Meet our Faculty

TEDxCU: How informal settlements (slums) will reshape the world

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 19:58:37 +0000

TEDxCU: How informal settlements (slums) will reshape the world Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/30/2020 - 13:58

[video:https://youtu.be/FGc1vduZ_6E]

Environmental Design Assistant Professor Jota Samper recently gave a talk on TEDxCU. The talk focuses on Professor Samper's collaborations with students and communities alongside his research on informal Settlements. Informal settlements (what some call slums) are the most common form of urbanization on the planet, accounting for one-third of the total urban form. It is expected that by the mid-twenty-first-century, up to three billion people will live in these urban environments. However, we lack a consistent mapping method to pinpoint where that informality is located or how it expands.

Samper explores the implications of that growth in the atlas of informality and how by visualizing informal communities, we can be made aware of innovations by these communities that can save the planet, TED selected this talk to be part of the TEDx library on TED.com.

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ENVD Professor Showcased in Colorado State University Exhibit

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 22:52:49 +0000

ENVD Professor Showcased in Colorado State University Exhibit Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/10/2019 - 16:52

On April 7, 2019, Environmental Design Professor Ping Xu was honored and featured in the Portraits of Inclusion exhibit at Colorado State University. The Exhibition was a first-of-its-kind event dedicated to showcasing women who have made significant contributions and achievements in Colorado's horticulture and landscape architecture profession. Xu was invited to speak at the event along with a panel of five other women who have also been given this honor.

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ENVD Assistant Professor Receives Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2019 Case Study Award

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 22:33:30 +0000

ENVD Assistant Professor Receives Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2019 Case Study Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/10/2019 - 16:33

Environmental Design Assistant Professor Danielle Rivera has been announced as one of the recipients of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2019 Case Study Awards, for her topic Urban Informality & Disaster Response in South Texas Colonias. Rivera is one of 10 recipients, each of whom was awarded $2,000. Learn more about the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and view all 10 recipients.

Environmental Design Assistant Professor Danielle Rivera has been announced as one of the recipients of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 2019 Case Study Awards.

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Five Questions with Senior Instructor Jade Polizzi

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 21:36:06 +0000

Five Questions with Senior Instructor Jade Polizzi Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/17/2018 - 15:36

ENVD sophomore Aubrey Prestwich sat down with Senior Instructor Jade Polizzi to get the inside scoop with five questions from the Environmental Design student body.

What makes the ENVD community more unique than other design schools?

I was actually a student here in the 1990s and in 2002 I started teaching at ENVD. I don’t have experience teaching in other design schools, however, when I travel I make a point of visiting design schools and taking tours. I’ve probably toured 30 different design schools and programs. Something I really love about ENVD is that it’s a small program at a large university, everyone knows each other and takes classes with each other. I love how students support each other and how the faculty and advising team supports the students. I feel that we’re really good at helping our students succeed. And, compared to other universities, our work is competitive.

What have you learned while being a college instructor that you didn’t expect to?

I love being surrounded by young people. I am an optimistic person in general, but I think being surrounded by our young optimistic students is really inspiring. What I didn’t expect when I began teaching, was how I would get so attached to each student’s process. I get emotionally attached to their work and I want each one of them to succeed. In a pin-up or a review, students want to make sure that what they are presenting represents the amount of time and effort they put in, but I’m sitting in the back thinking “don’t forget to mention this influence” or “make sure you point to that drawing.” I’m just as nervous as you are.

Other than that, I enjoy watching a student’s progress through life. Even if they don’t continue on the formal design path, I love hearing about former student’s families and life experiences. A couple of my former students are now teaching at other universities, and it’s great to get questions and emails from them. I think with social media its really easy to stay connected and I love that.

What is your favorite class to teach?

I enjoy all of my classes, but my favorite format is the design-build classes. First-year classes are fun because you get to see such great progress from beginning to end and the students know how much knowledge they’ve gained in drafting, modeling and computer skills. Upper-level students have such amazing knowledge and it’s fun to see them take on bigger challenges. But, the design-build classes are so much fun, especially when we go down to New Mexico, and live together for three weeks on-site. We camp together and eat all our meals together. We get to really problem solve together. The projects are so unique and I don’t always necessarily know the best solution, but we’re all working together to make something great. Another benefit is that I get to see who the students really are on the trip. I try not to stereotype my students, but it is easy to think about a student as the one who produces great work or the one who is very intellectual. That all gets stripped away when we spend so much time together and I get to learn a lot about them as people outside of the classroom.

What has been your favorite project to work on so far?

I couldn’t pick a design-build because that wouldn’t be fair, each project is unique and has its successes and challenges. I’d have to say that I really like the second-year studio abstraction project. Students are really happy with their work on the project and it’s challenging. They pour so much of themselves into this project and even though it is typically outside of their standard comfort zone the final output is frame-worthy.

How has travel changed or impacted your perspective on design?

One of the best things you can do as a designer is travel, because the more you see, the more you can draw from when you are designing. Last year I spent 11 months in 18 countries and we visited 121 different museums, cathedrals and monuments, and those just the ones we had to pay for, not the ones we popped our head in or visited from the outside. It’s great to see work that you’ve spent hours studying in books and journals in the flesh and I’m really excited about what I am bringing back from this experience.

Before the trip, I considered myself an environmentalist, but after seeing how many people live on the planet I would say I care about our resources even more. Travel has really shifted my paradigm of what’s important. Looking at the historic structures in Europe and how these spaces are thousands of years old has really made me wonder how we can build more permanently and make our buildings more adaptable for the future. I want people to be inspired to produce things with a high level of craft and construct from great material. Things are so cheap now and we are losing the art of craftsmanship and the desire for permanence.

Describe your teaching philosophy.

I want to know what makes students excited about a project and allow them to design based on what they like. What engages a student? A thought, a material, a form. It could be just one detail or a technique but I want our students to get excited about their work. I like to give the students the freedom to explore but with guidance and structure. Projects that build on each other are the most successful I’ve taught. It’s fantastic to see how a project progresses from start to finish when there are small attainable steps involved.

ENVD sophomore Aubrey Prestwich sat down with Senior Instructor Jade Polizzi to get the inside scoop with five questions from the Environmental Design student body.

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Colloquium Series Q&A with Georgia Lindsay

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 17:00:36 +0000

Colloquium Series Q&A with Georgia Lindsay Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/12/2018 - 11:00

Environmental Design sat down with Senior Instructor Georgia Lindsay for a Q&A before her Research Colloquium presentation Friday, September 14.

Tell me about yourself.

I did my undergraduate here at the ��񱦵�. I was an art and psychology double major, and people used to always ask me if I was going into art therapy with these two majors, but it was really the effects of the arts that interested me the most. For example, what does the “stuff” we make mean to the world and not necessarily just to the artist?

Later on, I worked for a non-profit arts organization and decided to get my master’s degree from the University of North Carolina in Liberal Arts. It was sort of a choose-your-own-adventure program, so I focused on a photographic essay. Again, I chose not to study the effect of making a photographic essay, but instead studied other photographic memoirs and how people used them; and what was the effect this had on the world.

I was also teaching high school at the time and decided that I liked teaching, but that I also enjoyed research, especially the reading of theory and thinking about ideas. So, I started looking around for graduate schools, because while there are lots of professions that tie those two things together, the main one that appealed to me is “college professor.”

I got into graduate school at Berkeley, and I decided to study architecture while keeping in mind that it is an art. I was most curious about iconic buildings, because they are kind of like sculptures out in the world, and I just assumed that architects would care about the effects of their sculptures. I

What brought you to ENVD?

The really pragmatic reason is that I needed a site for my field research, and had asked a few art museums with iconic architecture…and the Denver Art Museum said yes. It was a great move for me because I had always liked Colorado and was happy to get back here.

While I was here doing fieldwork, I met a few people from ��񱦵� and it just so happened that ENVD needed a lecturer for 1052. They haven’t been able to get rid of me since!

The reason I love ENVD is that my work sits in between fields. What I do is look at the city-wide effect of architecture–some aspects of my research include understanding how architectural objects fit in a city, what they do for cities, both at the visual city-scape level, while also thinking about branding, iconography and marketing for cities externally, but also how we as citizens see ourselves in cities. So, I tend to draw on the fields of geography, planning, architecture and a little bit of landscape architecture. An interdisciplinary program like environmental design just fits better, because I constantly move across different disciplines.

Tell me about your research interests and why you’re passionate about the topic.

My research interests are in iconic architecture, also known as “starchitecture:” the pretty, shiny objects that go in our landscapes and cityscapes. That’s where I began thinking about what does iconic architecture do for us, what do they communicate and what values are they communicating? I think about architecture as a form of communication, especially when it’s an iconic architecture pushing the norm, and trying to be cutting edge. It makes you wonder, “what are they trying to say?”

So, I started with art museums and I’ve been expanding that to include other cultural buildings. It began with looking at the communication in terms of aesthetic values and it’s expanded into what are they communicating in terms of social value, and specifically looking at sustainability in green building and infrastructure.

I’m passionate about my topic for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think it’s really important. Fundamentally, my work is about humanizing architecture, and taking built objects–which tend to be (at least in architecture history) object-oriented—but thinking about what they mean to people, and really understanding the human perspective, which is often called the user perspective.

Asking questions like, what do buildings do for us as humans, as a group, smaller sub-groups or individuals? I think that is really important because so often the majority of the people don’t have a voice in what goes into building iconic architecture because the buildings are expensive. It’s more about what does the client want and how much money can they throw at this?

I feel that sometimes the voice and the perspective of people, who didn’t give five million dollars to get their name on the building, is lost. I think it’s important to speak up for them and ask what are the effects of these buildings beyond just having another “cool” thing dotting our skyline?

What kind of findings has intrigued you so far?

While studying a building in Berkeley, there was one finding that really opened up a new aspect in my research. It was a LEED Platinum building and we found that passersby would rate it more highly visually, that is, they would say they like the way it looked if they were told ahead of time that it was LEED Platinum.

This little tiny finding has intrigued me so much that I’ve pursued a whole line of research on it. People care about sustainability, but they don’t necessarily know about it, so how can buildings communicate values of sustainability better. What I’m finding is that architects are not very good at communicating the goals of the building, and right now sustainability is very confusing for the general public. I feel it’s a missed opportunity for changing the conversation about values. We’re letting LEED do it instead of design do it.

What is your favorite thing about your job?

I really like that moment where something suddenly clicks and things that didn’t seem to fit together suddenly fit together, whether it’s for myself during research and I have the moment, or when I can help a student get to that moment through teaching; The light bulb flashes. I love that moment and I get to have it both in my research and as a teacher.

What do you find challenging about researching or teaching?

I would say the most challenging thing is all the administrative “stuff.”

How do you like to spend your free time?

I like mountain biking and yoga. I played roller derby for a long time but had to stop since it took too much time, but I still roller skate on the paths. I really like cooking, baking and spending time with friends. Also, I love brunch!

What’s the most helpful piece of advice you’ve received when you were figuring what you wanted to do?

There is no right answer. There’s just lots of answers and you just get to pick one. So, it’s okay to chill out a little bit. Know that you can always change later.

Who has influenced you the most as a student and as a researcher?

As an undergraduate student at ��񱦵�, I was in a program called the INVST Community Leadership Program. At the time, I had a graduate TA whose name was Beth Krensky, and she was encouraging, supportive and thoughtful. She also did really interesting research. But, she was just so open and transparent about her life, and always very professional.

As a researcher, my entire dissertation committee was hugely influential. I still refer to the work they gave me.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

When I grow up, I would really like to sail around the world, be a contestant on the Great British Baking Show, win and be a star baker for one week. Also, I think I could actually be really good at being a sofa Netflix tester.

What’s your favorite thing to bake?

I really like chocolate chip cookies, because my husband also likes chocolate chip cookies so I know I have an appreciative audience, and I won’t have to eat them alone. For I while I got into a sourdough bread kick. Bread and desserts are just really fun to make. Pies and cakes are next in line after chocolate chip cookies.

What was it like to have a book published?

The day they gave me the cover, I printed it out and posted it on my whiteboard because I was like “wow, I did this thing! Look at that cover, it has my name on it!” And, I keep a copy of it in my office, mostly just to remind myself that it’s real. It was very exciting to see the culmination of multiple years of work exist in reality, not just in my head.

What authors and books have influenced you the most?

I love reading novels! But, if we’re talking professionally, I really like Carol Duncan’s Civilizing Rituals. She’s an art historian and the book is really thin with pictures all throughout it. She discusses how art is displayed, so it’s not about the architecture necessarily, but it’s readable, understandable and she’s very clear in her writing. She doesn’t try to make ideas complicated, even when they are complex. I appreciate the combination of pictures with purposeful writing, which gets to the point and moves on. That has influenced both my teaching and my writing.

Victoria Newhouse also does similar things. She brings together both visual and textual information in a nicely designed book. She breaks things into categories, which really helps us think through what things mean and do.

What does Environmental Design mean to you?

The way it has been used is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of design fields usually spanning from architecture through landscape architecture and urban design and then also includes planning but doesn’t necessarily. That’s basically the right definition, but I also think there’s potentially a more interesting way to think about it. For example, if you’re embracing the term environmental design, instead of one specific discipline, it’s really about the interstitial spaces between the disciplines and how what is going on that isn’t strictly one thing or the other. Rather, it’s how do these things bleed together and inform each other to fill the gaps between the official disciplines.

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Designing for Life on Mars and Saving Honeybees on Earth

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 20:48:00 +0000

Designing for Life on Mars and Saving Honeybees on Earth Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/20/2018 - 14:48

Allyson Maturey

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to live on Mars? This hypothetical idea is coming to life in an ENVD senior-level studio, taught by Instructor Kimberly Drennan.

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