Students Inspire Hope with Landscape Architecture Senior Show
by Evan Seed
Cal Poly’s Landscape Architecture (LA) Department takes pride in each year’s graduating class being Ready Day One. The senior show is an opportunity for fifth-year LA students to demonstrate their readiness through their senior capstone projects, which encapsulate years of study, experience and innovation.
Students create their senior capstone projects over three intense quarters. While some project themes may be popular among the senior class, the studio allows students to delve deeply into the specifics of what they’re most passionate about.
“Students have to choose their own project,” explains LA Professor César Torres Bustamante, who has taught his senior studio for nearly 15 years. “Some students tend to focus more on technical solutions and technical knowledge. Some students tend to focus more on current, social, or even political issues.”
According to Sarah Cawrse (Landscape Architecture, ‘12), a member of the LA Department Advisory Council (LADAC), the senior design studio is a “dedicated time to dive into research, analysis, to discover a real project that has real problems, and then to look at the real solutions that can come out of that.”
LA senior Kacie Fetzer’s project investigated urban, river and coastal flooding issues in Petaluma, a city in Northern California.
“My capstone project title is Back to the Tracks,” Fetzer said. “I’m really looking at the flooding issues in California today.”
Her design focuses on water flowing naturally in its designated areas, preventing it from flooding into urban spaces.
For his senior project, LA senior Ayver Libes took inspiration from his childhood, growing up in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by nature.
“The title of my senior project is Reclaiming the Earth: A Futuristic Vision of the Inglewood Oil Field,” Libes said. “My project is focused on remediating the Inglewood Oil Field in Los Angeles, providing an urban sanctuary where people could escape the fatigue of urban living.”
Libes’s design seeks to transform the Inglewood Oil Field into a space “with new recreational and educational opportunities, event spaces, tranquil gardens, and a greenway connection stretching to the Pacific Ocean.”
LA senior Hank Veld’s project focused on the upper part of San Francisco’s Great Highway. The two-mile stretch of road is permanently closed to vehicles, making it the perfect canvas to implement design.
“My senior project is Beneath the Fog: Life Between Us and Water,” Veld said. “While the project is a large-scale planning project addressing issues such as climate change and cultural identities, it’s also a study of how life can exist beneath the fog in intimate moments.”
In addition to the intense research and design each project requires, students also organize their senior show, a gallery-style showcase open to the public.
“We like to make this event public so that industry partners, supporters, advisory council members, faculty, friends, family, and staff can attend,” Torres Bustamante described. “It is an event totally organized by students.”
For Fetzer, being on the setup committee meant coordinating student arrivals on the morning of the show, helping to put together presentation boards, and assisting with food and venue elements.
The valuable skills students gain from organizing and hosting a large-scale event are invaluable when finding their place in the workforce.
“Industry professionals are here,” Cawrse said. “They might be looking to hire. This is a way to connect students to professionals.”
Overall, students hoped visitors would walk away with new knowledge and a sense of optimism.
“The main thing that I hope people leave with is that there really is hope in our world,” Veld expressed. “I think a lot of times there’s a lot of pressure on all these big problems... but there are people, smart people who are trying their best to help solve these problems.”
To learn more about each student’s senior project, visit the CPLA Senior Show website.
