ENV Downtown was my Senior Degree Project at Cal Poly Pomona. The proposal is for a new facility for the College of Environmental Design of Cal Poly Pomona in downtown Pomona.

As a concept, the idea of a College of Environmental Design is a unique one. The model at Cal Poly Pomona is unique in that it brings together the departments most relevant to our built environment—Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Planning, and Art—in an attempt to promote interdisciplinary exchange. A lack of facilities, however, means that these programs are dispersed throughout Cal Poly’s campus, making interdepartmental interactions all but non-existent.

The proposed facility provides a place in which to house the College as a whole, and this facility is integrated into historic Downtown Pomona in an attempt to better connect it to an urban context.
Within the building, then, there comes a need to provide a connective tissue that would integrate the departments on a deeper level than simply the sharing of facilities. The College of Environmental Design Downtown Facility, then, is an investigation into the concept of hyper-connectivity within the program and site.

Much research went into the development of the ciruclution system employed in the ENV Downtown facility. In attempting to create a hyper-connected building it is necessary to investigate the and be critical of various vertical and horizonatl connective typologies – atrium spaces, open floor plans, etc. – and the spatial experience each possesses. The ENV Downtown facility is informed by these various canons of architecture and attempts to synthesize the methods employed in these projects to create a hyper-connected state.