MArch Urban Design, University of Illinois, 1969
BArch University of Illinois, 1967

Registered Architect: California

Associate Professor Gerald Gast teaches in the Portland Urban Architecture Program. His professional work, teaching, and research emphasize multi-discipline connections in urban design and architecture. 

Since founding Gast-Hillmer Urban Design, an urban design and architecture firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Gast has developed a significant portfolio of projects for cities and counties in the western states. The firm completed the master plan for the San Diego County Administration Center; the "Uptown District" in San Diego, an $80 million mixed-use residential-retail development with 313 new dwelling units, a community center, and neighborhood shopping district in a high-density, pedestrian and transit-oriented urban setting; and the Urban Design component of the Redwood City, California General Plan, a city of 100,000 persons in Silicon Valley.  He recently completed a proposal for a public square, MAX light rail station, and south downtown redevelopment for the City of Milwaukie, Oregon, The firm's projects have been recognized with national and regional awards from the American Planning Association and National League of Cities.

In his first international project, Gast is leading a team designing the master plan for the new Stryiskyi Park campus of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv, Ukraine. Founded in 1915, the University was closed under Soviet rule from 1945 to 1992. It is the first Catholic university on the lands of the former Soviet Union. This project has involved Portland Program graduate students. Construction of the first two University buildings is currently underway.

Gast has developed research and design opportunities for graduate students with public agencies in the Portland region. A recent project funded by the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission developed the Master Plan for the Oregon Science and Technology Park, an ecological industrial park along a four-mile stretch of the Columbia River in the cities of Gresham, Fairview, Troutdale, and Wood Village, at the eastern edge of the Portland Urban Growth Boundary.  His current thesis design studio is working with the City of Portland Office of Healthy Working Rivers on urban design and architectural projects for the City's new Willamette River Plan.

In recent research, Gast has focused on seminal urban regeneration projects in North America, Western Europe and Brazil. He has presented talks as an invited speaker at Stanford University and at meetings of the California League of Cities, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, and regional chapters of the American Planning Association, and a paper at the national conference of the Society for City and Regional Planning History.

A member of the University of Oregon faculty since 1994, Gast served as the first director of the Portland Architecture Program.  He currently serves as Visiting Associate Professor in Stanford University's Program on Urban Studies, where he teaches urban design. Previously he was the director of the San Francisco Center for Architecture and Urban Studies and assistant professor of architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana and Miami University of Ohio.