Community Engagement

Creating shade: building sun-safe communities in Denver

Sierra Brown — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:33:57 +0000

Creating shade: building sun-safe communities in Denver Sierra Brown Tue, 12/17/2024 - 10:33

Sierra Brown

The allure of Denver's 300 days of sunshine is hard to resist. But this cherished sunny climate comes with a tradeoff: increased UV radiation levels in a city lacking robust shade design infrastructure.

According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, in the U.S., more people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year than all other cancers combined. In Colorado, it’s the sixth most diagnosed cancer in the state. And while city planners and public health organizations have worked to enhance human health initiatives through advancing neighborhood walkability and bikeability in urban spaces, sun safety considerations, which increase with outdoor activity, have often fallen short.

Last summer, the Community Engagement Design and Research Center (CEDaR) partnered with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to explore the connection between sun exposure, skin cancer and the built environment, and work towards building sun-safe communities in the Mile High City.

Assistant Teaching Professor and CEDaR Research Associate Sara Tabatabaie has been involved with this work for nearly ten years and first conducted shade audits for neighborhoods in Denver as a PhD student. “At that time, it was part of my dissertation and research,” she said. “We did it for the CDPHE, but it was a small version. They contacted us again a year and a half ago, and they asked whether we could do it for the whole city.”

The project team, which consisted of Tabatabaie, Associate Professor and CEDaR Co-Director Jota Samper and four ENVD student interns: Logan Shockey, Cameron Cooper, Carl Eberly and Theodore Johnson Mencimer, worked to develop a methodology to assess sun exposure levels across the city. This required completing extensive shade audits within neighborhoods that varied across socio-economic level and built environment amenities.

To complete the audits, the team surveyed public areas like sidewalks, trails and urban parks at different times of day. Audits specifically noted and mapped both walkability of the blocks as well as objects that cast shade, whether from a cluster of trees or from a built structure. They also noted the physical activity within each neighborhood to better understand how often people use outdoor, sun-exposed spaces.

The shade audits evolved into comprehensive shade models for the entire city. The team used ArcGIS to map shade from both trees and buildings, combining these into a shade factor for each neighborhood and block group. Through integrating shade, walkability scores and socio-economic status information, the team calculated the sun risk index for each neighborhood and block group within neighborhoods to help prioritize areas for shade improvement.

According to the resulting maps, neighborhoods with high physical activity coupled with insufficient shade structure, which heightened risk of UV exposure, fell mainly to marginalized communities. In many cases, these at-risk neighborhoods also had higher percentages of children, a group that is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of radiation.

“Maybe not surprising, but disheartening, is this idea that the poorest neighborhoods are the ones who need the most intervention in these areas,” Samper said. “It's the ones who actually need the most shade that get the most exposure.”

Currently, Denver does not have a shade auditing component embedded within its Health Impact Assessment, a process that helps identify built environment impacts on community health. The CEDaR team hopes that the results of this study can be a first step in conducting comprehensive health assessments across Denver. They also believe that the CDPHE can use this research and the team’s recommendations as a policy leverage to support existing urban forestry initiatives, enhance streetscaping guidelines and direct more funding to the neighborhoods that need it.

“We know that what we are doing has a positive impact for the city,” Tabatabaie said.

Samper and Tabatabaie also recognized the positive impact the project had on the team’s student interns. The students were given the opportunity to gain field experience, learn and apply GIS mapping, support data analysis, provide input into the final report’s design and create connections within a government entity. CEDaR hopes to hire more student interns in the future to continue the next phases of the project.

“This is just the first phase of the project, it was about assessing,” Samper said. “The others will be about changing policy. And in the future, it will be about developing prototypes, designing and building things. It’s the entire spectrum of environmental design experience.”

Sun Risk Index for neighborhoods in Denver. The circles represent the percentage of children in each neighborhood.

Shade Score for neighborhoods in Denver.

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Designing with history: students take on Rocky Mountain Land Library site

Sierra Brown — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 03:57:35 +0000

Designing with history: students take on Rocky Mountain Land Library site Sierra Brown Mon, 12/16/2024 - 20:57

Sierra Brown

Nestled among the willow-lined banks of the South Platte River, the Buffalo Peaks Ranch in Park County, Colorado has witnessed many chapters of human history.

Over the past few centuries, the land changed hands repeatedly from the traditional territories of indigenous communities to the invasion of miners and settlers; from an immigrant family’s homestead to a thriving livestock operation; from a bustling railroad hub to a stopover for a gang of stagecoach robbers.

Today, the ranch is relatively quiet—perfect, some might say, for a library.

Established as a non-profit in 1986, the Rocky Mountain Land Library (RMLL) is a network of land-study centers located along the banks of the South Platte River, from the headwaters of South Park to the metro-Denver plains. What began as a personal collection has expanded to a library of over fifty thousand volumes of literature from across the world. The curated collection includes everything from wildlife sketches to cowboy novels to western historical accounts, with a predominant focus on the natural history, landscape and communities of the Rocky Mountain region.

With the help of students from the intermediate architecture Rocky Mountain Land Library studio, taught and led by Teaching Professor Marianne Holbert, a portion of this extensive collection may find its home somewhere in the scattered and semi-structurally sound buildings and barns of the Buffalo Peaks Ranch.

The ranch, however, strives to be more than just a 9,200-foot-high library. According to its 2023 Master Plan, development on the site, which was leased to RMLL by the City of Aurora and Park County to preserve its historic integrity, aims to produce a residential library back home in Colorado, one that celebrates people, land and nature. A place where people could learn from both the books, and the surrounding lands.

This means providing ample housing for visiting artists, opening field sites for researchers, creating shared spaces for classes and community workshops and integrating multiple library nooks scattered throughout. To help restore existing buildings for adaptive reuse and expand facilities with respect to the natural landscape, RMLL leadership turned to consulting teams, including ENVD architecture students.

“It was so much different from any other project we've had,” Andy McMahon (ENVD’25) explained. “The site was massive, and it was very much historically rooted. You’d see a fence and they're like, ‘oh, that fence has been there a hundred years.’ It was pretty daunting.”

Out on the ranch, students engaged in extensive site analysis work, wandering the uneven trails, weaving in and out of corrals and taking in the expansive views of the Rockies. They noted environmental conditions and potential climate-related hazards, deepened their understanding of the land’s history, and identified the specific needs and potential of the site. The course culminated in proposals that reflected students’ interests and personal connections to the site.

Kinsey Anger (ENVD’25), another student from the course, took the opportunity to reimagine the cement horse corrals into a wellness retreat supplementing the library, complete with reading rooms and artistic programming.

“Some of the themes for my design were based in indigenous history. I looked at the Ute tribe that occupied the land first, so I used cultural ideas of circular systems in connection with the land and land as a medicine,” she said. “I programmed the horse barn to be a wellness cafe where they could use plants that have been historically prevalent on the site. A bear root latte for example.”

McMahon’s proposal took a more direct approach. His plan was focused around developing the lambing barn cluster into a co-working space and library expansion. He emphasized connecting themes of cross-pollination, community and land appreciation. “The landscape is so apparent there. Really connecting the building with the land in terms of views, capturing an indoor-outdoor feel, but also using natural materials,” he said. “I used stone and mass timber to make it feel like it was blended into the landscape.”

The students shared that retrofitting a remote, weather-impacted and mostly decrepit cluster of structures came with its own unique set of challenges. While the RMLL has invested more than $100,000 in stabilization and restoration of three existing buildings, the dream of a residential learning library has a long way to go.

“The site was pretty worn down. The lambing barn that I was working around, we couldn't even go in because it wasn't structurally stable. You're trying to place a building basically on a blank canvas,” McMahon said.

However, the challenges provided the future designers with practical experience, something that’s often hard to find within the confines of a classroom. They expressed how the complexities of the site encouraged them to think more holistically and intentionally about all aspects of their designs.

"It was kind of like a simulation into real life design,” Anger said. “I'm really glad for this trial run.”

While it’s unlikely that the Rocky Mountain Land Library will be able to implement the exact floor plans of the students’ designs at the Buffalo Peaks Ranch, the ideas and perspectives shared between the students and RMLL stakeholders marks an important step in shaping its next chapter.

Architecture students in the Rocky Mountain Land Library (RMLL) studio spent the semester developing design proposals for Buffalo Peaks Ranch in Park County, Colorado.

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Postdoctoral Fellow Sophie Weston Chien uses textiles to educate, share stories

Sierra Brown — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 20:36:49 +0000

Postdoctoral Fellow Sophie Weston Chien uses textiles to educate, share stories Sierra Brown Mon, 11/11/2024 - 13:36

Sierra Brown

For Sophie Weston Chien, textiles are more than fabric—they’re maps, site models and stories woven together. As ENVD’s first Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow, she is pioneering an innovative approach to design communication, one that connects community, ecology and history through the tactile art of tufted textiles.

“The project came from an acknowledgment that there are different ways to communicate with folks and build community around spatial problems or ideas,” Chien said. “Textiles are such an engaging and active way to learn about something through touching it.”

For the past four years, Chien has been using tufted textiles as a dynamic design and environmental communication tool. She’s applied fabric to maps to mimic natural systems and their interactions with the built environment, from expansive watersheds to mossy microclimates. Her textiles have also expanded into human communities, like in Boston where she with collaborator Amanda Ugorji created a large-scale textile series that maps the urban fabric and ecological resilience of Black neighborhoods.

And now, through her postdoctoral project, Making Homelands: Tufting San Lazaro Lifeways, Chien hopes to bring tufted textile story maps to the Front Range.

San Lazaro is a predominantly Latinx manufactured and mobile home community located in northeast ��«��Ƶ. By gathering oral histories through workshops and conversations with San Lazaro community members, the textiles will act as a visual record of the residents’ relationship to each other, their personal journeys and the changing ecology of their home.

“Some of the questions I've been asking throughout the process are how can the rugs themselves be a design tool? Can a textile be a site model? Can a city be a rug?” Chien said. “And now in my work with San Lazaro, I'm trying to figure out how the textiles can be a witness to things as well."

Receiving the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity for the 2024-2025 academic year provided Chien with the time and resources to carry out this research. The position, which provides fellows with protected time for scholarship and research in preparation for a tenure-track faculty position, is not only new for ENVD, but is also unique in the field of design academia.

“Design scholarship doesn't easily fit into academic structures,” she explained. “As designers, you're image makers, you're visualizers, you're thinking spatially. And so, for me as a postdoc, I'm really excited because it's given me the space to do the kind of research that I want to be doing, that I think designers should be doing.”

Chien’s design journey began at home, raised by an architect father and landscape architect mother. After completing three professional degrees in architecture, landscape architecture and planning, she developed a keen awareness of both the potential and limitations of design.

“I think there's a lot of people that come out of design school that want to do really impactful things that actually change the world. But if your client isn't a good client, your project is not going to be good,” she said.

Design projects can be significantly limited by the entities that fund the work, approve the design plans and have power over the outcome of the project. In her professional practice, this knowledge encouraged her to seek out clients aiming to grow the structural capacity of people and industry in order to build better spaces. She calls this "design-organizing."

“I started learning about organizing because I was trying to understand how to build power, be it financial, be it social, to actually get better clients,” she said. “That really gave me the ability to think about what it means to build movements alongside building physical spaces.”

In her current postdoc position, design-organizing is exemplified through building strong foundations with the communities she works with, such as the San Lazaro residents. Through forming deep connections with project partners, engaging with community members and collaborating with other CU researchers and experts, she hopes to be an engaged researcher and a responsible teacher.

“I do think there's an obligation from us as educators, as researchers, to think about the future of the profession and how to change it,” she said.

In Chien’s vision, perhaps the future of design is yet to be tufted.

As ENVD’s first Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow, Sophie Weston Chien is pioneering an innovative approach to design communication that connects community, ecology and history through the tactile art of tufted textiles.

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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 ��«��Ƶ 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 ��«��Ƶ 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

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 ��«��Ƶ Valley School District (BVSD) schools. In the spring and summer of 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 ��«��Ƶ 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. Visiting Researcher Maruf Mirakhmatov, a renowned Tajik artist and grandson of the artisan who helped build the Teahouse, returned to ��«��Ƶ 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 ��«��Ƶ’s Climate Initiatives Department, spoke about deconstruction work being done locally, including the recent deconstruction of a ��«��Ƶ 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.”

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Students propose design interventions for historical area in Syracuse, Sicily

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 19:58:58 +0000

Students propose design interventions for historical area in Syracuse, Sicily Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/24/2024 - 13:58

In the tenth iteration of the Rome Global Seminar, Environmental Design students embarked on a summer field course, exploring the rich culture and historic urban landscapes of both Rome and Syracuse, Italy. The immersive studio challenged students to examine how cultural, behavioral and environmental factors shape the built environment. Through lectures, studio exercises, sketching sessions and exchanges, participants gained hands-on experience in urban site analysis and design.

Design abroad offers an incredibly rich opportunity to reflect on cultural practices of both one’s home country and those visiting. The lens of one whose is not embedded in a culture of place can sometimes highlight or verbalize qualities that those who live there daily have become so accustomed to that they no longer see. New eyes or fresh eyes can often make acute observations that residents may have become veiled.

In summer 2024, the Urban Site Analysis and Design Global Seminar, taught by Teaching Professor Marianne Holbert focused its course on both Rome and Sicily.

In this studio, the new perspectives from the ��«��Ƶ’s Program in Environmental Design students are informing urban planning decisions in Ortigia Sicily.

The students began the course with an investigation of markets in Rome to better comprehend the cultural facets of market life in Italy. This thread of cultural exchange through market life carried from both Rome to Sicily. The students began with four weeks in Rome taking Layers of Rome, an architectural history walking course, gaining direct contact with built structures, urban infrastructures and monuments to learn more about the urban evolution of the city. Freehand sketching, drawing and urban analysis were integral to both the studio course and the layer course.

Students in Holbert’s global seminar began research on their project site in Syracuse, Sicily, which resulted in design proposals for the town of Ortigia. The proposals ranged in disciplines from urban design, planning, architecture, landscape architecture and environmental product design. The design proposals also highlighted elements that local architects are now in discussion with the local municipality for possible realization.

Location:
A small island called Ortigia in Italian off the coast of Syracuse in Sicily, Città Vecchia (Old City) of Syracuse. The island has a unique history with the passage between Greeks and was founded by the Corinthians between 734-733 BC. Its position on the Ionian Sea made it strategic for navigation and power. The island is surrounded by the Ionian Sea and its rocky cliffs and beaches.

There are two small bridges that provide access to the island. Upon arrival one is greeted with mayhem of tourist stations, bicycle tourist stations, a temple and the Historic Ortigia Street Market, the farmer’s market by the sea.

The Ancient Ortigia Market Structure:
The Ancient Market Building is a historical structure dating from the 1890s and designed to be the market structure. It was designed by Edoardo Troja, an engineer of the Municipal Technical Office. The internal rectangular courtyard has an ornamental fountain in the middle and a portico with 24 arches surrounded by shops. In 2000, the structure was renovated for historical re-use.

Temple of Apollo:
The building of the historic market structure is situated across from the ancient Greek Doric structure from 6th Century B.C., the Temple of Apollo, constructed as a prototype for the Parthenon in Greece.

Proposal Scope(s):
Project proposals range in size and scope with approaches varying from urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture and/or environmental product design interventions. Proposals could utilize the Antico Mercato building as an adaptive re-use structure for covered market space, or other proposed urban enhancement programs, such as new urban space, landscape, park, enhance circulation and access of the existing market, and engage the street market and connection to the Temple of Apollo. Student designs proposals had the capacity to remove certain existing elements (railings, walls, urban infrastructure etc…) and add to the existing infrastructure to enhance the area. Individuals selected the projects' function and programs, as guided by the site analysis and research. The design project invited cultural sensitivity, imagination and intellect to inform and enhance the area.

The student design interventions could relate to adaptive re-use of the Ortigia market, a covered market at the end of the nineteenth century, engage an active street market or nearby sea edge. The Ortigia market borders to the east of the archaeological area of the Greek-archaic temple dedicated to Apollo and near the perimeter of the island and the Ionian Sea. The building is currently minimally used by the local community. The market structure contains a large courtyard characterized by a four-sided portico with arches on columns and a basement with a cryptoportico.

“The architects who reviewed the students' work thought it was incredibly thoughtful. The drawings could really speak.” - Teaching Professor Marianne Holbert

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The nest of innovation: a bird-inspired summer at the CLC

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 19:25:39 +0000

The nest of innovation: a bird-inspired summer at the CLC Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/27/2024 - 13:25

Sierra Brown

The Creative Labs Center (CLC), one of ENVD’s specialized workshops and studio spaces, has been a hub of activity, hosting thousands of students and countless projects. This summer, however, the CLC welcomed a unique group of residents — a flock of birds.

With wings crafted from painted cardboard, feathers cut from CNC machines and large beaked masks made from papier-mâché, the birds paraded through the Center for Innovation and Creativity (CINC) and soared over the rolling hills of Chatauqua Park. These bird costumes were the culmination of an immersive art-science program, brought to life by a multidisciplinary team of CU faculty, undergraduate mentors and a group of high-school-aged youth who made the CLC their temporary creative nest this summer.

Side by Side’s Interspecies Fellowship Program, an initiative funded by a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation, aims to increase participation and a sense of belonging in STEM for historically marginalized young women and gender expansive youth through immersive art-science learning experiences. The projects, which combine biological observation and research with performance and arts, are focused on shifting the ways participants think about and interact with the natural world.

“Side by Side looks at disrupting the hierarchical relationship of humans over nature,” Side by Side Executive Director Chelsea Hackett noted. “It's literally putting us side by side.”

In this case, paid high-school aged fellows were tasked with placing themselves side by side with birds. “When we think about climate change and we think about the shifts that need to happen for us to have a more sustainable relationship with the wider environment, birds are very acceptable,” Hackett explained. “They're everywhere. Migratory birds tell us very quickly about the changes in our environment.”

CU faculty, including ENVD Associate Professor Shawhin Roudbari, Professor Beth Osnes from the Department of Theater and Dance and Professor Rebecca Safran from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, provided support throughout much of the program. Safran’s lab, which studies barn swallow behavior, specifically helped the group to focus on the co-evolution of humans and barn swallows.

“Barn swallows are the only birds that exclusively nest on human-made structures, which I thought was super interesting to relate to architecture,” Maya Handelman, ENVD ‘25, noted. Handelman, along with six other undergraduate students, supported the young participants as near-peer mentors throughout the summer. “We were in the CINC for a portion of each day, and I got to show a lot of students about some steps of the design process,” Handelman said.

The design process included laser cutting feathers out of recycled yard signs, constructing giant papier-mâché bird masks resembling a species of the fellows’ choice, visiting a thrift store to gather clothing and materials and designing the interior and exterior of small birdhouses. While Side by Side has piloted this program in the past, this summer was the first year that it included members of the ENVD community and, as a result, the first year that it became such a materials-focused project.

"We got to see how they repurpose a ton of materials. The students are so creative, they all have such a sense of style,” Handelman remembers. “Letting students have creative freedom also lets them have more ownership over the project and they get to feel a lot of internal pride as well, which was super important.”

Integral to Side by Side is the concept of centering youth as knowledge holders, a practice that Handelman and Hackett note is often overlooked in traditional educational models. The initiative also seeks to integrate biological observation with artistic themes by encouraging fellows to value all their senses and explore joy and creativity, rather than focusing solely on data collection.

“I think particularly within academic institutions, there has been a history of overvaluing quantitative information,” Hackett explained. “The goal of this project is not to say the data and the information isn't important — because it is, and it deeply informs the work that we're doing. But it's really like, how do we take Becca and her lab's deep understanding they've built of the history of barn swallows through a biological lens and use that to think about our own shared relationship with birds and our own shared vision of the future?”

From Handelman’s personal experience, engaging in science through hands-on learning is what ultimately led her to pursue environmental design. She hopes that through this project, she can provide positive art-science experiences for her mentees, especially at a critical point in their lives. “ENVD is really the overlap of arts and science,” she said. “I'm so used to thinking in that way and I think it’s such a useful skill to have.”

Hackett agrees. She views the mentorship between the undergrads like Handelman and the young fellows as key to helping them develop and harness these skills. “We've seen that there's something really powerful about near peer mentorship,” she explained. “Our undergrads working with our high schoolers is really, really effective at expanding their understanding of what type of STEM fields or beyond STEM fields they could do climate work in.”

Photo Credit:

Lianna Nixon

Undergraduate Interns:

Maya Handleman (EnvDes’25)
Ayush Ghosh (Phys, Thtr’25)
Vianney Aguilar (MThtr’26)
Manogya Thapa (MCDBio’27)
Franco Devecchi (Psych’26)
Nevaeh Sauceda (AstroPhys’27)
Emilia Wencel (Engl’27)

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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 ��«��Ƶ 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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Faculty visit with Denver Botanic Gardens

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 16:50:55 +0000

Faculty visit with Denver Botanic Gardens Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/20/2023 - 09:50

On November 7, ENVD faculty visited the Denver Botanic Gardens with the goal to reinvigorate the CU-DBG connection and to introduce new faculty and leadership. There was inspirational discussion around the creation of new projects and collaborations that could result in new studio topics and offerings for ENVD students. Faculty in attendance also toured the Denver Botanic Gardens led by CEO Brian Vogt, which underscored the importance of mutual efforts to demonstrate new visions of sustainability and regenerative landscapes for the betterment of humanity.

ENVD faculty visited the Denver Botanic Gardens with the goal to reinvigorate the CU-DBG connection and to introduce new faculty and leadership.

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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 ��«��Ƶ-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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