The Studio
How the CAPLA community is building a changing world.
In The Studio, you'll find stories, thought leadership, profiles, and project narratives and galleries by and about the CAPLA community of faculty, staff, alumni and students.
The Studio
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Highlighting the Class of 2025: Ollie Freshour, SBE
Ollie Freshour is graduating with a BS in Sustainable Built Environments with an emphasis in Sustainable Buildings. As an online student, Ollie made the most of their experience traveling from Indiana to Tucson to connect with the CAPLA community and explore the ENR2 Building. From designing a sustainable park in Elkhart to planning a future as a certified arborist, Ollie is ready to make a lasting impact on urban environments.
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Architecture students earn top honors in BuildingsNEXT Student Design Competition
Three student teams from the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture competed in the 2025 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) BuildingsNEXT Student Design Competition, with two teams earning Honorable Mention—the highest recognition awarded in this year’s competition.
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Highlighting the Class of 2025: Annamaria Pongratz BLA
Annamaria Pongratz is graduating with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and a minor in Art History. Reflecting on her time at CAPLA, she shared how the experience shaped her as both a designer and collaborator. This fall, she’ll continue her academic journey as a graduate student at CAPLA. One of her proudest achievements? Designing a sensory garden for a children’s museum in her planting design class—a project that reflects her creativity and care for inclusive, engaging spaces.
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Architecture students design and build shelter to serve Tucson's unhoused
For their final capstone project, architecture students designed and built a prototype 8-by-12-foot micro-shelter that they hope lays the groundwork for a network of similar shelters for unhoused people in Southern Arizona.
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Highlighting the Class of 2025: Jedidiah Perea, B.Arch
After graduation, Jedidiah Perea is heading to Spain before starting his path to licensure. He reflects on his time at CAPLA as transformative, with late nights in studio and meaningful project, especially a sustainable housing design for the Hopi Tribe, shaping him into a stronger designer.
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Projects
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Course: ARC 201 | Professors Christopher Domin, Oscar Lopez, Stefan Mostert, Mike Silver, and Siri Trumble | Students: Ava Beveridge & Katie Sweiven
Gather Light: Ava Beveridge '28 & Katie Sweiven ‘28 B.Arch
For the ARC 201 Design Studio, students worked on defining a shadow caster threshold in a publicly accessible space. The "Gather Light" project was led by professors Christopher Domin, Oscar Lopez, Stefan Mostert, Mike Silver, and Siri Trumble.
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Museum of the All Souls Procession: Merle Weisshaupt '26 B.Arch
The architecture of Tucson's Museum of the All Souls Procession serves as a daily reminder of multicultural strength, bridging past and future. The museum's design embodies the procession, uniting history and modernity with weathered steel and wood, mirroring the cyclical renewal of tradition.
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The Temporal Passage: Jacob Downard '22 B.Arch
The architecture of The Temporal Passage responds to the site's volcanic conditions by being conceptually rooted in scale, time and the moving materials of our living earth in an attempt to convey the magnitude of these natural forces. It further explores the spatial and conceptual juxtapositions between the human-operated straight line and the ensured chaos of nature.