Dean’s Note

DEAN’sENV

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