Design Students Get Educational Mileage from Road-Trip Course

The UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning course titled “Architectures and Spaces of the Southwest” is meeting 24-7 during spring quarter in locales throughout  the American Southwest. 

Encompassing city and canyon, the “road-trip” course is led by David Saile, professor of architecture, and includes visits to the studios of working architects; workshops with archaeology, ecology, building technology, and community- development professionals; study of development trends focusing on retirement, recreation and casinos; and visits to traditional Native American settlements. 

Students in the course are occasionally sending back e-mails and images detailing their activities and experiences.  Below is the latest from architecture student Eric Stear.

May 1, 2005

After spending four weeks based in Tucson, we have spent the last two weeks traveling throughout Arizona, southern Colorado, and New Mexico. Our accommodations ranged from quaint motels along historic Route 66 to campsites without showers.  We spent the first night away from Tucson in Lost Dutchman State Park just east of Phoenix. Several students hiked in the nearby Superstition Mountains while others went into town to pick up some last minute items for our two weeks on the road.

May 2, 2005
This morning we visited Taliesin West, architect Frank Lloyd Wright's experimental winter studio. Later in the day we arrived in Prescott, Ariz., and visited an educational institute interested in sustainable, ecological, and regenerative design.  We had a great talk with the director, Anthony Brown.

After leaving Prescott, we visited nearby Arcosanti, an experimental town in the desert of Arizona built to embody the concept of “arcology” - the fusion of architecture with ecology. In the afternoon we stopped in Jerome, Ariz., a mining town built on the side of a mountain that provided some interesting comparisons to our earlier visit to Bisbee, Ariz. We camped in Dead Horse Ranch State Park. 

May 4-6, 2005
From Dead Horse Ranch State Park, we traveled through Sedona, Ariz. on our way to Flagstaff. Once in Flagstaff we visited the Museum of Northern Arizona and learned a great deal about the Colorado Plateau region where we’ll be for the remainder of our two weeks of travel. In the evening a group of students went to Lowell Observatory and was able to view Jupiter through their 100-year-old Clark Telescope. The next day, we drove to Grand Canyon National Park and spent the day hiking a few miles in the canyon and checking out the various overlooks around the rim of the canyon.

Soon after leaving Flagstaff, we arrived at Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments. Sunset Crater is a 1,000-foot-high cinder cone formed by a volcanic eruption 900 years ago. The ash from the eruption that blanketed the region made the land more fertile and allowed pueblos such as Wupatki to exist. We left Wupatki in the early afternoon and arrived in the Hopi Indian Reservation in time to enjoy authentic Hopi cuisine for dinner at the Hopi Cultural Center.

May 9-11, 2005

Chaco Canyon National Historic Park is the most isolated and desolate place we have stayed so far, but it is perhaps the most impressive. Over the course of the three days in the canyon we gained a great appreciation of the incredible precision and effort that the Chacoan people put into their dwellings and other communal structures. At the heart of Chaco Canyon is Pueblo Bonito, a site that covers three acres of the canyon floor and is believed to be the center of the Chacoan Culture. Nights in Chaco Canyon were just as amazing and awesome as the days. The high altitude and remote location of Chaco Canyon provides some of the best star-gazing in the country. One night we were able to view Saturn through the park's observatory, and another night we enjoyed a ranger-led session of viewing the night sky with the naked eye.

May 13-14, 2005

Mesa Verde in southern Colorado has the largest collection of cliff dwellings in the country, but it also provides a chance to study a more complete history of the ancestral pueblo people with its early pit houses and pueblos located on the tops of the "green tables." We spent our two days at Mesa Verde going on ranger-led and self-guided tours of the various sites in the park. From Mesa Verde we drove to Taos, N.M., where we will be based for the next two weeks.

To read prior e-mails from Eric, go to
http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.asp?id=2644
http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.asp?id=2698