Ryan ChartrandStudents in Cal Poly’s five-year architecture program spend their entire final year doing their senior project, and getting a deeper experience than the average college senior.
“Our process in general is long, complicated, and difficult and there are so many factors to consider,” architecture senior Noah Ti said.
Ti said that the project begins in the fall with research, experiments and writing a thesis. In the winter, students experiment more and allow their project to take shape. Finally, in the spring, they actually build their project to whatever scale they need.
Ti’s project is a massive structure that hovers over the top of the west staircase in the Architecture building. Ti designed his structure to not damage the existing building and be entirely temporary. It is braced or wedged against the concrete walls, utilizing the buildings pre-existing shapes to hold it.
“My project is more theoretical than functional,” Ti said, explaining that while the space could be walked on, that wasn’t its primary function.
His senior project adviser, architecture professor Karen Lange, said that part of the project is for students to explore their own ideas about architecture.
“Their thesis defines how they see architecture,” Lange said.
For Ti, this involved exploring a way to make his structure add to, but not take away from, the space where it is built. In a building full of square shapes, Ti built a more free-form design that he pictures as a creature. He also made his structure from wood, a material used sparingly in the concrete and steel building.
Students have projects that are at all scales, from actually building a structure, to creating a model of a much larger project. They are also spread all over California, not just centered at Cal Poly, she said.
One of Lange’s students who is building a scale model has designed a structure to go on the site of the Manzanar Japanese internment camp in Northern California.
Architecture senior Deric Mizokami said that he knew from the beginning that he wanted to build something for that site because he had a personal connection to it. His grandparents were detained there during World War II, and he said many people have forgotten about what went on there.
“You do a lot of research and then at the end it all funnels into one idea,” Mizokami said.
He finally decided to create a public bath, where people could come together and discuss the site and its history.
“I wanted to bring people to the place and have them talk openly about it,” Mizokami said.
He was inspired by the trips he took abroad to Denmark and Japan last year, and seeing facilities like this in use. He said he felt that having to strip down and bathe together helped to remove people’s emotional barriers.
“When they shed clothes they shed their status symbols and are more free,” Mizokami said.
Ti said that as a final part of the senior project process, students display their work for the public. Currently, they are rotating their projects through the gallery in the Architecture building. Once that is complete, they will be doing one big grand finale showing together.
That show takes place in Chumash auditorium and start Friday, May 25 at 3 p.m. Although the displays will remain up for longer, the opening ceremony takes place at that time. This point officially marks the end of the nine-month process the students go through to complete their senior project.