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A team of NewSchool of Architecture & Design students earned two out of five awards at the prestigious Cal Poly Design Village 2014 competition on April 11-13, 2014 in the categories of “People’s Choice/Most Contagious” and “Most Habitable.” NewSchool has a long tradition of winning top honors at the annual event, which draws architecture and design students from all over California.

The teams developed entries based on this year’s design competition theme of “Biologics.” The winning NewSchool structure, called “The Rotation of Living,” was inspired by the shape of a cell. The resulting wheel-like design was made of wood sheets, steel tubes and solar panels for the project’s LED lighting. Members of that team, which won the two awards, were: Guillermo Menjivar, Salvador Vicente, Aipeng Fang, and Juan Cruz. Two other NewSchool teams participated in the event. One of the teams – consisting of Alex Angeline, Daniel Facanha, Mallory Boyd and Paula Sigala – created a design inspired by the structure of a sunflower using cables, steel tubing, and seat belt material to create mesh “petals.” Another team built a pyramid-like structure designed to adapt to changing needs, notable for engineering elements such as a leveling mechanism created from chair springs. That team consisted of Ryan Stangl, Devin Lee, Andrew Schiffer, and Guy Hartwig.

For the competition, held by California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., students must carry their materials three-quarters of a mile, build the structure on site, and then live in it for three days and two nights. The class and competition provides NewSchool students with the chance to demonstrate their mastery of creative and functional design, which is emphasized throughout the NewSchool curriculum.

All the NewSchool student teams developed their entries as part of a design studio course at NewSchool. This is at least the seventh time in the past eight years NewSchool school teams have taken home top awards, according to records, though the winning tradition goes back further than that.

A NewSchool of Architecture & Design student received the first place Eco Innovators Award of Excellence during the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s annual ECO Innovators Showcase on May 1, 2014. The organization gave high marks to the design by NewSchool student Nick Wilson, and also noted the school’s “innovative teaching philosophy that inspires… students to develop sustainable environmental solutions.”

The competition, part of the Metropolitan’s annual Spring Green Expo, attracted projects from 20 universities and community colleges throughout Southern California in individual and team categories. Wilson’s project, which was one of three NewSchool entries, featured examples of single-family sustainable “Eco Houses” for desert climates such as Phoenix, Ariz. The project incorporates wind flow patterns and a pond and fountain element to encourage the flow of cool air through the homes, resulting in greater energy efficiency. The concept was developed by Wilson, who is in the Bachelor of Architecture program, under the guidance of NewSchool instructor Don Mirkovich.

The other NewSchool entries included a project by student James Darby that was also guided by Don Mirkovich, and a submission by student Joshua Nunnally that was guided by NewSchool instructor Victor Navarro.

A panel of judges from Metropolitan’s Engineering, Water Resource Management, and External Affairs groups scored the entries for the ECO Innovators Showcase competition, resulting in a tie for top individual honors in the Eco Innovators Award of Excellence category that Wilson received. The event and competition serve to bring awareness to topics related to water conservation and sustainability and includes exhibitions highlighting related technology, products, services, and programs.

Four NewSchool of Architecture & Design students were selected to the finals at the 2014 Red Bull Creation Competition, a 72-hour innovation competition which challenges the nation’s best and brightest makers, hackers, and inventors to innovate around a secret topic.

The project, which was developed in a fourth year Urban Issues class with Luisa Shultz, an instructor at NewSchool of Architecture & Design, was selected as one of six finalists from across the country to compete against five well-established organizations. Competing under the name Tactical Urbanists, this was the only student group selected to compete. Julio A. Media, David Harrison, Anastasia Podolskaya, and Boyd Wheeler traveled to Detroit to participate in the competition. “Our theme is to activate space through problem-solving derived from our urban background mixed with the challenges which will be faced from the competition and the location. With our architectural background, we have attained the ability to look at problems through a different lens than most. One of our greatest strengths is our ability to see hidden potentials in areas which most people would not recognize. Architectural studies have provided us with a diverse background of experience, which allows us to make connections across various topics,” said David Harrison, Co-Founder/Designer.