Students to Lead Community Workshop in Owens Valley  (Press Release)

Pomona, CA – Designing the future landscape of Owens Valley will the subject of a community workshop and resource fair in Bishop on October 15th, 2012. Seventy California State Polytechic University Pomona Landscape Architecture students will engage the local Owens Valley community in the design process at Methodist Center from 6pm to 8pm. The Landscape Architecture students will be visiting Owens Valley that week as they learn how to design large-scale sustainable infrastructure systems as part of the Cal Poly Pomona’s Aqueduct Futures Project.

‘One hundred years ago at the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, William Mulholland said, “There it is, take it.”’ It is now time to “give back” to the Owens Valley’, says Assistant Professor Barry Lehrman of Cal Poly Pomona’s Landscape Architecture program and director of the Aqueduct Futures Project. ‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct was designed over one hundred years ago to just supply water and power. However, infrastructure in the 21st Century needs to provide cultural and ecological uses too.’ The Aqueduct Futures Project’s mission is to enhance the resilience of water infrastructure, habitation and ecology in California.

Cal Poly students are creating an exhibition, website, and k-12 water curriculum through a series of interdisciplinary courses taught by faculty from Landscape Architecture, Graphic Design, Computer Science, Geologic Science, Geography and Anthropology, and Regenerative Studies. A $100,000 gift to the College of Environmental Design is funding the Aqueduct Futures Project to commemorate the Centennial of the Los Angeles Aqueduct on November 5th, 2013.

“Many people in Southern California take water for granted,” said Michael Woo, Dean of Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design. “Professor Lehrman’s project commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Los Angeles Aqueduct reflects our University’s commitment to educating future environmental design professionals and the general public about the fact that life as we know it in Southern California would be impossible without access to water.”

All Owens Valley residents are welcome at this free event. Doors at the Methodist Center (205 North Fowler Street, Bishop, California 93514) open at 6pm for the resource fair with community groups and local agencies. The design workshop will run 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Please RSVP and get additional event details are at: www.OwensValleyFutures.eventbright.com If your organization is interested in participating in the resource fair, please email:

Barry Lehrman is the Aqueduct Futures Project’s principal investigator and lead instructor. He joined the Landscape Architecture faculty at Cal Poly Pomona in 2011, after teaching at the University of Minnesota and practicing as a landscape architect in Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. Prof. Lehrman wrote about the connection between Owens Valley and Los Angeles in: Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles (ACTAR, 2008), based on his University of Pennsylvania Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) Thesis that designed an alternate dust control landscape for Owens Lake Playa.

He is the lead author for a chapter in Sustainable Energy Landscapes: Designing, Planning and Development (Taylor and Francis, 2012) about the Zero+ Campus Project at the University of Minnesota. As 2012 Case Study Investigation Research Fellow for the Landscape Architecture Foundation (Washington, DC), he led a team of Cal Poly Pomona MLA students investigating landscape performance of projects around Southern California.


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