Through partnerships with public and private sectors, the resources of the College of Design provide leadership and influence public discourse across the region.
Many times, these projects can and should only be accomplished in partnership with those in the region who can join forces to find meaningful and impactful solutions.
A sustainable, inclusive, and vibrant future for the region involves the most compelling questions of design and planning at all scales. The college has been working to improve the natural and built environments in Arizona, beginning with the concept for the Rio Salado Project in 1966‚ brought to realization in 1999 as Tempe Town Lake. Projects such as the Rio Salado and others on the downloadable map from a special issues of ASU Insight (pdf file) show that design can be a catalyst for change, providing appropriate and sustainable responses to emerging needs.
The college has a long history of community engagement. Our continuing commitment to using the resources of the college for the good of the region is strong, with community-based studio projects an important component of a student’s learning experience. The following is a selected list of the ways that the college is engaged with our university, professional, local, and national communities.
Tulane School of Architecture: When the dean of the College of Design heard about the devastation in New Orleans, he offered the dean of the Tulane School of Architecture a place for as many of their students as he could find and send to ASU. We were able to host almost the entire graduate-level architecture class—38 students and 5 faculty—so that the students could still be on track for graduation in the spring of 2006. ASU was able to provide the students with connections for places to live, computers to work on, studio space for their classes, and the support and camaraderie of our ASU students.
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Faculty Community Service: College of Design faculty have a long history of personal involvement in many service organizations both as ambassadors of the college and university, and for their own personal fulfillment.
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Staff Community Service: Through the organization of its Staff Council, College of Design staff reach out beyond the boundaries of the university to serve the surrounding community. For at least 15 years, the Staff Council has annually supported a Christmas charitable event to collect new items to wrap and give to local service organizations. For the last few years, the staff has supported teen mothers who are going to a local Tempe high school with Christmas gifts for the mother and child. This typifies the kind of group teamwork and community spirit of the staff of the college.
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Lectures/Exhibitions: Offering nationally and internationally known design experts and exhibitions is an important role of the college. Regularly sponsored lecture series of design experts and practitioners give local professionals and students access to industry professionals that they would not otherwise come into contact with. The college and its schools and departments also sponsor annual symposia on a variety of topics ranging from sustainable urban regeneration in Phoenix and Japan, to the global challenges of the urban landscape, to doctoral education in design. Local and national professionals and critics are invited to reviews of student projects, giving students a chance to learn from practicing designers and network for future career opportunities.
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Airport Comfort Zones: The Sky Harbor Terminal Two Comfort Zone project is a 1,000 foot-long shading and cooling structure that employs photovoltaics, evaporative coolers, and low heat-retaining materials for travelers waiting for ground transportation. The project, conceived and designed by School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture faculty, is under construction at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
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Agua Fria Watershed: The Agua Fria watershed had not been subject to a comprehensive planning survey to understand the impact of future development. The study by School of Planning students gathered information on history, geology, climate, soils, vegetation, wildlife, land use, economics, and demographics and presented their findings to Maricopa County, the Maricopa Association of Governments, West Valley Recreation Corridor Group, and the cities of Peoria and Avondale. This study led to further study by the West Valley Recreation Corridor Group with the Community Design Studio.
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Capitol Mall District: Beginning in 1996, the college has been working in the Capitol Mall District to bring awareness of the planning, social, and economic issues to elevate the natural and built environments of the Capitol Mall equal to the tasks that take place within its buildings. This early work led to identifying how homeless in the area impacts the Capitol Mall and resulted in the creation of a combined “campus of care”—the Central Arizona Shelter Services campus. In spring 2005, two college studios—one in architecture and one in planning—embarked on the next phase of research and planning in the area supported with funding from the Phoenix Community Alliance and APS, which resulted in a research publication—Capitol Mall District Revitalization Plan. Through the participation of the Phoenix Community Alliance, a multifaceted group of individuals from the state of Arizona, city of Phoenix, Maricopa County, and business, neighborhood, and university communities have now formed a task force to implement one of the students’ ideas—an Arizona flag walk along Washington Street to help elevate awareness of the Capitol Mall area in general. The college is committed to a variety of projects that look toward improving the area for Arizona’s Centennial in 2012. This is just one of those projects.
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CHAIRity: For eight years, the Interior Design Department has partnered with the city of Phoenix Family Advocacy Center for a “CHAIRity” event—a fundraiser for the work of the Family Advocacy Center, which provides support for victims of abuse. Receiving only $100 each for materials, teams of students design and build chairs inspired both by stories of abuse victims and artists or artistic movements. The chairs are auctioned at a benefit dinner attended by the students. Last year, the 11 chairs were auctioned for more than $7,500 in support for the Family Advocacy Center.
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Cities of Peoria and Goodyear Sponsored Research: Two sponsored projects—one each with Peoria and Goodyear—provided our students exercises in applied learning and cutting-edge urban planning solutions for these two growing Valley cities. The Peoria project involved three studios and four faculty members in surveying the downtown, constructing a downtown plan, and recommending a façade renovation plan. Goodyear needs to encourage development, but maintain the quality of life that its residents appreciate. So, students researched and compiled the Goodyear Employment Corridor Development Plan, which was adopted by the Goodyear City Council.
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Citizen Participation Course: For more than 15 years, School of Planning graduate students have had the opportunity to take a course titled “Citizen Participation” to introduce them to the finer points of community involvement. Students receive firsthand experience with government, civic, nonprofit, and grassroots organizations and work in small groups to enable an organization of their choosing further its goals. In addition to the regular demands of coursework, students spend an additional 25 to 40 hours during the semester working with the community organization, and many times the commitment does not end until after the end of the semester.
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Design of Prostheses: An industrial design studio partnered with the Bioengineering Department to develop a prototype for a prosthetic arm that could be manufactured from readily available materials in developing countries, where there is a need for inexpensive, easily manufactured assistive products.
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Downtown Phoenix Studios: The college is exceptionally involved in the development and redevelopment of the heart of Phoenix—its urban downtown core. Studios have performed research into plans for a medical school campus and research building; housing alternatives to provide both market rate and low-income housing; networks of pocket and linear parks, bike paths, connective shade structures, permeable ground surfaces, urban reforestation, and street transformations; community centers for the urban Native American community; ASU Downtown Campus plans; and plans for an urban farmer’s market, which were brought to fruition with the hard work of two graduate planning students. Most of these studios have partners with the city of Phoenix, Maricopa County, the Phoenix Community Alliance, the Downtown Phoenix Partnership, or other social and economic service organizations. The Phoenix Urban Research Lab (PURL) has space that has hosted meetings for nonprofit organizations and state, city, or county officials whose missions are to raise the awareness or increase economic environment through improving the built and natural environment of the downtown area.
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Every House Changes: Working with the Urban Design office of the city of Scottsdale, an architecture studio provided Scottsdale with an important survey of existing housing stock in south Scottsdale and then recommendations for revitalizing these 1950s ranch style cement block homes for the 21st century. An exhibition and presentation of findings was attended by a packed house of Scottsdale residents at the Scottsdale Urban Design Studio eager to improve south Scottsdale neighborhoods.
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Frame A Dream: For two years, an Interior Design studio has endeavored to “Frame A Dream” of a sick child who is a patient at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. The project is begun at the hospital where hospital staff ask the child to write what their dearest wish would be—the answers range from ride a horse to be able to eat food again. The students take these dreams and build small, beautiful, artistic sculptural responses to the dream that the child can use to attach photos or mementos. The child and student never meet, but the students do hear from family and hospital staff about the appreciation of their work on the child’s behalf.
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Garfield Elementary Graphic Design Project: Seniors in the Visual Communication Department choose a variety of projects to focus on for their final year. One group of students chose to work with the Garfield Elementary School on projects that would help the school’s young, inner-city students express their wishes and goals for the future. One project had children express what made them thankful through a small painting. The graphic design students took the paintings and transferred them to fabric and hung a “quilt” of these wishes from a tree in front of the school for the school children, parents, and teachers to enjoy.
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Graphic Identity for Nonprofits: Visual Communication studios regularly take on the challenge of helping nonprofit organizations design a graphic design and strategies to seek an impact for their missions in the community. The graphic design studios have worked with the Washington Carver Museum organization, which is the first African American high school in Phoenix and the center of African American community for generations, and Concilio Latino de Salud, a service organization promoting health and disease prevention in the Hispanic/Latino community among others. Students design from business cards to promotional materials and make presentations to board directors and managers.
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Hope Lodge: At the request of the local American Cancer Society, an architecture studio provided plans and ideas for a new care center close to the Mayo Clinic that would provide space for patients and their families to stay while receiving care, a resource center, and a new administrative office for the chapter. The students presented their plans to the regional president and development officer and published a book for them to retain.
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Light Rail Transit Research: Several studios across the disciplines of the college have done research for the coming light rail line in the areas of train design, station platform and area design, planning the rail corridors, cooling strategies for platform and benches, landscape strategies for waiting areas, the impact of the light rail on development of the surrounding neighborhoods, design aesthetics, shade and solar opportunities, and universal access. Faculty from the college are involved in the design and implementation of the light rail trains, stations, and corridor planning. Both studio and faculty research have been implemented within the execution of the light rail development.
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McDowell Mountain Region Development Plan: With the assistance of NASA geographic information system mapping analysis, landscape architecture and planning students with city of Scottsdale planners and city manager gathered key information on the McDowell Mountain region to chart the future of development and preservation in the area.
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Mentoring Program: The college continues to support and encourage the participation of college alumni in a mentoring program with students through mixers, and meetings. Over 50 different organizations (some alumni and some not) participate in this program that matches professionals and students to develop new leaders in the design professions.
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Native American/Japanese Oral History Project: This is an oral history project through a southern Arizona Native American community where students collected and visually and graphically presented stories about the relationships that evolved and the individuals who lived in a Japanese internment camp next to tribal lands during World War II.
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Northern Arizona Tribal Communities Design Research: The college has been involved in many different projects on the Navajo and Hopi reservations to research and build projects from the plan of a new village to the construction of a culturally and environmentally sustainable house for a Navajo elder. A College of Design Navajo student also organized a charrette for the Navajo Tribal Nation in Window Rock, bringing together a variety of Native American students, architects, planners, engineers, faculty, and government officials to address the needs of the governmental campus. From the use of small diameter trees to build traditional and nontraditional Native American housing to innovative concepts for the design of family homes, the college continues to partner with Native American projects.
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Papago Park Planning: The natural beauty of the Papago-Salado area is in conflict with the continued pressures for development. Interest in this area by planning and landscape architecture faculty, begun in 1997 and continuing through today, is bring awareness about trail planning, recreation, and redevelopment for city of Phoenix and Tempe planning staffs.
Pedestrian Amenities Along 7th Avenue: An architecture studio’s proposal to use shared urban space to improve the streetscape won the approval of a coalition of businesses located on 7th Avenue in Phoenix. The faculty member obtained a $500,000 TEA-21 grant to build a demonstration site, the second phase of which is scheduled for construction soon.
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Phoenix Zoo: An Architecture faculty member who was designing new exhibit habitats for bighorn sheep, involved his studio in the design and building of a “terracrete,” or earthen concrete, wall that would educate the public about the impact of humans on the landscape. Each layer is embedded with artifacts representing a layer of human history. This wall continues to be part of the bighorn sheep exhibit at the zoo.
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Poverty Indicators: A joint project with the School of Planning and the School of Social Work gathered data from homeless and users of food pantries for the annual National Hunger Survey, supported by the nonprofit organization, Second Harvest. The research also gathered information about how the homeless view the location and services of shelters in Maricopa County.
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Reinventing Neighborhoods: This initiative, through the Community Design Studio (formerly the Joint Urban Design Program), brought together stakeholders in four different central Phoenix neighborhoods to examine how good planning and design can raise awareness of the social and cultural challenges of the areas and help form coalitions of neighbors, businesses, city services, social service agencies, school districts, and local politicians to improve these important inner city neighborhoods. Each of these four charrettes or intensive four-day sessions resulted in positive change and improvement for these areas. The Central City South neighborhood coalesced around improving housing and streets, which resulted in seeking a Hope IV grant to demolish outdated public housing and rebuild the Matthew Hansen housing. The Roosevelt Neighborhood charrette helped residents understand and support the need for more transportation networks and encouragement of arts spaces and housing in the area. The Wilson Community charrette helped to identify key areas that will benefit from the light rail routes and resulted in residents requesting and receiving a light rail stop in the area. Finally, the Balsz/Gateway Community charrette helped to plan and identify the Washington Street corridor as an opportunity corridor for business and commerce along this key route between downtown Phoenix and Tempe. Though not in central Phoenix, the CDS has also worked with the city of Mesa on the Broadway Corridor Community Design charrette, addressing the same kinds of issues that the Phoenix workshops tackled—transportation, housing, and redevelopment.
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Service Learning/Sowing the Seeds: An Industrial Design studio worked collaboratively with the Department of Plant Biology to design a movable, chair-height gardening box for the elderly or those with limited mobility and tested it with clients at the Scottsdale Village Square.
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Sonoran Preserve Master Plan: The Herberger Center for Design Research (formerly the Herberger Center for Design Excellence) and a landscape architecture faculty member partnered with the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department in preparing and publishing a master plan that creates a framework for a preserve system that builds on Phoenix’s history of setting aside significant Sonoran Desert land for recreation, open space, environmental education, and preservation. The master plan was built on research conducted by planning and landscape architecture studios research.
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Sound Design: This is a study by Industrial Design faculty and students on the impact of musical instruments for music therapy for children with a variety of physical and mental disabilities. Students researched and developed the instruments for the children’s use. The faculty member received the Mortar Board Award from the ASU Student Association for her role in initiating and facilitating this project.
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South Scottsdale Neighborhood Study: The city of Scottsdale Community Planning Dept. invited a planning studio to study Scottsdale’s oldest residential neighborhoods. The students interviewed over 150 individuals in 11 different neighborhood areas to gather data about demographics, land use, transportation, crime, and environmental conditions.
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Straw Bale House Research and Building: Architecture students designed and built a straw bale house in Guadalupe.
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Tempe Sister Cities: Tempe and its sister cities organization have been working with the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) to make a dedicated pavilion for the sister cities a reality. Funds have been raised to develop the design and initial plans, and fundraising will continue for further development and construction.
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Town Plans: In cooperation with the State of Arizona Historic Preservation Office, the Community Design Studio, formerly the Joint Urban Design Program, conducts planning charrettes (or intensive workshop) to develop a new master plan for several of Arizona’s small towns. Working with town government, business, and citizen participants, the charrette produces a new town plan published in an illustrative poster along with helpful guidelines for the towns to implement. The CDS has worked with the towns of Winslow, Jerome, Globe, and Tombstone.
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Town of Buckeye: The town of Buckeye is expected to grow to close to 500,000 residents if master planned communities all become reality. A School of Planning studio developed design guidelines that would be grounded in a special identity for Buckeye and its small town western heritage through a series of workshops with the community, chamber of commerce, and town government.
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Town of Gilbert: A study by Planning faculty about the cost of providing services to the growing residential community of Gilbert was commissioned by the Gilbert city council and resulted in a report—The Town of Gilbert: The Cost of Providing Community Services (1998).
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Town of Guadalupe: Architecture studios researched and presented findings to the city council of the town of Guadalupe for two houses that provide temporary lodging for a self-help housing rehabilitation program. The houses were bioclimatically designed with straw bale and aerated concrete block construction.
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Traffic Calming for Story Neighborhood: A landscape architecture studio worked with neighbors and city engineers to find ways to calm traffic in this historic Phoenix neighborhood. The recommendations were implemented by the neighborhood in 2005.
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Upper San Pedro River Watershed: This study of the San Pedro watershed by the college in conjunction with the Southwest Center for Environmental Research and Policy (SCERP) and funded by the EPA, considered conflicting needs and cultural sensibilities to weigh political, business, and environmental concerns against mining, farming, and military access.
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Urban/Desert Edge: A School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture studio provided research and policy recommendations to the Phoenix City Council for environmental and economically sustainable design-driven strategies for guiding urbanization at the desert edge. The city council adopted those guidelines and has extended these recommendations not just to the area of the study—the north Phoenix edge—but also to all new development at the city’s edge.
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Xavier College Prep Visioning: Several architecture studios took on the challenge of giving planners for this central Phoenix girls’ high school ideas about planning and design of its new performing arts center. More importantly, the faculty engaged the high school students in the work of the university students, encouraging these high-achieving girls to think about careers in architecture—a historically male-dominated profession.
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West Phoenix Revitalization Area (WPRA): A team of faculty and students from the School of Planning has been analyzing how social and economic conditions are reflected in the neighborhood environment of the WPRA and are developing new strategies for revitalizing this core residential sector of Phoenix. The ASU team’s work with the city of Phoenix Planning Department and city manager’s office is ongoing.
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Wheeled Mobility Devices: In partnership with BTI Consultants, an Industrial Design studio and faculty member researched new ways that wheelchairs and scooters could be restrained in buses and light rail cars. Prototypes of wheelchair and scooters have been tested with users with research into new devices ongoing.
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Whispering Hope Ranch: At the request of the camp’s foundation board, an architecture studio and interior design studio partnered to design a camp for children with special needs to be highly accessible, negotiable for a variety of physically or mentally challenged children, and logical for campers to find their way around, but in keeping with the spirit of the camp’s philosophy, a place for fun, freedom, and adventure.
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