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Graduate students at the University of Oregon‘s School of Architecture and Allied Arts‘ Portland annex are imagining what the Old Town section of the city might look like as a sprawling corporate campus.

It is mostly an intellectual and academic effort at this point.

However, Marti Gerdes, communications specialist for the school, said students’ hypothetical designs for the 34-block area might help corporate leaders think outside the box – or rather inside it.

“Corporate campuses tend to be on the fringe of metro areas rather than integrated into the center of a downtown,” Gerdes said. “What an Old Town Portland corporate campus would offer is, well, everything from office space to housing to shopping – and in a compact, culturally rich space tucked inside one of the hippest cities anywhere.”

Plus, she said, such mixed use is inherently sustainable.

“The UO group is the type of people we want to help design the city,” said Greg Goodman, co-president of Downtown Development Group LLC in Portland, in a press statement. “If you look at the driver in Portland, it’s young people. It’s not about monogrammed shirts here anymore. There’s a vitality.”

Students taking part in the Sustainable Real Estate Design Challenge are working with city and state government planners and real estate development and planning consultants as well as architects and designers to come up with theoretical plans for the neighborhood.

Class instructor Ric Stephens, principal at Stephens Planning & Design LLC, said city officials and local residents have met over many months to identify the planning challenges of the area.

“These include potential conflicts between historic preservation and contemporary development,” he said.