Nancy Yen-Wen Cheng 
Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, 1206 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1206 USA  
nywc at uoregon dot edu
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 Nancy Yen-wen Cheng, AIA, teaches architectural design and computer methods at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on how inquiries, tools and methods shape the design process. She is examines how high-tech and high-touch approaches can enrich creative thinking. After teaching digital media for many years, directing the Rome program lead her back to drawing, painting and material investigations. Her Digital Sketching project  shows how a pen that creates animated drawings can be used to teach sketching techniques and study design process.  She is using a computerized router to carve screens that modulate light. She is interested in how shadows can accentuate sun movement and increase awareness of natural cycles.

Social interaction spurred Nancy's research into Internet collaborations. While teaching at the University of Hong Kong ('93-'96), she developed international Virtual Design Studio projects with former Harvard classmates. After coming to Oregon in 1996, she has enriched her teaching with in-house and remote Web collaborations, most recently using blogs, Wikis and social bookmarking for sharing background research, design approaches and critical reflections. As virtual communities have become more mainstream, Nancy has turned her energy towards the physical design of sustainable cohousing, or intentional residential communities. Her students have worked with aspiring cohousing communities in 5 different Oregon locations.

Nancy enjoys working with colleagues on digital design research and architecture teaching issues, meeting at interesting locations around the world. She is president-elect for the Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), an editorial board member of the International Journal of Architectural Computing, and regularly contributes to academic paper reviews and design juries. She was the 2004 Chair of the AIA National Technology in Architectural Practice knowledge community, membership officer of ACADIA and organized a joint AIA-ACADIA conference on digital Fabrication in November 2004. Her papers on digital media, web collaborations and design teaching have been presented at conferences in four continents.

Prior to teaching, Nancy worked for Boston architectural firms such as Kallmann, McKinnell and Wood, Graham/Meus and Raphael Moneo. She holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University and a master's degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design. While at Harvard, she assisted William J. Mitchell in teaching computer graphics to professional and post-professional students.


University of Oregon Architecture Dept
 
Univ of Oregon School of Architecture & Allied Arts