCA Student Designs and Builds New Student Bicycle Parking Facility

Portland, OR—January 3, 2013—Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is poised to celebrate the completion of a three-year, student-led project to build a new bicycle shelter for the College. Alumnus David Boekelheide, who received his MFA in Applied Craft and Design (a joint program of PNCA and Oregon College of Art and Craft) in 2011, designed and fabricated the organic structure as well as shepherded the project through an extensive approval process. PNCA Dean of Student Services Michael Hall spearheaded the project for the College.

The College already has one of the city’s largest bike parking facilities. The new Student Pedal Garden both celebrates PNCA’s bicycling community and serves as a memorial for Tracey Sparling, a PNCA student who in 2007 died in a biking accident. Sparling’s death was one of two such bike commuter tragedies in the PNCA community during October of 2007, with alumni Brett Jarolimek’s death following on October 22.

Featuring wall-mounted white powder-coated racks covered by a partial roof, the PNCA Student Pedal Garden also demonstrates PNCA’s commitment to design in support of a sustainable future. The College will host a dedication ceremony for this bicycle oasis on Friday, January 25, 2013.

“It’s been an incredible learning experience,” Boekelheide says. It was his first experience with a project of this scale involving the input and approval of so many agencies and associations. “It has been as much an exercise in public policy and the public art process as a design-build project.”

ELEEK, Inc., an award-winning Portland design and fabrication shop, has provided shop space for Boekelheide to fabricate the racks. ELEEK’s owner, Eric Kaster, has been involved in project management for most of the design and permitting aspects of the venture. PNCA Board of Governors member and PNCA alumnus Jean-Pierre Veillet ’97 has also been an important contributor to the project through his personal involvement and that of his staff at his company SiteWorks Design. Veillet mentored Boekelheide during his graduate program.

President Tom Manley will dedicate the Student Pedal Garden on January 25 at 11:30 am in the Swigert Commons of PNCA at 1241 NW Johnson Street.

ABOUT PACIFIC NORTHWEST COLLEGE OF ART
As Oregon’s flagship college of art and design since 1909, Pacific Northwest College of Art has helped shape Oregon’s visual arts landscape for more than a century. PNCA students study with award-winning faculty in small classes. In the last seven years, PNCA has doubled both the student body and full-time faculty, quadrupled its endowment, and added innovative undergraduate and graduate programs. PNCA is now embarking on its boldest venture yet by establishing the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design as an anchor for the College’s vision of a new campus home on Portland’s North Park Blocks. Focusing on the transformative power of creativity, the capital campaign, Creativity Works Here, was launched in June 2012 with a lead gift from The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation of $5 million. PNCA’s new home will be a bustling hub for creativity and entrepreneurship, reflecting the influential role of art and design in our 21st century economy – both in Portland and beyond. For more information, visit pnca.edu.