ENV
DEAN’s If only ENV were the subject of a hit mini-series on HBO or a summer blockbuster movie.…
I frequently hear from alumni, parents of current students, our allies at high schools and community colleges, and readers of ENVirons that our College of Environmental Design is still too much of a mystery. ENV is doing well at producing graduates ready to compete in the job market, but we’re still a well-kept secret. That is the simple idea underlying our upcoming ENV Festival, which will showcase the world of environmental design at Cal Poly Pomona, highlighting the diverse and sometimes awe-inspiring work and interests of our faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Several years ago, The New Yorker magazine launched the New Yorker Festival with events springing up in October at locations around New York City. The New Yorker Festival would stage events and a staff writer would interview a prominent author, movie director or actor; spend a morning touring the Frick Museum; or interview a musician interspersed with snippets of the musician performing songs. In some ways, the New Yorker Festival is like the magazine, but it happens in front of or with a live audience. We are hoping the ENV Festival will have the same effect, but instead of bringing life to the magazine, the ENV Festival will educate the outside world about the meaning of environmental design and the disciplines that comprise it, and the potential for ENV’s role in making the world a be er place through environmental design. By scheduling the festival for October and November (which happens to coincide with the Cal Poly Pomona application period for undergraduate freshmen and transfer student admissions for fall semester 2018), we will use the festival to reach out to an audience of prospective applicants, their families, friends, teachers and counselors. Think of it as an academic potluck. An ENV Festival may appeal to an audience that might not recognize the term environmental design, but is intellectually curious or is at least receptive to learning what it means. Maybe they’ve heard of Frank Lloyd Wright or Frank Gehry. Maybe they’ll give you a funny look if you say landscape architect or urban planner (but they’ve heard of the High Line). They might look blank the first time you try to explain the difference between graphic design and visual communication design, or bring up regenerative studies. But they know that “design” and “environment” mean something. They may have a passion for fighting climate change. Or conserving water. Housing the poor. Inventing the next killer app. Vertical farming. Figuring out whether robotics and autonomous technology can make city life more humane. Bringing an element of beauty or grace to a hardscrabble world. The unifying theme of the ENV Festival is “Design the Future.” Whether you design publications and websites, preserve historic buildings,
run a farmers market, write code for a national park app, fight groundwater contamination, analyze housing data, sketch production design for opera companies or theme parks, experiment with homeless shelter Dean Woo documenting mysterious urban phenomena designs, or design landscapes for in Ortigia, Sicily. community care facilities, you’re part of ENV’s mission to make the world be er by designing the future. We’re also going to emphasize this unifying theme in our outreach to high schools and community colleges. An ENV Festival, like ENV itself, isn’t going to change the world overnight. But we’ll have fun pu ing it on. Think of the ENV Festival as a version of pursuing truth in the company of friends. I’ll start by telling you how I plan to contribute to the ENV Festival. In October 2016, recreating a truly unique experience I had in summer school a ending USC’s Urban Semester program in 1972, ENV offered an all-night bus tour of downtown L.A. The point was to show people some important aspects of city life that are invisible when you go to sleep at night. We started at a downtown art gallery then went to the emergency room at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, the central area Los Angeles Police Department station, the all-night construction site for the downtown regional connector, and finished at a wholesale produce company. We’re pu ing on another all-night bus tour Tuesday, Nov. 7, with an all-new downtown itinerary. For those who prefer to move around during the day, I’ll lead a Sunday walking tour of Hollywood on Oct. 22, starting with lunch at the Hollywood Farmers Market (of which I was a co-founder), and then walking around Hollywood to learn what makes that unique community tick. To close the ENV Festival in late November, I am working on an ENV-sponsored symposium in downtown Los Angeles on the advent of autonomous vehicles and their implications for architecture, planning and the future of cities. You may have to wait for the ENV mini-series on HBO or the ENV summer blockbuster. But check the ENV website for a complete and upto-date calendar, and please join us for some of the ENV Festival events running from mid-October to late November.
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Very truly yours,
Michael K. Woo Fall \ 3 \
