Cal Poly SLO

Varied outdoor spaces among the residential buildings encourage outdoor life, opening to a large lawn with an amphitheater and a courtyard with volleyball and basketball courts. The community is richly programmed with natural features, gardens, contemplative spaces, and bike paths, offering every student the opportunity to be engaged. Mustang Way leads through the center of the community toward the heart of central campus.

To break up the visual mass of the building, the design team clustered windows together and offset the façade horizontally across the long elevations. L-shaped sunshades shield windows from the top and from one side, mitigating solar heat gain and adding variety and texture to the facades. Monumental architectonic forms contain the living rooms and study spaces, which extend all the way through the buildings and feature expansive glazing to bring in natural light.

To give students an even deeper sense of rootedness in the local landscape, the university partnered with the local Northern Chumash tribe - yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini ­- to provide direction for creating environmental graphics for each of the residence halls. These graphics tell the stories of the landscape of seven Northern Chumash villages along the Central Coast, including flora and fauna. Each residence hall draws its name from a tribal village: elewexe, nipumuʔ, tiłhini, tsɨtqawɨ, tšɨłkukunɨtš, tsɨtpxatu, and tsɨtkawayu.

Interior art on concrete walls tell each building’s main landscape story as well as individual substories that add depth. Within each building, every floor has its own wall art reflecting elements of the main story (ground floor) and substories (upper floors). The wall art, which was approved by the tribal team, was applied with stencils and hand-painting. The goal is to increase students’ respect for the land and its ecosystems, for each other, and for the cultural heritage of the place they live.