Projects & Other Work

CAPLA faculty, students and alumni create projects and other work that are wide-ranging and far-reaching—always with an eye towards a more sustainable built environment.

View summaries and image galleries of this dynamic work:

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Casa Verde render

UArizona Architecture Students Make Impact on – and are Impacted by – 2023 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge

Two B.Arch student teams made the finals of this year's Solar Decathlon Design Challenge, while the Casa Verde team took third place in the Attached Housing Division. As much as we tout the students’ success, however, the more significant impact is on the students themselves.

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Guess That Arroyo cover

Architecture Lecturer Bill Mackey’s Book ‘Guess That Arroyo’ Sheds Playful Light on the Tucson Region Watershed

“Arroyos on the desert are magic,” writes CAPLA Lecturer in Architecture Bill Mackey in the introduction to his new bilingual book Guess That Arroyo: Tucson, developed in collaboration with the Watershed Management Group's River Run Network.

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Urban forestry work

Feature on Tucson Urban Food Forest in the Guardian Quotes Sustainable Built Environments Professor Ladd Keith

A March 21, 2023 feature on Tucson’s Dunbar/Spring neighborhood in The Guardian, “‘A living pantry’: how an urban food forest in Arizona became a model for climate action,” quotes CAPLA Assistant Professor of Planning and Sustainable Built Environments Ladd Keith.

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SBE faculty and students in the UArizona Community Garden

Sustainable Built Environments Students Cultivate More Than Community in the UArizona Community Garden

At the beginning of the Spring 2023 semester, students in the University of Arizona Bachelor of Science in Sustainable Built Environments and Minor in Sustainable Built Environments programs joined together at the UArizona Community Garden to grow fruits, vegetables and other plants while cultivating their own community. This is their story.

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Biosphere 2

Reimagining the City in a Changing World: UArizona Hosts Inaugural Urban Humanities Global (Un)Conference

The inaugural Urban Humanities Global (Un)Conference held in Tucson March 3-5, 2023 will draw close to a hundred scholars, practitioners and community leaders to the Sonoran Desert to chart a path forward for the next generation of spatial transdisciplinary research, design and public engagement.

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Mary Hardin and architecture students

UArizona Distinguished Professor Mary Hardin Wins ACSA Design-Build Award for Stadium Rowhouses

University Distinguished Professor of Architecture Mary Hardin has been awarded an ACSA 2023 Design-Build Award for Stadium Rowhouses: Macro to Micro. One of just four national Design-Build Award recipients, Hardin leads hands-on design-build projects with undergraduate and graduate architecture students at UArizona.

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Downtown San Francisco

CAPLA and Other UArizona Deans Share Insights on Transdisciplinary Applied Humanities Program

At the 2023 Modern Languages Association Convention in San Francisco, CAPLA Dean Nancy Pollock-Ellwand joined COH Dorrance Dean Alain-Phillippe Durand, CALS Dean Shane Burgess and Eller College of Management Dean Karthik Kannan to discuss the innovative Bachelor of Arts in Applied Humanities, including the Spatial Organization & Design Thinking emphasis area in partnership with CAPLA.

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Bisbee Center for Jazz section by Sal Arellano

UArizona Undergraduate Architecture Students Focus on Universal Design for Prize Funded by AGM and Ascension Wheelchair Lifts

For the third year in a row, UArizona architecture students participated in a universal design competition that put their creative and analytical skills to the test on a significantly sloped site. Thanks to AGM Container Controls and Ascension Wheelchair Lifts, the winning students received a total of $7,400 in prizes.