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Spring 2024

Design, Construction

Map of eastern Washington state with label that reads Project Malden
Winter 2023

Designs for Malden by WSU student landscape architects

As the small Eastern Washington town of Malden builds back from a devastating 2020 wildfire, Washington State University landscape architecture students visited and helped with re-⁠envisioning the town and its public spaces.

After talking with residents, the students looked to the future of the town while honoring its past. Their ideas, which you can see below, include a conceptual design for a new town square, a fire monument, updates to Malden’s park, and more.

Click on each image to view each PDF presentation

» More …

Line drawing illustration of cohousing building
Summer 2023

An introduction to cohousing

What exactly are cohousing and intentional communities?

Cohousing is a way of living where people choose to share space with their neighbors, get to know them, and look after them.

Architect Grace Kim (’93 Arch.) explains the idea, and its many benefits, in her 2017 TED Talk video below. Continue on for more resources on cohousing.

 

 

Learn more

It takes a village (WSM, Summer 2023)

Cohousing communities and more information at the Cohousing Association of the United States

Northwest Intentional Communities Association

Close up black and white profile of Rudolph Weaver
Summer 2023

Weaving a tradition: The architect behind the President’s House

Visions of the past still resonate from what former President Enoch Bryan, writing in his memoir, remembered as “that beautiful corner of campus.” Work on a new home for the Washington State College president began there in 1912.

Sprawled across a grassy knoll, its elaborate garden-side façade remains visible behind thick foliage. More than a century since its completion, the newly re-dedicated Ida Lou Anderson House remains the premier representative of a transformational moment in the planning and design of the college grounds.

Designed by architect Rudolph Weaver, the new house for the college president offered a distinct example of the Georgian Revival: a … » More …

Summer 2022

Permanence

The ancient Roman architect Vitruvius conceived of three primary virtues for structures: beauty, utility, and firmitas, a term that can be translated as permanence. Naturally, buildings can’t be crafted to last through time immemorial. What is permanence if even stone monuments wear away into sand?

Moreover, as Washington State University architecture professor Ayad Rahmani asks in this issue’s essay, maybe the longevity of structures should be questioned. Rahmani writes about Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic view of buildings and their inevitable decay, and that we should perhaps consider their “measured return to the earth.”

We don’t really expect our buildings to last forever, but we rely … » More …