Faculty Research & Creative Scholarship

Last spring, CAPLA Sustainable Built Environments Lecturer Nataliya Apanovich partnered with Iskashitaa Refugee Network to create a study concerning issues among University of Arizona students and United Nation (UN) Refugees.

Master of Landscape Architecture students Annalise Hummel, Christian Aguilar Murrieta and Cordell Lee were honored for highlighting the need for smart watering solutions to support tree planting as a cost-effective way to mitigate urban heat.

Collaborative efforts from City of Tucson leadership and staff, community stakeholders, and University of Arizona faculty to address escalating heat challenges have resulted in the adoption of a newly crafted Heat Action Roadmap and Heat Protection Ordinance for city workers and contractors.

A new federal initiative will rely on University of Arizona research and scholarship to help communities across the U.S. create policies and take action to mitigate and manage extreme heat. Ladd Keith, an associate professor in CAPLA, will lead UArizona's involvement in the center.

The second annual Remembering Spaces of Internment (ReSI) International Symposium convened an interdisciplinary network to study internment sites globally. Co-founder Beth Weinstein discussed ReSI's goals, emphasizing the need to analyze and remember the systemic nature of internment

University of Arizona professor of medicine Dr. Esther Sternberg, director of the Institute on Place, Well-being and Performance and research director at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, shares her research examining how work environments effect people's health and productivity.

A new interdisciplinary book, "Measuring the Impact of the Built Environment on Health, Wellbeing, and Performance," explores how technology can gauge and enhance health in homes and offices. It offers insights, methodologies and pandemic-related considerations for optimizing building designs

Laura Carr, a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture, is part of a team that secured a $200,000 grant for the Native People's Design Coalition. This grant will support their efforts in collaborating with tribal communities to plan and design sustainable and resilient built environments.

Garrett Smith serves as a CAPLA lecturer in both Sustainable Built Environments and Landscape Architecture. His research focuses on how recreation affects people, the environment and those responsible for managing it.

Researchers from the UArizona Drachman Institute, along with colleagues from ASU, NAU and the University of New Mexico, will research housing security, climate and health with a focus on Hispanic and underserved communities in the arid Southwest.

Seth Okyere, a CAPLA visiting assistant professor and Emerging Faculty Fellow, contributed to an article published this summer in Nature Sustainability, which publishes significant original research about sustainability, including policy dimensions and possible solutions.

Noémie Despland-Lichtert joined CAPLA this fall as our second Emerging Faculty Fellow. An accomplished teacher, researcher and practitioner, she spent the last year in Brussels and has also worked at Taliesin West, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Architecture Department of Getty Research Institute, among others.