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Designer Kristi Neznanski faced a formidable design challenge from an unusual client.

She had to design a better chicken coop.

Neznanski is one of the members of DesignOpine, a group of young architects and designers in Salem that is part of the American Institute of Architects, to accept the Chicken Coop Challenge.

DesignOpine devised the challenge as a way to rally members and contribute to Habitat for Hens, a nonprofit organization that helps impoverished families raise their own chickens as a step toward economic self-sufficiency.

DesignOpine members competed to see who could design the best chicken coop.

“It had to be built well and aesthetically pleasing,” said Leah McMillan, a member of the DesignOpine committee and 2012 AIA Salem president. “The challenge was won, ironically, by the one member who actually owns chickens.”

The key lay in understanding both humans and chickens, Neznanski said.

“Chickens, as a client, tend to be under the three-foot range, but chicken coops need to build on the human scale,” she said. That way, people can more easily check on the chickens, harvest the eggs and so forth.

“I tend to be more form over function,” said Neznanski, who works for Lenity Architecture in Salem. “As a chicken owner, there were definite design elements I needed to meet. The coop I designed is actually what I wanted to design for myself. A lot of the designs you see online don’t account for the four to six months of rain we get here.”

DesignOpine members are building Neznanski’s winning chicken coop in the garage of group member Blake Bural. They plan on installing Neznanski’s “Casa de Gallina” at a needy family’s home in May.

Neznanski said she is not a farm girl. She became interested in chickens in college. “When I was going to college at Iowa State, I became very interested in sustainability,” she said “That’s a big buzz word in the Northwest, but it’s not quite as big in Iowa.”

When she took a planning course on sustainable communities in which students looked at the city of Madison, Wis., and learned the virtues of chickens.

“They’re kind of your own backyard ecosystem. They eat bugs and scraps,” Neznanski said. “As a pet in a small urban environment, they’re perfect.”

Neznanski and her husband, Matt, moved to Oregon only to find that Salem had rules against city dwellers keeping chickens. She joined the group Chickens in the Yard to fight for the right to keep their birds. They now have two chickens, a Rhode Island red named Rhoda and a barnvelder named Miss Barnie.

“It was an experiment, first of all, to see I could keep them alive, which I have,” Neznanski said.

McMillan said the Chicken Coop Challenge proved a fun and rewarding way of generating enthusiasm for DesignOpine. The group is only a few years old.

“In 2009, we realized the AIA group in Salem had quite a few younger members who weren’t really active in the chapter,” McMillan said.

Young聽 architects and designers banded together and got a $2,200 grant from the national organization. The money helped young designers purchase study guides for taking their licensing exams. It was also used for a contest to come up with a name.

“The national office calls young architect groups Emerging Professional and Young Architects,” McMillan said. “We thought that was a bit cumbersome. We went with DesignOpine.”

Membership in the group is for people who have been architects or designers less than 10 years. It also includes interns and other unlicensed people.

“We wanted to hold events your boss wouldn’t necessarily attend,” said McMillan.

Although the median age of members is 30, McMillan said people don’t have to be young to be young architects. A person who goes back to school at age 55 and becomes an architect could join.

鈥淭hey actually do qualify as a ‘young’ architect,” she said.

In addition to the Chicken Coop Challenge, group members formed a mentor group that paired young architects in groups of three with seasoned professionals. About half 聽of Salem AIA was involved.

McMillan said she gets a lot out of the organization. “I do plan reviews for the state, so I work in a nontraditional role,” she explained. “The organization lets me connect back to architectural community and lets me keep in touch with the design world.”

Members often have a lot in common.

鈥淭his group has provided forum and place for those who are in the very loosely defined chapter of life between a design degree and full professional practice,” said member Erick Peterson. “It’s a niche that has met individuals’ needs to discuss the many aspects of professional development without some of the formality and restraint that is present during other AIA meetings.鈥�

Members are often alumni of the University of Oregon and find themselves at similar stages in life. About half of them have young families, McMillan said. Others have dogs and go to dog parks together. There are not many romantic hookups, though, she said.

The Salem group is more chickens than lovebird, she added.

“Everyone has known each other too long,” McMillan said. “You hear about that sort of thing more in Portland.”

(Editor’s note: This is a corrected version of the story that was originally posted on Dec. 31, 2012.)