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The University of Oregon has hired a team of design and engineering firms to try an unusual technique for planning a new home for its School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

Bruce Mau Design, Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design and Arup will work with faculty, staff and students at the university to develop a “strategic vision” for the school’s future buildings and locations in Eugene.

The plan is usually done by an architecture firm as part of its contract – but the school wanted to take a different tack and a deeper look into the process, said Rob Thallon, associate dean.

“Usually when a unit or institution needs a new building, you have somebody do programming, which is looking at what additional space is needed, what needs to be connected to what and things of that nature,” Thallon said. “What we’re doing is taking that piece, breaking it out and making it more thorough.”

The goal is to develop a plan for the school – which makes up about a 10th of the UO campus – that will remain useful for the next 100 years and meet the demands of changing classroom technology, Thallon said.

Right now, the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, or A&AA, is spread across 13 to 15 campus buildings. Part of the plan is to figure out which parts of the school should be merged into a new space and which need to stay where they are, said Karen Johnson, a spokeswoman for the school.

“What we’ve done so far is create a set of research and planning sessions,” Johnson said. “We’re trying to understand what higher education will look like in the 21st century and what our space needs will be. We’ve issued surveys asking students what they’d like to see. We’ve also submitted surveys to our faculty.”

The budget for the plan is about $200,000. The budget for a new building isn’t solidified yet, but Johnson projected the school’s current space needs would require a $60 million to $100 million project.

It’s a bit early to solidify an overall project cost, however, because space needs in some cases could actually shrink, Thallon said.

“We could find that digital technology actually reduces our space needs, with online programs and other things,” Thallon said. “The way classrooms work is changing. They’re not very efficient right now.”

Online programs – which let students take classes from home – could remove the need for some entire classrooms. Parts of the school also have specific space needs that are different from standard facilities, Thallon said.

“We have a lot of studio-based courses,” he said. “And we have classes where students make or build things. That’s a big part of our educational process.”

There’s no set date yet for completion of the new campus, but Thallon said he’d like to see “at least a shovel in the ground someplace” by the school’s 100th anniversary in 2014.

The school also hasn’t figured out yet where the new complex will be built or where all the money will come from, Johnson said.

“It’s going to be a project that will have a lot of partnerships and probably look at some unusual funding sources,” she said.

Some possible sources could include private investors or retail leases at the new site, she said.

Some of the results of the discussions could be used in other projects at the school or even at other schools around the country, Johnson added.

“There will be pieces that relate to other schools, even though it will mostly relate to our unique school,” she said.

Johnson has started an informational blog about the project at .