For their winter term final project, architecture students from NewSchool instructors Michael Riggin, Philipp Bosshart, and Hussein Munaim’s AR202 design studio developed conceptual designs for a ranger station in San Diego’s Florida Canyon area. The popular hiking area includes three miles trails and it is located along the east side of the city’s famous Balboa Park and San Diego Zoo.

The class was divided into teams of three students and each team was assigned a different spot along the canyon to serve as their case study for the hypothetical ranger station, resulting in 52 unique projects. Models of the ranger stations were then presented during finals week, and put into place on a single site model surface that was created to replicate the façade of the canyon.

The design studio, informally titled Canyon Logic, is an example of how San Diego’s unique urban and rural geography serves as inspiration for design studio projects. For a previous design studio, Riggin had students research and visit the Borrego Springs desert, about two hours from San Diego, to design an observatory for a private lot in the desert.