Faculty bio | TallWood Design Institute | (323) 821-1208 (mobile)

Judith Sheine is an academic expert in mass timber design, Southern California 20th century architectural history, design and construction technologies, and housing. At the University of Oregon, she is a professor in the Department of Architecture and the Director of Design for the TallWood Design Institute (TDI), a collaboration between the UO’s College of Design and Oregon State University’s Colleges of Forestry and Engineering focused on the advancement of timber products and their application in building systems.

Since 2008, Sheine has worked in interdisciplinary teams of architecture and engineering faculty and students focused on advanced timber products and their applications. This work led to her involvement in the formation of the TallWood Design Institute in 2015. Sheine is engaged in TDI research, outreach, and education; current research projects include the development of single-family mass timber workforce housing and façade retrofits for energy and seismic resilience, both projects employing prefabricated mass timber panel assemblies, and the re-use potential of mass timber building components. Sheine has expertise in affordable housing, having won several prizes in the 1990s for competition entries and one built project, expertise that she is now applying to the new timber technologies. Her background in the examination of Southern California architects and the connection of their design theories to construction technologies serves as an underpinning of her more recent work in the field of design and construction technologies in timber.

Sheine is also an award-winning architect whose projects have been published internationally and she has been recognized as the leading authority on the work of R.M. Schindler; her publications on the architect include R.M. Schindler (Phaidon Press, 2001) and her most recent book, Schindler, Kings Road and Southern California Modernism (University of California Press, 2012), co-authored with Robert Sweeney.

Recent Media:
Too many people, not enough homes: Oregon's affordable housing crisis (KLCC, June 30, 2023)
Oregon State, University of Oregon, Portland State, others receive National Science Foundation money (Oregon Public Broadcasting, May 11, 2023)
The life and legacy of Thomas Hacker (The Registry, March 14, 2023)
Industry Veteran: Oregon Poised to Become a World Leader in Manufactured Homes (Oregon Business, Feb. 9, 2023)
Oregon project to expand mass timber production, industry jobs with $41.4M federal grant (The Register-Guard, Sept. 6, 2022)
UO and OSU awarded grants to further mass timber projects (KLCC, Sept. 6, 2022)
OSU and U of O receive millions in grant money to help timber research (KGW, Sept. 5, 2022)
Celebrating the centennial of (arguably) the world’s first modern house, in West Hollywood (The New Yorker, July 21, 2022)
Using technological innovations to lower housing construction costs (PD&R Magazine, May 31, 2022)
The newest high-rise near you might just be made from wood (The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2022)
Wooden skyscrapers are on the rise (The Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2022)
Oregon Mass Timber Coalition's manufacturing facility proposal a finalist for BBB funding (The Register, Guard, Dec. 16, 2021)
Sturdy, strong and sustainable: Mass timber's popularity grows in Pacific Northwest (The Register-Guard, Dec. 15, 2021)
29 granny flats that put guests up in style (Dwell, October, 2019)
Sea Ranch, California’s modernist utopia, gets an update (The New York Times, June 11, 2019)
A modern home joins a storied site on the Pacific Ocean (Dwell, August 2018)
Urban jungle: wooden high-rises change city skylines as builders ditch concrete (The Guardian, Dec. 15, 2015)
UO partners with OSU on new center for sustainable wood products (Around the O, May 5, 2015)