News & Headlines

Arlie Adkins discusses "The Criticality of Context: Centering the Sociocultural in Planning and Urban Design Practice."

The 12th Annual CAPLA Job Interview Fair, made possible by the Chasse Building Team and 22 other sponsors, was held February 10-11, 2022. For the first time, the interactive two-day event took place both online and in person and included 42 employers, 145 students and 536 interviews.

In this talk, Lisa Schrenk, associate professor of architectural history at the University of Arizona, presents the early studio of Frank Lloyd Wright from research she conducted for her critically acclaimed book The Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright.

“Winners of the 2nd Annual Universal Design Awards reveal how the next generation of designers are rethinking accessible architecture,” says Architizer in a March 2022 article that highlights work produced by third-year B.Arch students in a studio sponsored by Ascension Wheelchair Lifts.

World's fairs introduced us to Heinz ketchup, the Ferris wheel, the telephone and countless other now-ubiquitous innovations. Lisa Schrenk, a CAPLA associate professor who studies world's fairs, has helped establish a new institute to study how the events impact global society. Learn more in this interview.

Linus Kafka, CAPLA professor of practice in planning and real estate law, spearheaded the successful addition of the "desert modernist" Orchard River Garden Park, a 136-unit townhome complex built on a former pecan orchard, to the National Register of Historic Places.

Ana Astiazaran ’22 B.Arch, who received a national COTE Top Ten for Students Award for Sustainable Design Excellence from the AIA in 2021, recently served as one of nine national judges for the AIA 2022 Architecture Awards. She was the only student jury member in the esteemed competition.

In a paper published in December 2021 in the Journal of the American Planning Association, ASU's Sara Meerow and UArizona's Ladd Keith analyzed the results of their extreme heat survey of planners from diverse cities across the United States to establish baseline information for a growing area of planning practice and scholarship that future research can build on.

Richy Altuna, who graduated from the Bachelor of Architecture program in 1974 and went on to become a renowned consumer experience designer for many of the world's most iconic retail stores, passed away in June 2021. His family and friends have established the Richard “Richy” Eugene Altuna Endowed Scholarship to support CAPLA undergraduate students.

Built environment innovation. Water consciousness. These are the principles fourth-year B.Arch students in the ARC 401 studio considered when crafting designs for a research center at the base of Sentinel Peak, along Tucson’s Santa Cruz River, for the Fall 2021 Richärd Kennedy Fourth-Year Studio Prize.

On March 24 and 25, 2022, the Institute for the Study of International Expositions (ISIE) will host its first annual symposium: International Expositions: Looking to the Past, Seeing the Future. Registration for the online event co-sponsored by CAPLA is now open.

Ladd Keith, CAPLA assistant professor of planning and sustainable built environments, was quoted in a February 17, 2022 KOLD-TV story on Tucson’s goals to become carbon neutral by 2030. “We need to make sure the most vulnerable in our community are taken care of when we address climate change.”