Architecture Professor of Practice Takes Arizona Daily Star Readers on a Southern Arizona Road Trip

Nov. 7, 2022
Who
Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr, Assistant Professor of Practice in Architecture
What
Favorite Places Editorial for Arizona Daily Star
Where
Southern Arizona's Madrean Archipelago
Categories
Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr. and truck

Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr surveys the Madrean Archipelago of Southern Arizona at sunset. Photo by David Fenster and Jandro Davalos.

“There is a place in Baja Arizona that rests in my memory and daydreams, more as a passage than an arrival to a specified destination,” writes Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr in a November 5 Arizona Daily Star editorial. “A confluence of history, cultures, landscapes, biomes and folklore. It is as much defined by the roads, trails and stories that lead you from the Tucson basin into the valleys and high desert grasslands of the Madrean Archipelago.”

Robles, an architecture assistant professor of practice at the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, takes the reader along for a ride in his trusty pickup truck as part of the newspaper’s “Favorite Places” series. Robles narrates the spare beauty of the 80-mile drive on the two-lane road between the Santa Rita and Whetstone Mountains, though Sonoita, and into the Patagonia Mountains.

Enjoy the drive with Robles via the Arizona Daily Star or watch the video:

Robles, who joined CAPLA in 2013, is a principal at DUST Architects, an award-winning studio grounded firmly in the tactile, in pursuit of the intangible. The studio, as well as his teaching at UArizona, explore ideas and ethics rooted in a reverent intimacy with craft and place through endeavors into the essential and the timeless.

  

Subscribe to The Studio

Sign up for CAPLA's monthly e-newsletter to get the latest news and events, insights from faculty and leadership, profiles of students and alumni and more.

Subscribe Now

Latest CAPLA News, Projects and Profiles

arc 201

Gather Light: ARC 201

Students in CAPLA’s ARC 201 studio, guided by faculty including Christopher Domin and others, completed the "Gather Light" project focused on understanding and designing in harmony with the Sonoran Desert environment. Through observation, drawing, and modeling, students explored how light, nature, and architecture interact. Key activities involved studying desert plants, translating their forms into design systems, and developing canopies that filter light and enhance outdoor spaces. The project emphasized hands-on learning, teamwork, and iterative design using 2D and 3D representations to create thoughtful architectural interventions that respect and respond to the desert landscape.

Chris Tucker Design Pedagogy Award

Lecturer Christopher Tucker wins AIA Design Pedagogy Award for innovative Abiotic Studio

Christopher Tucker, a lecturer in architecture at CAPLA, received the American Institute of Architects’ Design Pedagogy Award for his Abiotic Studio, a fourth-year course that challenges students to engage with ecological realities and reimagine post-industrial landscapes through more-than-human perspectives.

See More