Faculty and students decked the halls of the Environmental Design building with a semester’s worth of design work, highlighting architecture, environmental product design, landscape architecture, and sustainable planning and urban design from all class levels. The ENVD Open House on Dec. 13 marked the sixth iteration of the building-wide exhibit. 

Couldn’t make it this year? Browse through the photo gallery.  

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Last fall, we spoke with Associate Teaching Professor Emily Greenwood to learn more about her third-year landscape architecture studio, Green Schoolyards. At the time, students proposed new schoolyard designs emphasizing learning, creativity, mental health and interactions with nature for six Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) schools. 

According to Greenwood, accepting and advancing the design proposals depends on the needs of each school, availability of funding and district support. Schools aren’t always readily equipped with the resources and support it takes to implement even the most minimal design. 

Over the course of spring and summer 2024, two out of the six BVSD schools have worked to successfully advance their projects from planning to planting. 

Mesa Elementary School in south Boulder used inspiration from student designs to transform its southern courtyard into a . What was once barren soil with few amenities is now an interactive play area with a shaded pergola bench, rock sculpture garden, art gallery and turfed picnic space. 

���Ҵ�ý�ƽ������ one mile east of Mesa Elementary, Fairview High School is also implementing student designs. In their proposal for Fairview, Theodore Johnson Mencimer (ENVD’24) and Logan Shockey (ENVD’25) emphasized supporting student agency through garden therapy and interactive landscapes. The drawings added sensory trails, increased tree canopy and pollinator gardens as intervention to improve mental health and well-being of the high schoolers.

When Fairview expressed interest in implementing aspects of the proposal last fall, the two jumped at the opportunity. They soon realized, however, that moving from planning to implementation can be an arduous process. 

“Most of the work that we did from January till April last semester was less so design and more logistics and communication,” Mencimer described. 

“We had this giant email chain going back and forth,” Shockey elaborated. “It was between us and Fairview and Emily and all these other members of the school district. There was a lot of communication going in all directions.”

Before breaking ground, the two needed to address concerns from invested stakeholders in regard to student safety and maintenance of the greenspaces. This meant determining exact dimensions of tree growth for mowing purposes, narrowing down a list of acceptable non-fruiting tree species, drafting a detailed maintenance document and crafting multiple iterations of design plans to satisfy various school community members. 

"It’s funny how much implementation drives the actual design,” Shockey commented. “It was mostly just slowly convincing the maintenance crew and some other members of the school district to actually let us start installing some landscaping that is not just a grass lawn.” 

Mencimer described the back-and-forth process as useful, albeit tricky and slow moving. “Yeah, I think it was a good experience for both of us, undergoing that real world treatment,” he said. 

What ultimately helped solidify the project was the team’s focus on improving the mental health of the high schoolers and emphasizing the educational benefits of biodiverse spaces, something both the teachers and students asked for during the studio’s initial design feedback sessions. 

Mencimer and Shockey were also grateful to receive direct support from the high schoolers themselves. While the ENVD team conversed with the school board, motivated students from Fairview High fundraised nearly $10,000 to purchase plants and materials. Along with parents and other community members (including Mencimer's mom Kristine Johnson, Principal at Climate Resilient Landscapes), the students also helped Mencimer and Shockey plant the initial 14 trees at the front of the school, completing the first phase of the proposal. 

Despite the hurdles, Mencimer and Shockey acknowledged the importance of their work, especially to provide support for students during a particularly difficult time in their lives. “I think that I have really benefited from working with high school students just because I did not have a good time in high school,” Shockey shared. “The kids at Fairview were really involved and really wanted to help.”

Mencimer, who attended Fairview High, described returning to his old school as cathartic. “The energy that the young people had was really heartwarming,” he noted.

“It feels good to plant trees with a group of people,” Shockey said. “I don't know, there's just something that's very healing about it.” 

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The Program in Environmental Design hosted its Open House exhibition on Dec. 15, 2023. The Open House is a building-wide exhibition of design and research produced by students and faculty during the fall semester. The event was established in 2018 to encourage the connection between students, their peers, alumni and friends, as well as the Boulder community.  

Couldn’t make it this year? Watch the video reel above!

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Sticky metal playgrounds and hot asphalt. Bare patches of dirt on browning soccer fields. Limited shade with no space for solitude and quiet. A small cluster of trees - sometimes. This is what tends to come to mind when we think about a typical schoolyard. Soon, however, six Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) schoolyards may receive a green makeover.  

In the third iteration of the Green Schoolyards Studio, third-year landscape architecture students have spent the past semester analyzing schoolyards, collaborating with school communities, and crafting feasible plans that redesign schoolyards for learning, creativity, mental health, and interactions with nature.  

We spoke with Assistant Teaching Professor Emily Greenwood about how her class approached this monumental task: 

What’s the idea behind “Green Schoolyards”? 
The inspiration came from work I did in my graduate program. A professor at CU Denver started this movement called Learning Landscapes which began with a few schoolyard designs and then became this 15-year-long project of redesigning all 52 Denver public schoolyards. I’m still really involved in the one that I designed from conception through construction. It planted a seed. 

At that time, we realized that schoolyards weren’t just for play - they can also be for learning. Schoolyards are really just public open space that we’ve accidentally set aside. So, taking advantage of them more as this public amenity and not just for play between the hours of nine and three. That’s the Green Schoolyards movement.  

What does the process look like for your students in the studio? 
I tell them that this project is their world, their oyster. They do a pretty good precedent analysis at the beginning and they’re designing it according to how they compiled that initial information. Then all of the student groups do a community engagement activity with students and parents.  

My students love this bit. Kids never get asked questions about what they want their spaces to look like. They can be super imaginative, and we can take those probably unrealistic ideas and make it into something that’s grounded. It’s totally the way to go. Because otherwise you go in and only respond to the site. And that’s such a small piece of the equation. There’s nothing cuter than asking kids what they want to see in their schoolyard. 

My students also did research to understand the mental health piece of the Green Schoolyards movement and then reached out to the community to elicit their feedback as to their needs and constraints. 

Can you tell us more about the mental health piece? 
This is from more modern research - we’re realizing that schoolyards should be play, they should be learning, they should be a community amendment and they could have spaces for all different types of people. There should be quiet spaces, private spaces, thinking spaces. It’s trying to incorporate all of those principles into schoolyard design. 

Are schools designed the same way for all age groups? 
It’s very different. It’s interesting culturally what we think students need. There’s a ton of research on developmental stages, but it feels to me that we kind of abandon them around middle school. I always use the example of swinging – you can’t tell me that a seventh grader doesn’t want to swing. It’s this universal human, self-regulating, nourishing activity that we just kind of pull out from under them at this certain, pretty random age.  

The elementary schools usually are rich with play equipment but not with other learning tools. Middle schools will just have tether ball courts and that’s it. And then there’s high schools – the one we’re working with has a great view of the Flatirons but every space around this school is just totally unprogrammed. The day we visited the sites I was wondering – are we actually making high schools harder for people who are already in the hardest years of their life? They are more easily bored and the mental health crisis in teens is horrifying. Maybe we could help with this.

To find out how redesigning schoolyards might be helping, we sat down with Lily Flanum, Slater Weil, and Danny Eisenstein, some of the students involved in the studio:

What are the main focus areas for your school’s design? 
Lily: We’re mostly focused on designing outdoor classrooms for mental health and incorporating Native land acknowledgment. Rather than just making a plaque we wanted to create a design centered around traditional medicinal herbs for students to learn and interact with. We also put seating in there and color-coded the different plants around it.  

How was the engagement with the students? 
Lily: This is our first community project. I loved it. We had a day where we asked them what their dream playground would be. Would they want more social space, more learning space? Their brains work so differently, they are so imaginative. In design, we’re so used to these standards that we confine ourselves to - why would we ever think outside the box? This one girl wanted tanning chairs and a pool. Other kids just wanted shade and more nature. One kid wanted a horse track. 

Danny: Generally, they wanted creative spaces and more terrain, more things to climb on. It’s very primal: they really just want to crawl around, dig in the dirt.   

Do you think pieces of your project will be implemented? 
Lily: Each school has different parameters. Our school will take our suggestions into account and budget for them. There's a lot of analysis that goes into it and you have to consider what’s actually important to the site and what the kids would actually use. A horse track would be awesome, but it’s also not the most realistic.  

The horse track may not make the cut, but other aspects of the student designs will likely be incorporated in the future. Greenwood elaborated: 

Are these schools going to be able to implement the plans once they are finished? 
Some schools have enough money to execute phase one in the first year, other schools use the material to apply for grants. What happens to those drawings depends on the school’s needs. But they at least have well-designed documents that could be pushed forward through a professional to become something that’s executional. This is part of how I convince the schools to do it. You’re going to have hundreds of donated design hours. Even if it’s not perfect, in the end, you have this amazing tool that saves so much money. 

Do you see growth in your students through this studio?  
Yes, it’s super cool. We all have these preconceived notions of what schoolyards are, largely based on our experience in whatever schools we went to. So, it does feel like as we add more research and better understanding of the precedence, the students understand more of the intricacies of what those spaces could be. It’s beautiful to bring fresh minds into that conversation. 

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The was held Nov. 11-14, 2022, in San Francisco. There was a record turnout in attendees from Environmental Design, which included seven landscape architecture majors, Taylor Atkins, Sean Donovan, Halley Douglas, CJ Ebberly, Theo Johnson and Austin Shoer, and three faculty members, Maggie Aravena, Christy Rogers and Amy Saunders. Aravena was named a . 

“This was my first ASLA conference and I was impressed by the fact the ASLA Climate Initiative was presented in San Francisco–a powerful symbol of how popular culture and sustainable action plans manifest in an urban setting,” ENVD Lecturer Amy Saunders said. 

As a recognized and registered student organization at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Center for Student Involvement (CSI), the Student Affiliate Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and it's members did not have to pay our of pocket for airfare and lodging expenses. To get funding approved, the ASLA student board created a budget and presented it to the Student Organization Allocations Committee (SOAC) funding board. 

"I hope the newsletter helps inspire other ENVD clubs to apply for funding for their disciplines' national conferences or events," ASLA Co-President Austin Shoer said. "It is something I think all clubs should know about and take advantage of. Funding can be used for travel or hosting events at CU.”

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In the summer of 2022, a group of collaborators from the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP), Growing Up Boulder, CEDaR and ENVD began meeting about the concept of eco-healing–the ways in which connecting to nature can help communities process and heal from traumatic disaster events and create educational opportunities around climate change and natural disasters.  

Growing Up Boulder conducted community engagement activities with the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) and students from Whittier Elementary school that focused on exploring emotions around climate change and the super fires of today. Within the first few weeks of the fall 2022 semester, a third-year landscape architecture studio, instructed by Teaching Assistant Professor Emily Greenwood, has expanded on the work carried over from summer.  

Students began their design project with an exploration of emotion and tying that emotional connection into what is typically referred to as the initial research phase. In mid-September, representatives of the multi-agency collaboration presented at the Colorado Open Space Alliance conference on Eco-Healing with youth: Inspiring Emotional Resilience through Wildfire Interpretation and Climate Action. Third-year landscape architecture students will spend the rest of the semester designing interpretive education opportunities along the Marshall Mesa (and adjacent) trailhead that will be presented to OSMP and folded into the future designs for those trailheads.

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The senior landscape architecture capstone studio, Landscape as Agent: Climate Resilience (LAND 4100), instructed by ENVD Instructor Emily Greenwood, launched the spring semester with a research paper that covered a specific theme of climate change, along with a graphic collage that represented their research. The data-driven collages were used as tools to help frame discussions around climate change impacts. The research from this assignment will inform the studio’s next assignment. 

Using various research resources, students could choose from the following climate change vulnerabilities to investigate to create a better understanding of the issue.

• Extreme weather events
• Climate change inequity
• Air quality and carbon emissions
• Ocean health

• Water quality and quantity
• Food security and safety
• Human Health
• Energy Sources

Referencing their new knowledge, students were tasked with creating a tabloid-sized collage using digital and/or analog tools. Using techniques such as layering, the collage could have included compelling graphics such as maps, text, photographs and sketches. 

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At the end of the fall 2021 semester, students from the landscape architecture studio Green Schoolyards: Playgrounds of the Future partnered with Lafayette Open Spaces and Escuela Bilingüe Pioneer Elementary to host a soft opening of the new Lafayette Outdoor Classroom.

Students presented brief examples of the types of outdoor learning that could happen at each station as they welcomed the community to the new space. 

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Over the past two weeks, students in Instructor Siobhan Brooks’ landscape architecture studio have been exploring Boulder County, learning firsthand about the structure of community parks and their role in regional recreational planning. The studio will be collaborating with the City of Longmont’s senior planners and landscape architects to develop masterplan schemes for a future community park in southwest Longmont. 

During the first week, students visited Foothills Community Park, Sandstone Rand and Dry Creek Community Park. This week, students launched their site reconnaissance analysis phase, with a site visit to the 80-acre Sisters of St. Francis property. The studio was accompanied by City of Longmont Senior Project Manager Steve Ransweiler, PLA.

During the first clear and cool day of the semester, Brooks and the students enjoyed marching through the cornfields, hopping across irrigation ditches and investigating riparian zones.

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Students in Instructor Emily Greenwood’s landscape architecture studio, have developed work for their first assignment. Students were asked to reconnect with their own memories of play before launching into designing schoolyards. Through the diversity of their childhood experiences they were able to see the beauty of any child’s natural desire to play, how play becomes interwoven with locality, culture and families, as well as how play resonates over decades of life.

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