(Courtesy photo)
Mustang Daily Staff Report
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Fifth-year architecture students will display their thesis projects — the culmination of their college careers — at one of the largest design and architecture exhibits in California, “FINAL CUT.”
Students spent one quarter doing research and two quarters working on the architecture version of the yearlong senior project.
“The capstone of their college career will showcase everything that they have learned in the past five, six or even seven years,” architecture professor Barry Williams said.
There are eight different fifth-year studios, which all focus on a particular theme. Williams’ class focused on the social aspects of architecture.
“There are 149 students participating, and what it shows is there are 149 ways to go through the curriculum,” Williams said.
Within the broad range of projects, one student is designing a school in Ghana, which has become a real-life venture.
“Things from locations all over the world, from houses, to museums, to theoretical what-if projects,” Williams said. “It is important to look at and examine and see a broad range of architecture and what architecture does and what these someday-architects will be doing.”
Architects are invited and come from firms all around to look at student projects.
“It’s a good chance for them to look at the 100-plus potential candidates,” Wiliams said.
On Saturday, eight faculty members will select 10 projects they consider best-in-show.
“It gives people a good idea of what architecture students have learned, what they are doing and the complexities of the field of architecture,” Williams said. “A lot of the time, they see architecture students walking around in a gaze from lack of sleep, and now they know why.”
Architecture senior Kiley Feickert’s project is a theoretical building inspired by the migration out of Detroit.
“It is an observation tower that grows as people drop their abandoned objects, which symbolizes the mass migration out of the city,” Feickert said.
“FINAL CUT” will take place Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Chumash Auditorium.
“It is basically the show you are working toward all five years,” Feickert said. “It is our last project at Cal Poly.”
Hillary Kaiser contributed to this staff report.