News & Headlines

CAPLA’s “Building Better is Building Green” panel highlighted how sustainability credentials and real-world experience are preparing students to lead the future of the built environment. The event also celebrated 21 students receiving support from the Green Ginsberg Fund to participate in a summer LEED Green Associate bootcamp and certification exam.

CAPLA has announced the recipients of the 2026 Grassroots Seed Grants, which support innovative teaching, research and creative activity aligned with the college’s Strategic Plan. This year’s projects advance collaboration, community engagement and new approaches to addressing social, environmental and economic challenges.

CAPLA students earned top honors at the AZASLA Awards Gala, including awards for Cycles of Renewal and Watermark’s Re-imagined Therapeutic Garden. Recognized for excellence in landscape architecture.

CAPLA Lecturer Christopher Tucker contributed to three projects featured in a Cloud 9 Architects pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale. The work explores new directions in ecological design, emphasizing architecture’s potential to integrate with and support natural systems.

Huê-Tâm Jamme presents research exploring the deep behavioral roots and long-term impacts of U.S. car dependence on individual well-being and social equity.

Kirk Dimond has received the TRIAD Award from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, recognizing his exceptional leadership and sustained service to the field. Over eight years with the organization, including five as treasurer, he strengthened its financial stability, advanced long-term planning and helped establish key scholarships and endowments.

CAPLA student Ella Parsons ('27 B.Arch) shares her ecological “cookbook,” blending art, architecture, and ecology to explore site, narrative, and design through experimental methods.

Ryan Smith, director of the University of Arizona’s School of Architecture, co-authored a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report outlining a national strategy to expand offsite construction as a solution to housing affordability and supply challenges. Drawing on global case studies, the report introduces an Offsite Action Plan focused on regulatory reform, innovation and education to accelerate scalable, high-quality housing production.

An engineered network of waterways flowing west from the Rockies sustains life in one of the hottest regions on Earth, forming a “cyborg watershed” that blends natural systems with human-made infrastructure and regional mythologies. Bon explored this system through her large-scale artworks, examining buried waterways, the complexities of policy and politics, and the pursuit of a civic identity shaped by water rather than boundaries.

CAPLA’s Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning and Design (ISAPD) will host an all-day symposium on April 6, bringing together students, faculty and practitioners to explore Indigenous approaches to the built environment. Featuring Indigenous designers and supported by campus partners, the event will highlight community-centered design, sustainability and the role of Indigenous knowledge systems in shaping more responsible relationships with land.

CAPLA students spent spring break in Agua Prieta, Sonora, building a home for a local family in partnership with Rancho Feliz. Working alongside community members, they gained hands-on construction experience while contributing to a reciprocal housing program designed to address affordability and climate-responsive design.

Senior Lecturer in Architecture Oscar Lopez and three CAPLA alumni won first place in the 2025 AIA Arizona Ideas Competition for their proposal “BLOCK UP.” The project reimagines the urban tower as a vertical civic framework for Phoenix, integrating public space, housing and climate-responsive design into a shared, adaptable structure. Developed through close collaboration between Lopez and alumni Sal Arellano, Trevor Watson and Cameron Noble, the proposal explores how density can expand community and access beyond the street level, highlighting CAPLA’s impact on forward-thinking, civic-minded design in Arizona.