Student Work Exhibitions

Student Shows

Architecture students are required to display their work at several student shows during their time with us. A selection of images from various shows are found on this page.

Student Work Gallery

We are proud to showcase our students' work! Visit this page to see work from first through fifth year students.

paraSITE Project

The paraSITE project occurs at the midpoint of the First Year program and offers first year students the opportunity to utilize the concepts and skills that they have acquired to that point to engage in an investigation into material, context, and the human scale. Working in groups of four, students are assigned a specific location on the Architecture Building to serve as a site. Each site is carefully drawn and modeled, and the students begin to learn about the influences, both tangible and intangible, that makes their specific site unique. Sketches, watercolors, photographs, rubbings, as well as the creation of temporary instruments are employed to discover ideas about forces at work on their site such as traffic, temperature, materiality, texture, wind, light, and mood. Using this information, each group creates a paraSITE, which is temporarily attached to building while displaying a high quality of craft in joinery and materials, and serves to highlight a site-specific condition through human interactivity. 

Vellum Exhibitions

Vellum Design Build and the College of Architecture and Environmental Design (CAED) initiated almost a decade ago (2004) a design competition and exhibition that encourages participants - mostly students, from the California Polytechnic State University, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo - to create original furniture designs and have their submissions juried by a panel of experts in their field. Intended to inspire creative thought and challenge participants to press the boundaries of design, the Vellum Competition offers a tangible experience and exposure to the industry.

5th year Architecture Show

Each year Cal Poly fifth-year architecture students have come together to showcase their senior design projects at an annual exhibition in the Chumash Auditorium.  Each year’s exhibition is planned, organized, and curated by the fifth year student body, under the direction of the Fifth-Year Architecture Student Committee, in order to highlight the unique character of that class, and to showcase the exceptional thesis design projects of the fifth year architecture students.  The 13th annual exhibition, titled UNLICENSED, will provide the opportunity for the fifth-year class to display their architectural talent and innovativeness to their peers, community, family members, prospective employers and supporters of Cal Poly’s College of Architecture & Environmental Design.

Updated 08.08.16