Q&A

AJ Newlin, Architecture

Anonymous — Wed, 03 May 2023 18:30:00 +0000

AJ Newlin, Architecture Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/03/2023 - 12:30

Where are you from?

I am from Fort Collins, Colorado, which is about an hour away from Boulder.

What inspired your decision to come to Environmental Design at ��?

I was very interested in the interdisciplinary nature of ENVD even though I already knew I wanted to go into architecture. I was able to visit Boulder in the spring of my senior year, and even during the pandemic I knew I was in the right place.

Did you know right away that you wanted to major in architecture? How/when did you know?

I only really discovered my love for architecture during my last few years of high school, but looking back, it has always been there. The first realization was when I took a construction class in high school and built a house. It was the first time I had truly understood a process start-to-finish. Seeing the house go from nothing to something tangible gave me a huge sense of accomplishment. I was hooked.

Do you have a favorite project that you're currently working on/have worked on in the past?

I think the 8-week architecture studio’s Athenaeum project has been my favorite so far. I often revisit and edit it even though the course ended. I learned a lot about balancing concept with practicality and it was my first real attempt at using design software in my work.

What has the program taught you about yourself as you’ve taken on your educational career?

I learned how to adapt to new challenges and deadlines that I have never faced in the past. ENVD has a lot of resources that are there to help me.

What would you like to do upon graduating from Environmental Design?

I know that there are a lot of possibilities, so I am trying to keep my options open right now. I do know that I want to go to grad school after I graduate and I want to work somewhere that allows me to travel a lot while my career is starting out.

What tips or advice would you give to future design students?

It’s very easy to compare yourself and your work to others, especially in a program like design, where our work is so subjective. Be confident in who you are and what you bring to the table, because others see a lot of value in your opinions and your work even if it doesn’t look like theirs. How boring would design be if everything looked the same?

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Ainsley Watkins

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 17:23:52 +0000

Ainsley Watkins Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/19/2023 - 11:23

What year are you?
Senior

Where are you from?
Saint Louis, Missouri

What inspired your decision to come to Environmental Design at ��?
My woodworking education throughout high school led me to seek out a program in which my desire to make things with my hands would be met and challenged.

Did you know right away that you wanted to major in product design? How/when did you know?
I felt pretty certain that I was drawn to product design within my first few weeks at ENVD but I didn’t know for sure until I had to make the choice to specialize in EPOD my sophomore year. I knew it was the right choice for me when it came down to what sort of work I wanted to be doing during my time in the program. Hands-on problem solving and material studies appealed to me and solidified that choice.

What has the program taught you about yourself as you’ve taken on your educational career?
ENVD has taught me so much about the ways I work best. Pen to paper sketching and tangible, hands-on prototyping hugely outweigh digital means of illustration and development. I have also been asked to do a lot of reflection around my identity and values as a designer which translates so heavily into the lifelong practice of being a human.

What would you like to do upon graduating from Environmental Design?
Smile, share some hugs and kisses, maybe move back to that mountain in New Mexico.

What tips or advice would you give to future design students?
You are not your best ideas nor are you your worst ones, your identity lies in your values and passions and how you choose to answer them

For Ainsley Watkins the hands-on problem solving and material studies was appealing and helped solidify her choice in product design.

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Andrew Song

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 17:17:43 +0000

Andrew Song Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/19/2023 - 11:17

What year are you?
Junior

Where are you from?  
Aurora, Colorado

What inspired your decision to come to Environmental Design at ��?  
I have always loved creating. Whether it be art, music, design, etc the creative process has always been a part of my life. I love being in a creatively enriched environment and it is amazing to see how uniquely different all our creations are.

Did you know right away that you wanted to major in product design? How/when did you know?  
I had a hard time choosing which discipline I wanted to major in, but as I experienced more of the design process I figured out that I prefer working on fast paced and tangible projects. After making my first lamp in 1110 [fundamentals of product design], I felt empowered to create anything and that feeling fuels me to continue creating.

What has the program taught you about yourself as you’ve taken on your educational career? 
EPOD has shown me how capable I really am. Everyday I am creating new things that I didn’t think I could make. I am constantly pushing my boundaries, and the program has shown me just how quickly we can grow our skills and knowledge.

What would you like to do upon graduating from Environmental Design?  
I would like to gain more experience and knowledge by working in industries that I am passionate about, eventually I would love to use those experiences in order to create my own business that is a combination of my interests and passions.

What tips or advice would you give to future design students?  
CREATE MORE. The more you do the less you wait.

Andrew Song has always loved creating and loves being in a creatively enriched environment.

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Nate Kingdom

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 21:54:12 +0000

Nate Kingdom Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/17/2023 - 15:54

Where are you from?  
Denver, Colorado

What inspired your decision to come to Environmental Design at ��? 
When I came to college, I knew I wanted to be creative and constructive. At first, I was set on being a sculptor, but then I realized that I wanted to create for people.

Did you know right away that you wanted to major in product design? How/when did you know? 
I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. I was back and forth between architecture and product design. But, after taking the 1110 studio, I knew EPOD was right for me.

What has the program taught you about yourself as you’ve taken on your educational career?
This program has taught me how to present who I am in professional environments and how to defend myself and my work. It has also helped show me my place in the world.

What would you like to do upon graduating from Environmental Design?
When I graduate from ENVD I hope to leave the United States and start designing for the world. Products that can help everyone and be used all over the world.

What tips or advice would you give to future design students?
Always keep working hard, have a positive mind set, and keep your eyes open. It's a beautiful program and so much to learn from it.

Nate Kingdom, a product design major from Denver, hopes to design products that can help everyone and be used all over the world.

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Liana Bradley

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 21:31:22 +0000

Liana Bradley Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/17/2023 - 15:31

Where are you from?
Durham, North Carolina

What inspired your decision to come to Environmental Design at ��?
I was originally an environmental studies major in 2020. After my first semester I found myself bored with the subject. I found the most joy in my 3D art class and I was constantly making art in my dorm. Coming into college I suspected I would change majors and after my first semester I discovered ENVD. I could design and fabricate as a major instead of on the side in my dorm.

Did you know right away that you wanted to major in product design? How/when did you know?
After my initial intro studios I knew that I wanted to specialize in product design. I was immediately drawn to the human interaction between people and their cherished possessions. I love seeing the relationship of people to products and what makes them loved or hated. I felt that this deeply personal connection to design was the strongest in EPOD and that’s why I picked it.

What has the program taught you about yourself as you’ve taken on your educational career?
ENVD has taught me that finding a major that I am passionate about was more important than sticking with the one I was in because it was easier to stay than transfer. ENVD has made me understand my values as a person and discover how I can use my skills to contribute to a better world.

What would you like to do upon graduating from Environmental Design?
I am unsure of what I would like to do after I graduate. I think that ENVD has given me great opportunities to look at a wide range of options for opportunities I can take after graduation.

What tips or advice would you give to future design students?
I would say that you should use the full extent of the ENVD resources from the get go. Places like the DMC photo booth, and the CINC are really cool and exciting resources that are great to practice hands-on work. I wish I had practiced taking photos for a portfolio or getting familiar with the DMC resources sooner.

Meet Liana Bradley, a product design major from Durham, North Carolina. Bradley loves seeing the relationship of people to products and what makes them loved or hated.

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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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Nicholas DeFaria

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:08:23 +0000

Nicholas DeFaria Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/22/2018 - 12:08

Nicholas is from San Diego, California. He's a full-time student and spends his weekends with the Air National Guard. One thing he likes most about ENVD is the opportunity to make connections with professionals.

Where are you from?
I’m from San Diego, California

Why did you choose to come to ��?
The reason I chose to come to �� was that I didn’t know anyone from Colorado. Everyone has their own time frames in life and I believe that at a certain age you realize what you really want to do. You understand that even though you have a circle of great friends, you need to be surrounded by the people that are pushing you to be better or you need to remove yourself from everything that is distracting you from what you love and what you’re passionate about. You need to dive in head first, take a leap of faith and see if it works.

So, I moved from California to Colorado. I didn’t have a place to live at the time, so I lived in my Uhaul for a few days. I applied for school and I got accepted, found a place to live, got a job, joined the military and made it work and now it’s three and half years later.

What drew you to the Program in Environmental Design?
I did some research on architecture because it was kind of my passion and I didn’t know where I wanted to go at first. I understood that CU Denver had a program but it was more of an MA instead of a BA, so I thought “OK! I can’t do that, so where can I go?”

So, I started looking around at Front Range Community College and ��. At the time, I had visited �� and seen a lot of upper division student work. I got to meet a few faculty members and sit in on a few lectures. It just seemed really interesting, and the experience really drove me to understand that there are two spectrums of theory and form and ENVD was a mix of both.

What year of study are you in?
I’m in my third year and I’m in my praxis semester, which I’m really excited about. I’m specializing in landscape architecture, but I’m taking an architecture praxis, because the teacher, Marcel de Lange, is teaching us the business side of design. I want to be well-rounded on the design side, but also know how to order parts, materials and oversee general construction.

What is a Praxis? A praxis is a way to experience what it’s actually like to be a professional in design. By doing a praxis semester you get to dabble and understand what it’s like to work on a project at a professional level.

It’s kind of a small mockup. You have a smaller, more limited time-frame but I feel that can be a positive and negative. Having a smaller time-frame allows you to work better as a team because people separate the jobs out, just like it would happen in a firm. Not everybody is going to be good at drafting, not everybody is going to be good at rendering; so it allows us to take on roles based on our skills. Each praxis class becomes its own tiny firm, because we’re working with ourselves, with our principals being our professors and people taking on specific roles as if they were professionals.

What do you like most about this major?
What I enjoy most, is the opportunity to make connections with professionals, especially my professors, because in the end I believe the more you have invested in someone, the more you’re going to give them. So, the more connected I am with my professors the more excited I am about meeting their expectations. They appreciate that I put a massive number of hours into my work. And, it feels great to have the opportunity to see my final work surprise them.

How do you stay involved on campus?
I’m going on my second semester of peer mentoring. It’s allowed me to understand what I lacked as a freshman and what I wanted to see from upperclassmen. I also work in the Digital Media Center, where I help with printing, 3D printing and Adobe software. I troubleshoot most of our digital platforms and assist students with any questions they have. I also get to advance my own skills along the way, because I have to learn the programs to be able to help others.

What do you like to do in your spare time, when you’re not on campus or in classes?
Travel! I'm in the military, so I get deployed and travel the world, kind of taking the opportunity to work hard and play hard. I believe that as long as I get good grades every year I should definitely reward myself, and I believe that the best way to reward yourself is by creating experiences, and not buying things. By getting a stamp on my passport I get to immerse myself in other cultures and other people’s way of life and, especially in our degree, I'm able to see different architecture from different countries. It’s kind of my go-to if I have the opportunity and money. I’d rather buy a plane ticket, leave for a week and come back with a great story to tell.

What branch of the military are you in?
I’m in the Air Force and I’m in the Air National Guard, so I’m kind of like a weekend warrior. I get to work two days a month, two weeks a year and get benefits for school tuition, health insurance etc…as well as opportunities to travel. Not to mention, I get to be a little kid and an adult at the same time. I’m a fuel specialist for F-16 planes, like a glorified gas mechanic, so that means I get to take apart giant jets. It’s like being a little kid again, but they’re really big “important” parts.

How does what you do in the military relate back to your major and vice versa?
I think that the military has been an avenue for exercising my obsession with detail. So, my attention to detail, which is a huge core value throughout the military in all branches, allows people to understand that when your professor says something that you should probably take note of it, because that attention to detail will make a big difference. I believe this has made me a better student and a better person.

What do you want to do when you graduate?
It’s a huge debate for me at the moment. As my own toughest critic, I believe that no matter what, I can never be perfect or ready for a job, but I’d like to have all the answers that I can. I would like to, in the long run, have the opportunity to intern, as well as eventually open my own firm. I’ve made friends in this program that have I’ve been with for 3-4 years. I’ve grown with them, built houses with them and designed with them. The ultimate goal is to create our own firm and build our own houses and design our own things, but I’ll settle with interning and getting a good job at an architecture firm first.

What advice would you give to underclassmen and future students?
Do the readings. Drink a lot of coffee. Make friends, not in your classroom, but at two in the morning when you need another piece of drafting paper. You will notice that the people who stick around the longest, and put the most time in are going to be the best friends that you have, because they’ll always be willing to invest in you.

Nicholas is from San Diego, California. He's a full-time student and spends his weekends with the Air National Guard. One thing he likes most about ENVD is the opportunity to make connections with professionals.

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Brooke Williams

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 17:45:07 +0000

Brooke Williams Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/22/2018 - 10:45

Brooke is from Santa Cruz, California. During her sophomore year, she made the switch from Architectural Engineering to Environmental Design. In summer 2017, she interned with the architecture firm Fuse, and in summer one of her designs broke ground. In her spare time, she listens to podcasts, "because you can learn so much about a subject in 20 minutes."

Where are you from?
I’m from Santa Cruz in northern California. We’re closer to the San Francisco Bay area. Santa Cruz is really cool in the fact that it’s a small coastal community. It’s very similar to Boulder in size and demographics, and they have similar urban layouts.

Why did you choose ��?
I didn’t actually know what I wanted to study until December of my senior year, when I finally figured out that architecture was what I wanted to go to school for. I applied to a lot of liberal arts schools and I applied to �� and Tulane University in Louisiana as my two schools for architecture. I got accepted into the Tulane architecture program, which is a five-year program, but it ended up being really expensive.

I was then accepted into the engineering program at �� and I decided that CU was the way to go, because I really liked math in high school. I was very good at it and passionate about it, so I thought, “you know what, I might as well try my hand at engineering.” It was a better fit for me coming from California.

How did you end up in Environmental Design?
I started out with Architectural Engineering as my major. I did two full years in the engineering program before I started with ENVD as my minor. I had heard about it through one of my friends and thought it sounded great. I missed design and it was something I realized the engineering school didn’t offer. But, when I originally thought of architectural engineering I thought it was going to be half design and half engineering, because you’re doing architecture. That wasn’t the case. It’s all engineering.

I picked up the ENVD minor and it only took me one class to realize that I was in the wrong major, and that design was my passion. I could have continued in engineering if I wanted to, but it wasn’t for me.

As soon as I graduated high school, I knew wanted to be an architect. That was always my goal, even if I went to engineering school. I thought, “I’ll just join a firm right after school.” But, I realized that engineering wasn’t giving me the tools that I needed to go out and apply myself and be a good candidate for an architecture firm. But ENVD did have all that

Once I got here, I realized the ENVD crowd were just my people. I really fit in here, and I felt a sense of community that I’ve never felt in any other school or in any other class. It was very competitive in engineering and I just didn’t fit in. It was a great experience though, and I don’t regret it at all.

I’m able to relate back to my engineering side while working on the Lighting Design Certificate. I’d say that it’s been a great, sort of hybrid and an easy transition.

What year of study are you in?
Technically, I’m a senior, but in ENVD I’m a junior because I studied abroad in Rome. I’m specializing in design studies, even though my focus is architecture outside of school, and what I want to do in life.

What was it like to study abroad in Rome?
It was when I was only an ENVD minor, so it was hectic. It was my second class in ENVD and was a 3000 level studio, which is a junior praxis. I didn’t know anyone other than a friend that I met from engineering. That said, it was still amazing. I learned so much in that studio just from watching and being around other people that are now seniors or have graduated.

It was incredible and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone… to really get out of their comfort zone, go to a new country, live there, be there. It was the hardest I’ve ever worked. We had class from 9 to 5 and it was such an enriching experience.

How long was the program?
It was a six week summer program and it didn’t detract from the rest of my schedule, so it was perfect. I got to travel throughout Germany a little bit before the program started, and we got to travel a few weekends during the program as well. We went to Venice one weekend and separately, I went with my friend from engineering to Florence for another. I try to go back to Europe or new places as often as I can. I find that I learn and become more inspired the more I travel.

What do you like most about your major?
That’s a hard question. I equally value the curriculum and the fact that they give you such a wide breadth of study, and encourage you to really think and understand the entire human-built environment. It’s not just about architecture and how space works inside of a building. I think it’s so important to understand the scale of architecture, the scope of landscape architecture and the context of urban planning. That’s just really cool and unique and it gives me an edge that no one else will have in the field. It gives me a wider understanding that opens my eyes to more.

The other half is the people. I feel like ENVD is such a tight-knit community. I can walk around upstairs and say hi to everyone. I think it’s also because I’m in a few different class levels, but at the same time it’s so supportive and cool that I can do that. Everyone truly cares and is there to help you, everyone is passionate about creating and innovating. You have such a unique relationship with faculty too. They don’t treat you necessarily like a student...like, “call me professor so-and-so.” They let us call them by their first name. That’s so unique and it feels a little bit like high school, where everyone kind of knows everyone and teachers know the names of their students.

What was it like to be a Teaching Assistant?
Being a TA was really great. I was able to sort of integrate myself and give back, and I’ve always loved helping out. Talking about architecture, inspiring kids and helping other people with technology or anything I can is extremely satisfying. There was this one time I gave an impromptu mini lecture about the importance of making models. Students clapped for me afterwards, and I thought it was so cool, because I heard two girls mention how excited they were to start their models. I actually inspired somebody. I couldn’t believe that my own passion and my own enthusiasm for a subject could inspire the same excitement in others. It was probably one of the coolest moments I’ve had to date.

How do you stay involved on campus?
I try to stay involved in as many clubs as I can, and the clubs I’m involved in tailor to what I’m passionate about. For example, I’m doing the Lighting Design Certificate, so naturally I joined the Illumination Engineering Society club (IES), and I try to go to as many meetings as I can.

I joined the Design Build Institute of America (DBIA) by hearing about it from friends. I’m also in American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), because I’m really passionate about architecture. I also try to attend the ENVD 5:47 lectures when I can.

I guess I stay connected by sort of exploring what I like and then seeing what else is out there. School comes first and then clubs are second for me. Sometimes you may not feel like going to a meeting, but in the end I never regret going, and it’s really fun to be with a group of people who are passionate about the same things you are. The opportunities are really great, and not many people take advantage of them all. For example, I have a meeting for lighting design coming up, and they’re bringing in professionals to look at our resumes and portfolios; one-on-one, for an hour.

Being involved is something I’ve had to work on. I was bad at it when I first started school. I was not involved in anything my freshman year, and then in my sophomore year I started to come out of my shell and my junior year I became really involved. I found that it was helpful and great to be a part of something.

What is DBIA?
It is the Design Build Institute of America. It’s a design build deliverable. I got recruited into this because a friend in the engineering school asked me to be the architecture/Environmental Design liaison. I think people in my class are trying to integrate Environmental Design and the Engineering school more and more, so I was sort of a bridge of the two.

Basically, this club is about the design build process of construction and building projects. They do a competition every year where we respond to an RFQ, and in a team of five, we have ten days to respond, which is a full 60-page document, and you have to go through the whole system. We submitted mock-up resumes explaining why our team is the best fit for this project and create mock projects that we’ve worked on and describe it to them. In addition, we had to come up with a design concept, renderings and construction schedule, which required special software skills we had to learn.

I ended up being team captain of the competition this year, and I was able to recruit four other members, one from ENVD, and three from engineering. It was scary, but we learned a lot as a team and we got third place. It was really cool to collaborate with a team who all had very different skills. I had my hand in everything, which was really cool. I was able to help with the graphical layout, our company logo, making the resumes, and help with the design and Revit tasks. It made me realize that I would really like to have my own firm one day, and to just kind of help out and have my hand in everything, and not have to be responsible for one thing, and to be able to encourage people.

What do you like to do in your spare time, outside of class and work?
In my spare time, exercise is really important to me, so I go to yoga or barre. I try to go for a hike when I can, because I found that it brings a lot of clarity and calm into my life. I also love cooking! Cooking is so fun for me, and I love looking at new recipes and trying new things.

My number one thing to do outside of class is travel and I’m trying to get in as many new experiences as I can with as many new people as I can. I find that I feel most grounded and most inspired after I come back from a trip. When I go somewhere I’m sort of challenged in a way. For example, I just went to New York, and I got so much inspiration that I was so excited to come back here and have it inform my designs. Just being able to talk to people and how their lives interact with design, and society.

I also really like to listen to podcasts. They are second next to travel, because you can learn so much about a subject in 20 minutes. It’s just so cool.

What do you want to do when you graduate?
When I graduate, I’m on track right now to work as an architectural intern for a few years or be a job captain at an architecture firm. I hope to work in lighting design for a little bit, or be able to incorporate lighting design into my work in some way. And, possibly grad school. Depending on what happens. I plan to get my architecture license, and that may or may not involve grad school.

It would be really cool to own my own firm one day and have it be made up of about 12 people. Probably in San Francisco or Santa Cruz would be awesome, next to the ocean, and I would love to do residential work. It’s my little dream.

So, you’ve had an internship? What was that like?
I had an internship this past summer with Fuse, an architecture firm. At the time, I didn’t have any connections with them, even though they are in my hometown. I used to walk around town and I loved this one particular coffee shop. It was a beautiful space with its lighting design and use of unique materials. There was also this house I used to walk by when I walked my dog, which was right along the ocean. I would always walk by and say, “I’m going to live in this house one day.” I thought it was so beautiful.

One day, my dad sent me this link saying he had found my favorite architects. I had emailed them from their website with “Hi there, my name is Brooke Williams. I’m from Santa Cruz and I go to the �� where I study Environmental Design. Do you offer any summer internships?” They got back to me saying that they do offer internships and that I’d need to submit a resume. I was so excited.

I didn’t have a resume at the time, so I had 24 hours to create one and send it off. I had no previous work experience besides at a restaurant. They didn’t ask for a portfolio, which I thought was interesting. But, they called me in to interview while I was home for spring break. I was so nervous that I was shaking in the car. I wore my best architect outfit with my glasses, a button-up shirt and jeans, hoping I’d fit the part.

The office was so cool with a wall covered in hand-drawn renderings. I sat on the couch and they just asked me a few basic questions about design, why I like it and what my skill set was. They told me they wouldn’t get back to me for a few weeks, and when I didn’t hear back from them for 4 weeks I emailed them to follow-up. When I received their response offering me the internship, I was working in the studio around 7 at night. I had tears in my eyes I was so excited.

I started working for them full-time right after school let out. The contract they sent me with my duties included items like basic graphic design, material library organization and filling up water bottles. It seemed pretty basic, like entry-level duties. I thought it was perfect. At least I would be in an environment where I'd be around the things I want to do, because I truly had no idea what working in an architecture firm was like. So, I started out doing the basic duties and on my first day it happened to be a job captain’s last day. He had graduated from his college and was going to grad school at Columbia. So he left the

same day I arrived and his leaving created a void in the firm. He had projects he had been working on that no one could pick up and work on, because they had other projects and no time. So, they asked me to kind of step in his shoes.

A few days into the internship, my boss at the time, turned around and asked me how well I knew autoCAD, and asked me to draw up some renderings for a client. I was so bad at autocad when I first started. It took me so long to draft up this particular project, but I ended up asking my co-workers for help and they taught me so much. By the end of the week I had a full set of drafts, labeled with everything done for the client to review. I was able to sit in the meeting with the clients, where I mostly listened and took notes for my boss, but they allowed me to participate in the conversation and the process. After that my boss began to give me more responsibilities.

About a month into the internship, there was this client who wanted to open her own cake shop. I was tasked with taking the as-builts (the existing building measurements). It was a really small and narrow space and created a big design challenge. Long story short, I was able to come up with the schematic design for her cake shop, and it’s being built now. I was able to show the finished design to my bosses on the last day of my internship and they loved it. I just felt like they were being nice at the time, but it was the real deal and they chose to move forward with my design.

I’m planning to work for them again this summer where I’ll be able to pick up the project where I left off, and see it through the entire construction process, from start to finish. It has been the most enlightening experience and has confirmed that I am in the right field. This is exactly what I’m passionate about and this is what I want to do the rest of my life. It was so exciting and gratifying for me to have this experience so early on.

What advice would you give to underclassmen and future students?
I would say go out and get as much work experience as you can, because it will help you understand where you want to be after school.

Take time to fully appreciate school for what it is. Working in the “real world” is very different from school, in that it’s geared towards budget and building code design and working with clients and contractors. School is almost the opposite, where you don’t really draw construction documents and you can think more theoretically. You really need to separate the two, which is something I really struggled with when I came back from the internship.

When you’re in school, enjoy school. Use all the resources you can. Use 3D printers, use your faculty, and use your peers. Take full advantage of school and learn in school, but also in your free time try to get in as much work experience as you can, because the more work experience you have the more you’ll know, and you’ll be able to shape your education more towards what you want to do with your life.

Brooke is from Santa Cruz, California. During her sophomore year, she made the switch from architectural engineering to environmental design. In summer 2017, she interned with the architecture firm Fuse, and in summer 2018 one of her designs broke ground. In her spare time, she listens to podcasts, "because you can learn so much about a subject in 20 minutes."

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Christian Bellefeuille

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 17:23:21 +0000

Christian Bellefeuille Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/22/2018 - 10:23

Christian is from Fort Collins, Colorado. He works at the Digital Media Center and enjoys urban exploration and photography. One piece of advice he’d give incoming students is “to not hold back, be yourself and go for it.”

Where are you from?
I'm from Fort Collins, Colorado.

What year of study are you in?
I’m a freshman.

Why did you choose ��?
I originally wanted to go out of state, just to try something different, but ENVD was actually the reason I decided on ��. It’s a super unique program and it combines everything that I want to learn about.

Why were you drawn to the Program in Environmental Design?
I originally wanted to study engineering, but everything changed senior year of high school. I started doing some architecture and planning projects on my own, and realized that’s really what I want to do with my life. I did a tour of the ENVD program, before I knew much about it , and that decided it for me. I thought, "yup, this is where I want to be."

What do you like most about your major?
I really like the community. Many of my friends from high school, who go to �� as well, are scattered around different majors. ENVD is unique in the fact that we have a strong sense of community and everybody gets to bond over late nights in the studio, working on the same types of projects and just supporting each other.

How would you describe your first semester?
It was tough but definitely worth it. I stayed up a lot later and a lot more often than I ever expected. I learned a lot, even in the first couple of weeks. I gained some incredible skills that I didn’t think I would learn until a couple of years in. It was definitely a challenge, but fun too and just great all together.

How do you stay involved on campus?
I have a job at the Digital Media Center, and I am also involved in EDSG, which stands for Environmental Design Student Government. On top of that, I just joined the Environmental Design Gala planning committee. That's our annual awards ceremony.

What do you like to do in your spare time outside of classes?
A little bit of everything. Reading, writing, hiking, biking, photography, and just hanging out with my friends. I also like to do a bit of urban exploration. It’s fun to go explore the town.

What do you want to do when you graduate?
It’s hard to say since it’s three and half years down the road. I’m looking into something along the lines of lighting design, since I’m planning on getting the lighting design certificate. But, I honestly have no idea yet.

OK, what about your biggest dream?
My dream would be to have my own firm and be able to see my own designs come to life, especially when it comes to architecture. I’m really interested in communal living, which isn’t actually in abundance. I think my dream is to just build whatever I'd like.

What advice would you give to future students?
I’d say just go for it right from the beginning. I went into studio on one of the first nights that we were all there working together and I thought,“ok, I want to make some good friends.” I just started talking to everybody and over time we built a really strong bond together as a studio. I met some amazing people. So, just don’t hold back, be yourself and go for it!

Christian is from Fort Collins, Colorado. He works at the Digital Media Center and enjoys urban exploration and photography. One piece of advice he'd give incoming students is "to not hold back, be yourself and go for it."

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