Student Work

Landscape architecture students help Green Schoolyards take root

Sierra Brown — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 04:00:01 +0000

Landscape architecture students help Green Schoolyards take root Sierra Brown Tue, 10/22/2024 - 22:00

Sierra Brown

Last fall, we spoke with Associate Teaching Professor Emily Greenwood to learn more about her third-year landscape architecture studio, Green Schoolyards. At the time, students proposed new schoolyard designs emphasizing learning, creativity, mental health and interactions with nature for six Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) schools.

According to Greenwood, accepting and advancing the design proposals depends on the needs of each school, availability of funding and district support. Schools aren’t always readily equipped with the resources and support it takes to implement even the most minimal design.

Over the course of spring and summer 2024, two out of the six BVSD schools have worked to successfully advance their projects from planning to planting.

Mesa Elementary School in south Boulder used inspiration from student designs to transform its southern courtyard into a multi-use outdoor classroom they named Mesa Oasis. What was once barren soil with few amenities is now an interactive play area with a shaded pergola bench, rock sculpture garden, art gallery and turfed picnic space.

Mesa Oasis before transformation

Mesa Oasis after transformation

About one mile east of Mesa Elementary, Fairview High School is also implementing student designs. In their proposal for Fairview, Theodore Johnson Mencimer (ENVD’24) and Logan Shockey (ENVD’25) emphasized supporting student agency through garden therapy and interactive landscapes. The drawings added sensory trails, increased tree canopy and pollinator gardens as intervention to improve mental health and well-being of the high schoolers.

When Fairview expressed interest in implementing aspects of the proposal last fall, the two jumped at the opportunity. They soon realized, however, that moving from planning to implementation can be an arduous process.

“Most of the work that we did from January till April last semester was less so design and more logistics and communication,” Mencimer described.

“We had this giant email chain going back and forth,” Shockey elaborated. “It was between us and Fairview and Emily and all these other members of the school district. There was a lot of communication going in all directions.”

Before breaking ground, the two needed to address concerns from invested stakeholders in regard to student safety and maintenance of the greenspaces. This meant determining exact dimensions of tree growth for mowing purposes, narrowing down a list of acceptable non-fruiting tree species, drafting a detailed maintenance document and crafting multiple iterations of design plans to satisfy various school community members.

"It’s funny how much implementation drives the actual design,” Shockey commented. “It was mostly just slowly convincing the maintenance crew and some other members of the school district to actually let us start installing some landscaping that is not just a grass lawn.”

Mencimer described the back-and-forth process as useful, albeit tricky and slow moving. “Yeah, I think it was a good experience for both of us, undergoing that real world treatment,” he said.

What ultimately helped solidify the project was the team’s focus on improving the mental health of the high schoolers and emphasizing the educational benefits of biodiverse spaces, something both the teachers and students asked for during the studio’s initial design feedback sessions.

Mencimer and Shockey were also grateful to receive direct support from the high schoolers themselves. While the ENVD team conversed with the school board, motivated students from Fairview High fundraised nearly $10,000 to purchase plants and materials. Along with parents and other community members (including Mencimer's mom Kristine Johnson, Principal at Climate Resilient Landscapes), the students also helped Mencimer and Shockey plant the initial 14 trees at the front of the school, completing the first phase of the proposal.

Despite the hurdles, Mencimer and Shockey acknowledged the importance of their work, especially to provide support for students during a particularly difficult time in their lives. “I think that I have really benefited from working with high school students just because I did not have a good time in high school,” Shockey shared. “The kids at Fairview were really involved and really wanted to help.”

Mencimer, who attended Fairview High, described returning to his old school as cathartic. “The energy that the young people had was really heartwarming,” he noted.

“It feels good to plant trees with a group of people,” Shockey said. “I don't know, there's just something that's very healing about it.”

Last fall, students proposed new schoolyard designs emphasizing learning, creativity, mental health and interactions with nature for six Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) schools. Over the course of spring and summer 2024, two out of the six BVSD schools have worked to successfully advance their projects from planning to planting.

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Restoration, Salvation and Climate Adaptation

Sierra Brown — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 23:00:00 +0000

Restoration, Salvation and Climate Adaptation Sierra Brown Tue, 10/22/2024 - 17:00

Sierra Brown

The third floor of the Museum of Boulder was exceptionally lively for a Thursday evening in late September. Guests filled the galleries, where colorful hues and intricate floral patterns from hand-painted artifacts adorned the walls. Spicy aromas of chai tea wafted through the museum’s halls, mingling with the hum of footsteps and conversation.

The Restoration, Salvation and Climate Adaptation symposium drew a crowd of over 80 academic researchers, design professionals, city leadership and Environmental Design community members to the museum. The symposium took place in conjunction with Elemental: Tajik Arts, a public exhibition that celebrates the work of 16 ENVD students who spent much of their summer speckled with paint and perched high on scaffolding as they meticulously restored the exterior west face of the Dushanbe Teahouse.

“The work was a bit exhausting and sometimes physically hurting for them. They have to hold postures with their hands or with their bodies on the floor,” Associate Teaching Professor Azza Kamal described of the students’ summer work. “To be honest, it was nothing close to what you have seen in the symposium, they were very articulate, well dressed, which I think is a good takeaway about the good work it takes also to deliver.”

In the second iteration of the special topics course, History and Historiography of Environmental Design: Restoring the Dushanbe Teahouse, students explored the intersection of cultural heritage, restoration and sustainability within the context of Central Asian culture and architecture. ��ý�Ļ��Ʒing Researcher Maruf Mirakhmatov, a renowned Tajik artist and grandson of the artisan who helped build the Teahouse, returned to Boulder to co-teach the course with Kamal and facilitate the restoration.

While similar in scope to the course’s previous rendition, led in 2018 by Associate Professor Shawhin Roudbari and Nate Jones, ENVD Assistant Director of Advising & Professional Development, Kamal aimed to expand the focus this year to cover the pressing issues of climate change and resilience. “Restoration is part of climate adaptation. Preserving buildings saves a lot from the landfill and deconstruction minimizes emissions,” she noted.

Historic preservation is nothing new to Kamal. Her academic studies, professional experience and research pursuits have taken her from the Middle Age-era craft districts of Cairo to the historic neighborhoods of modern-day San Antonio. As one of eleven commissioners in San Antonio, her role involved collaborating with the Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) and the community to preserve historic and culturally significant areas while allowing for mindful development.

“What we need to preserve matters and how we keep the materials matters. Some of the these buildings are constructed with much better quality materials with longer life span than the standard building materials now,” she shared.

Kamal pointed out that despite the importance of restoring buildings, especially when they hold cultural significance, such as the Teahouse, historic buildings are not always the most ecologically fit. They rarely meet modern green building standards such as energy efficiency, water use and indoor air quality.

However, with the current national discourse to interconnect preservation with climate adaptation strategies, there is a hope that with careful retrofits, municipalities could improve the performance of historic structures and landmarks, so they can be climate-ready.

Last month’s symposium brought together a multidisciplinary panel of academics, artists and city officials to discuss these efforts. According to the night’s keynote speaker, Distinguished Professor of architecture and historic preservation at Roger Williams University, Hasan-Uddin Khan, it all comes down to stewardship.

Stephanie Phillips, a circular economy senior manager for San Antonio’s OHP and one of the night’s panelists, agreed. “The stewardship of the built and living heritage exists in the same vein as stewardship of the natural environment,” she commented.

Phillips’ work deals primarily with deconstructing aging buildings at the end of their life spans. This slower but more intentional process produces less waste and emissions than machine-heavy demolition and generates more jobs in skilled labor. Panelist Jonathan Koehn, the director of Boulder’s Climate Initiatives Department, spoke about deconstruction work being done locally, including the recent deconstruction of a Boulder community hospital where 94% of the building waste products were recycled and diverted from landfills.

In his keynote presentation, however, Khan warned that part of our identity is lost when we lose historic buildings, even in deconstruction. He spoke of the importance of upholding the culture of restoring buildings using traditional techniques, something the ENVD students were able to experience this summer while suspended up on scaffolding.

The symposium underscored the importance of balancing cultural heritage with sustainability and resilience, reminding attendees that restoration is not just about preserving the past but adapting it for the future.

“We can learn from the past, but we need to look forward,” Khan stated in his final remarks. “At the end of the day, architecture isn’t about buildings, it’s about people.”

The Restoration, Salvation and Climate Adaptation symposium drew a crowd of over 80 academic researchers, design professionals, city leadership and Environmental Design community members to the museum. The symposium took place in conjunction with Elemental: Tajik Arts, a public exhibition that celebrates the work of 16 ENVD students who spent much of their summer speckled with paint and perched high on scaffolding as they meticulously restored the exterior west face of the Dushanbe Teahouse.

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Two majors come together for cross disciplinary collaboration

Allyson Maturey — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 19:28:26 +0000

Two majors come together for cross disciplinary collaboration Allyson Maturey Tue, 10/22/2024 - 13:28

For the first time, students from the Fundamentals of Planning & Urban Design (1140) and Fundamentals of Architecture (1120) studios came together for an interdisciplinary interaction. During this session, 1140 students presented their studio project plans and visions, allowing 1120 students to select a public building to be designed as part of their studio work. This collaboration highlights the unique role that interdisciplinary education plays at ENVD.

Second-year architecture and sustainable design and urban planning students came together for an interdisciplinary interaction.

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ENVD 1030 hosts spring design competition

Anonymous — Tue, 14 May 2024 17:47:39 +0000

ENVD 1030 hosts spring design competition Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/14/2024 - 11:47

This spring, the Introduction to Landscape Architecture Studio hosted a design competition. The competition was reviewed by Shihomi Kuriyagawa and Emily Urquhart at the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department. Students who made the list were encouraged to acknowledge the recognition in their portfolio, resume and LinkedIn profiles.

Spring 2024 ENVD 1030 design competition winners:

Overall Design Excellence: Anthony Haberkorn (s15)

Runner Up: Cameron Cheney (s11)

Innovation: Cameron Cheney (s11)

Runners Up: Emma Browning (s15) and Clara Denham (s14)

Ecology: Maddie Veasey (s14)

Runner Up: Ella Seevers (s11)

Art: Clara Denham (s14)

Runner Up: Emma Browning (s15)

Honoring Culture: Leighton Larson (s17)

Community Commitment: John Davis (s19)

Youth in Nature: Ella Seevers (s11)

Runner Up: Caroline Gilchrist (s12)

Land Art: Arina Volkova (s13)

Sustainability: Caroline Gilchrist (s12)

Projects that are in the running for pop-up installations in summer 2024:

Clara Denham (s14), Leighton Larson (s17), John Davis (s19), Emma Browning (s15), Ella Seevers (s11), Caroline Gilchrist (s12)

The competition was reviewed by Shihomi Kuriyagawa and Emily Urquhart at the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department.

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Environmental Design 2024 Latin Honors Recipients

Anonymous — Wed, 08 May 2024 16:56:23 +0000

Environmental Design 2024 Latin Honors Recipients Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/08/2024 - 10:56

Each spring, a group of environmental design honors students defend their theses to their dedicated thesis committee. Afterward, the Honors Council meets and awards Latin honors at the levels of cum laude, magna cum laude or summa cum laude.

Projects worthy of the honors designation will be works of creative expression, including design, research, and theoretical work that demonstrates a high level of intellectual and creative ability and analytical skills. Completing an honors project allows students to investigate topics of interest, provides the opportunity to work closely with a faculty thesis chair and creates a culminating intellectual experience that produces both a meaningful project and an invaluable learning experience. The Honors project represents the climax of their college careers.

Congratulations to the following students graduating with Latin honors!

Abel Chamberlin, magna cum laude

Balancing Global Building Standards and Contextual Design: A Critical Regionalist Analysis of the WELL V2 Building Standards Impact on Design and Wellbeing

Sean Donovan, summa cum laude

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Grassland Restoration: Exploring best practices and interdisciplinary collaboration in the context of grassland restoration

Lakin Fain, summa cum laude

Reinforcing Appalachia

Nicole Tschan, summa cum laude

Briki: Re-Brick Your Dorm

Annie Geoghegan, summa cum laude

The Green Paradox: Gentrification & Greenness in the Mile High City

Congratulations to this year's Latin Honors recipients!

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For the win: A semester worth celebrating

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 18:23:46 +0000

For the win: A semester worth celebrating Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/19/2023 - 11:23

The Program in Environmental Design hosted its Open House exhibition on Dec. 15, 2023. The Open House is a building-wide exhibition of design and research produced by students and faculty during the fall semester. The event was established in 2018 to encourage the connection between students, their peers, alumni and friends, as well as the Boulder community.

Couldn’t make it this year? Watch the video reel above!

At the end of each fall semester, Environmental Design (ENVD) hosts a building-wide exhibition of design and research produced by students and faculty.

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Green is the New Asphalt: Landscape Architecture Students Redesign Green Schoolyards in Fall Studio

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 20:15:53 +0000

Green is the New Asphalt: Landscape Architecture Students Redesign Green Schoolyards in Fall Studio Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/15/2023 - 13:15

Sierra Brown

Sticky metal playgrounds and hot asphalt. Bare patches of dirt on browning soccer fields. Limited shade with no space for solitude and quiet. A small cluster of trees - sometimes. This is what tends to come to mind when we think about a typical schoolyard. Soon, however, six Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) schoolyards may receive a green makeover.

In the third iteration of the Green Schoolyards Studio, third-year landscape architecture students have spent the past semester analyzing schoolyards, collaborating with school communities, and crafting feasible plans that redesign schoolyards for learning, creativity, mental health, and interactions with nature.

We spoke with Assistant Teaching Professor Emily Greenwood about how her class approached this monumental task:

What’s the idea behind “Green Schoolyards”?
The inspiration came from work I did in my graduate program. A professor at CU Denver started this movement called Learning Landscapes which began with a few schoolyard designs and then became this 15-year-long project of redesigning all 52 Denver public schoolyards. I’m still really involved in the one that I designed from conception through construction. It planted a seed.

At that time, we realized that schoolyards weren’t just for play - they can also be for learning. Schoolyards are really just public open space that we’ve accidentally set aside. So, taking advantage of them more as this public amenity and not just for play between the hours of nine and three. That’s the Green Schoolyards movement.

What does the process look like for your students in the studio?
I tell them that this project is their world, their oyster. They do a pretty good precedent analysis at the beginning and they’re designing it according to how they compiled that initial information. Then all of the student groups do a community engagement activity with students and parents.

My students love this bit. Kids never get asked questions about what they want their spaces to look like. They can be super imaginative, and we can take those probably unrealistic ideas and make it into something that’s grounded. It’s totally the way to go. Because otherwise you go in and only respond to the site. And that’s such a small piece of the equation. There’s nothing cuter than asking kids what they want to see in their schoolyard.

My students also did research to understand the mental health piece of the Green Schoolyards movement and then reached out to the community to elicit their feedback as to their needs and constraints.

Can you tell us more about the mental health piece?
This is from more modern research - we’re realizing that schoolyards should be play, they should be learning, they should be a community amendment and they could have spaces for all different types of people. There should be quiet spaces, private spaces, thinking spaces. It’s trying to incorporate all of those principles into schoolyard design.

Are schools designed the same way for all age groups?
It’s very different. It’s interesting culturally what we think students need. There’s a ton of research on developmental stages, but it feels to me that we kind of abandon them around middle school. I always use the example of swinging – you can’t tell me that a seventh grader doesn’t want to swing. It’s this universal human, self-regulating, nourishing activity that we just kind of pull out from under them at this certain, pretty random age.

The elementary schools usually are rich with play equipment but not with other learning tools. Middle schools will just have tether ball courts and that’s it. And then there’s high schools – the one we’re working with has a great view of the Flatirons but every space around this school is just totally unprogrammed. The day we visited the sites I was wondering – are we actually making high schools harder for people who are already in the hardest years of their life? They are more easily bored and the mental health crisis in teens is horrifying. Maybe we could help with this.

To find out how redesigning schoolyards might be helping, we sat down with Lily Flanum, Slater Weil, and Danny Eisenstein, some of the students involved in the studio:

What are the main focus areas for your school’s design?
Lily: We’re mostly focused on designing outdoor classrooms for mental health and incorporating Native land acknowledgment. Rather than just making a plaque we wanted to create a design centered around traditional medicinal herbs for students to learn and interact with. We also put seating in there and color-coded the different plants around it.

How was the engagement with the students?
Lily: This is our first community project. I loved it. We had a day where we asked them what their dream playground would be. Would they want more social space, more learning space? Their brains work so differently, they are so imaginative. In design, we’re so used to these standards that we confine ourselves to - why would we ever think outside the box? This one girl wanted tanning chairs and a pool. Other kids just wanted shade and more nature. One kid wanted a horse track.

Danny: Generally, they wanted creative spaces and more terrain, more things to climb on. It’s very primal: they really just want to crawl around, dig in the dirt.

Do you think pieces of your project will be implemented?
Lily: Each school has different parameters. Our school will take our suggestions into account and budget for them. There's a lot of analysis that goes into it and you have to consider what’s actually important to the site and what the kids would actually use. A horse track would be awesome, but it’s also not the most realistic.

The horse track may not make the cut, but other aspects of the student designs will likely be incorporated in the future. Greenwood elaborated:

Are these schools going to be able to implement the plans once they are finished?
Some schools have enough money to execute phase one in the first year, other schools use the material to apply for grants. What happens to those drawings depends on the school’s needs. But they at least have well-designed documents that could be pushed forward through a professional to become something that’s executional. This is part of how I convince the schools to do it. You’re going to have hundreds of donated design hours. Even if it’s not perfect, in the end, you have this amazing tool that saves so much money.

Do you see growth in your students through this studio?
Yes, it’s super cool. We all have these preconceived notions of what schoolyards are, largely based on our experience in whatever schools we went to. So, it does feel like as we add more research and better understanding of the precedence, the students understand more of the intricacies of what those spaces could be. It’s beautiful to bring fresh minds into that conversation.

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EPOP Shop: Student designed, sustainably built

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 19:16:21 +0000

EPOP Shop: Student designed, sustainably built Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/21/2023 - 12:16

Allyson Maturey

On Saturday, Nov. 11, at the corner of Pearl Street and 13th Street, the laser cut sign read: Student Designed. Sustainably Built. Nestled in the wooden structure was a half-moon-shaped display of 12 products that students from the third-year intermediate environmental product design studio designed and produced less than three months before. Each one ready to make the perfect gift.

At the end of day two of the Firefly Handmade Holiday Market, nine of the 12 products sold out and the EPOP Shop made $7,500 in sales. The funds will be reinvested into the next EPOP studio.

The EPOP Shop made its first pop-up debut during the Environmental Design Open House in December 2019. Teaching Professor Marcel de Lange and Teaching Associate Professor Jeremy Ehly introduced the pilot studio with funds secured through an ENVD-sponsored SEED grant. The environmental product design studio has since been embedded into the ENVD core curriculum for students majoring in environmental product design.

ENVD Teaching Assistant Professor Jared Arp took the lead for the EPOP studio in the fall of 2021 and integrated the first in-person market outcome at a Firefly Handmade market in Denver. “The Firefly seemed like a good fit because of the handmade aesthetic,” Arp said. “It fits the professional level that we perform at, and their market happened to fall towards the end of our semester.” This fall, Arp is co-teaching the studio with Teaching Assistant Professor Melissa Felderman.

The outcome is more than just setting up shop and selling products at a market. Students learn from and are challenged by the design process and key parameters of sustainability and teamwork. To kick off the fall assignment, students were sent to Pearl Street gift shops to pick out gifts for five different people in their life. The goal: understanding what motivates gift selection and how it differs from other kinds of shopping.

From there, individual product pitches were made. “We asked each student to pitch a product, concept or idea and then students vote on their top 10 or 12, depending on the class size,” Felderman said. Groups of three are formed around each concept, where they collaborate to identify and refine the final form of a sustainably designed product along with quantity. “We think a lot about how much effort goes into reproducing each product. So, we’re encouraging our students to figure out [some kind of a] production or assembly line since there’s three students, how do you take advantage of having three sets of hands to make [products] in the most efficient way possible without sacrificing quality?”

Group work is the foundation and one of the key parameters of this capstone studio. “Maybe it’s teamwork that makes this studio so unique, probably amongst all of ENVD, I would say,” Arp said. Students perform the entire semester in the same team. “So, it’s a long-term team commitment, which you’ve worked in teams, teams are tough, right? Everybody's got their own agenda. Sometimes communication is tough. One person on the team gets what you said, and the other person misinterprets. We’ve got to get there together, and we’ve got to do it quickly. They’re learning team dynamics.”

From the student perspective, teamwork is an experience they do not take for granted. “I feel like working in a group can be kind of a pain,” Owen Forsythe, a third year EPOD student from Crested Butte, Colorado said. “But at least our experience has been nice. Each one of us has a specialized skill set that maybe the other person doesn’t have. So, we’ve been able to teach each other what to do through the design process.” Forsythe's team, which includes Mia Colletto, a third year EPOD student from San Francisco and Chloe Lapierre, a third year EPOD student from Cape Cod, developed Round 2, glassware inspired by the 14er mountains of Colorado made from recycled wine bottles.

While Arp and Felderman lead the course, the duo expressed that the students deserve all the credit. “It’s the students. They’re incredible. They’re going to design the store, they’re going to merchandise it, they’re going to build it, they’re doing everything we’re advising,” Arp said. “It’s something really beautiful to watch them work like that,” Felderman said.

Earlier this month, students from the third-year intermediate environmental product design studio set up the EPOP shop at the Firefly Handmade Holiday Market in Downtown Boulder.

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ENVD student contributes to Taos Pueblo community development project

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 21:03:47 +0000

ENVD student contributes to Taos Pueblo community development project Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/30/2023 - 15:03

Sierra Brown

Nestled in the valley beneath northern New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo range, amidst expansive high desert terrain scattered with juniper and sage brush, lies the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States: Taos Pueblo. This ancient village comprises a multi-storied residential complex with ceremonial kivas and multiple layers of interconnected individual homes. According to the Taos Pueblo website, the Taos people have preserved and revitalized the pueblo for more than a millenium using traditional materials and methods, including replastering with thick layers of the structure’s primary building component, adobe.

“Architecture isn’t just siding and wood, it can also be adobe,” Masani Salazar, a fourth-year architecture student, explained. “People forget that this building method is pretty much the most sustainable thing you can do for architecture.” Adobe, a combination of burnt-orange earth mixed with water and straw, is both energy efficient in its insulating properties and incredibly resilient to climate and time. “I’m really interested in looking at ancient architecture and how it still stands. In Taos Pueblo, the structures still hold and the adobe stays put.”

Salazar has lived in Colorado for most of her life. But as a tribally affiliated member of the Taos Pueblo people, she has deep connections to the community. “It’s a part of my culture and I practice their traditions. Even though I’m from Colorado, it’s home.”

Despite the village’s long-standing history and living culture, available and affordable housing has become a critical need for the people living in the vicinity of the Pueblo. The expansion of Taos, a nearby municipality, and the consequential impacts from regional tourism have put pressure on the community, forcing many to leave. Young people especially are struggling to find available housing in the community as it hasn’t seen new housing development in over 30 years.

In summer 2023, Salazar hoped to address this need.

Through an internship with Ferguson Pyatt Architects, a Boulder-based architectural firm, Salazar took a vital role in the firm’s long-term community development project with Taos Pueblo. The firm’s principals and owners, Janna Ferguson, Rob Pyatt (both ENVD alums) and Heather Kahn-Pyatt, see the firm as “the embodiment of the philosophy that ENVD teaches in terms of integrative design and interdisciplinary approaches to projects.”

“We’re both interested in architecture that is contextual,” Ferguson added. “The foundation of the work is place-based and informed by local context.”

In this case, the place is Taos Pueblo. Ferguson Pyatt first began work with the Taos Pueblo Housing Authority in 2017 when they were hired to develop a master plan for a 50-acre housing development project known as the “New House” neighborhood. The plans include four emergency housing areas and a 50-unit housing complex.

“Masani joined when the project had already been underway for a couple of years,” Pyatt explained. “But for us, it was really important to include Masani in all aspects of the project. This is her community. Her family is there. She is emotionally and intimately knowledgeable of the culture.”

Under Ferguson Pyatt’s mentorship, Salazar designed and constructed a three-bedroom floorplan prototype model at an 8-inch scale, mirroring the Taos Pueblo’s traditional style of architecture. “Native American typologies aren't really being talked about in architectural history at ENVD,” Masani acknowledged. “So, this experience was a way for me to understand more about what else the field has to offer other than European architecture.”

She hopes that by designing housing that is familiar and comfortable, built out of adobe or similar material and following traditional architectural styles, more people will choose to stay in the community.

Site work and construction has already begun and final design plans for the rest of the houses are expected to be finalized by the end of the year. Despite the project’s successes, however, it didn’t come without challenges. “There’s a historic imbalance of power,” Salazar commented. “Initially, it’s hard for my community to really trust outside agencies.” Masani explained that Ferguson Pyatt’s work, however, focuses on building long-term relationships and incorporating community input every step of the way.

“We have a big emphasis on community engagement and community-led design. It can be difficult, and it takes a lot of time, but I think the projects are better because of it,” Ferguson expressed. To the firm, this engagement is highly variable from project to project and looks different depending on the needs of the community: listening sessions with elders, design workshops for students or feedback sessions with invested community members.

According to Shawhin Roudbari, ENVD associate professor, this kind of engagement practice isn’t as common in the field of architecture as one might think. He noted that the Ferguson Pyatt approach is “profound in our discipline. In the research I’ve done, I haven’t seen people really succeed in managing a sustainable practice and doing it deeply. These deep relationships they have with partners has allowed them to do something that I haven’t seen other practices do.”

“They are helping our community modernize, but in a way that’s for the people while keeping it as traditional as possible,” Salazar agreed.

Salazar has found some unexpected fame as a result of her work. “My family has gotten more notoriety. The people at the community events tell my family that they’re excited that I’m pursuing this kind of work that’s helping them,” she said. When she presented her work to the Tribal Council and other community members, she nearly received a standing ovation. The governor of Taos Pueblo personally acknowledged her and her contributions and addressed the importance of supporting young professionals and tribal members like Salazar who can work in their community to support their families and relatives.

“It was inspiring especially for some of the young people that were there. One of our goals is trying to connect tribal youth in the communities that we are working with to higher education and the field of architecture, design and engineering,” Pyatt noted.

Salazar is currently studying abroad in Barcelona. For her, it’s an opportunity to get in touch with the other side of her heritage which has roots in Spain. “There’s this gap that I’m trying to fill, to learn a little bit more about my culture. I wanted to go to Spain to learn more about what the architecture is like but also seeing how the people are here. I’m really interested in learning cultural things about indigenous people, and I’ve been learning about the indigenous people here and what they value.”

She won’t be away from Ferguson Pyatt for too long, however. When she returns, she plans to assist the firm on a new school project in Colorado, redesign her parents’ house that burnt down in the Marshall fire, and, of course, continue her work at Taos Pueblo.

“To have her involved in the first new housing that is going to be built at Taos Pueblo in over 30 years is such a cool story.” Ferguson beamed. "It's historic.”

Under Ferguson Pyatt’s mentorship, fourth year architecture student Masani Salazar designed and constructed a three-bedroom floorplan prototype model at an 8-inch scale, mirroring the Taos Pueblo’s traditional style of architecture. She hopes that by designing housing that is familiar and comfortable, built out of adobe or similar material and following traditional architectural styles, more people will choose to stay in the community.

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Summer independent study redesigns central ENVD space

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 22:06:28 +0000

Summer independent study redesigns central ENVD space Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/28/2023 - 16:06

Sierra Brown

A central conference room in the Environmental Design building, typically referenced as ENVD 134A, has been reimagined, redesigned and repurposed. While it will still serve as a supplemental meeting space, its new main objective will be to safely and securely hold materials, not humans. “We have hundreds, maybe thousands of building samples, and they’re all spread out in offices, out in CINC, behind jammed doors,” Marcel de Lange, ENVD teaching professor explained. “We asked ourselves, what can we do with it?” For de Lange and Jared Arp, ENVD teaching assistant professor and co-lead on the project, the solution was simple: create a centralized and accessible materials library in an already centralized and accessible room.

The space will function less as a typical reference library and more as an experiential space. “It’s supposed to be exploratory,” Andrew Song, senior in product design commented. “It’s something we’ve been missing in this program. We don't often have access to physical examples of things we could use to build with.”

Such material examples include natural, metal and synthetic objects as well as building systems (such as small wall sections and joinery) so that students could visualize how these materials function in practice. The library will also contain a thorough reference section containing relevant design books and magazines, many of which were donated from local design firms. “All of our projects start with precedent research so this will be a nice area to do that,” Madison Svoboda, another senior in product design also working on the space said.

As part of an independent study course, the students working on the project have spent the summer retrofitting ENVD 134A: installing new carpet tiles to mitigate sound reflection, adding updated lighting systems and constructing floor-to-ceiling shelving units built to accommodate and showcase the variety of design materials. “We found a couple of ENVD students that wanted to take this on as an independent study because they felt like they were missing some of the hands-on design build type of experience,” de Lange explained. “Under our supervision, they conceived most of the things, got some critical feedback from us and now they’re putting it together.”

Much like the synergetic process behind the project itself, the finished library is meant to be a space for collaboration. With shelves set aside to highlight both student work and design displays, the hope is that the room will be fully accessible to faculty and students of all majors to share resources, access unique materials and find inspiration. “For the foreseeable future, it’s about going in and finding things that you didn’t even know existed,” Arp said.

Design Contributors

Faculty Leads: Marcel de Lange, Jared Arp

Independent Study Students: Colleen Lilley, Andrew Song, Madison Svoboda

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