Each year Helen Erickson brings together graduate students in her preservation planning course with neighborhood residents on a project designed to benefit the community. This year they created the Tucson Community Treasures app.
“What I love most is bringing the history of a place to the surface for people to see. When people understand the larger context of a building, site or city, they have a deeper appreciation for it.”
“Everything I do as an artist and architect comes into my teaching methodology. I try to think about problems creatively and research them through a multitude of lenses. I expect the same of my students.”
In March and April 2021, Laura Hollengreen will lead an online UArizona humanities seminar that examines four sacred sites—Qalʿat Simʿān, Constantinople, Conques and Chartres—to find evolving concepts of sanctity and forms of cultic practice in medieval sociopolitical context.
CAPLA Dean Nancy Pollock-Ellwand discusses the importance of heritage conservation and the fascinating work she does as a "mission expert" and former co-chair of the World Heritage Evaluation Panel for the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).
CAPLA's 15-unit, five-course Graduate Certificate in Heritage Conservation relaunched this summer, and students both on campus and off may complete the certificate, which prepares students from a variety of backgrounds for practice in fields such as heritage conservation, cultural resource management and historic preservation.
Helen Erickson published the essay “Buffalo Soldiers on the Southwest Border” in The Field, the blog of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Professional Practice Network. The essay explores the historic Black landscape of Camp Naco.
Robert Vint, assistant professor of practice in architecture at CAPLA, was profiled in the Summer 2021 issue of Preservation Magazine for his conservation work on San Xavier del Bac, the landmark “White Dove of the Desert” mission located south of Tucson, Arizona.
School of Landscape Architecture and Planning Assessment Coordinator Kelly Eitzen Smith, who also serves as project coordinator for the Native Peoples Technical Assistance Office, helped create and launch the new Native American Advancement, Initiatives and Research (NAAIR) web portal.
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.
The Camp Naco story map tells the story of the still-standing adobe Buffalo Soldier cavalry camp and its meaning both to the descendants of these soldiers and to African American members of the military and their families.
Assistant Professor of Architecture Courtney Crosson has been appointed director of the University of Arizona’s Drachman Institute by CAPLA Dean Nancy Pollock-Ellwand. Crosson's introduction was combined with a project showcase on April 13 in a "relaunch" of this important, community-focused institute.