The Persistence of Vision, by Patrick Kelty (LARCH 2018) and Antonio Baldazo (ARCE 2019) will forever be a special part of the Cal Poly campus thanks in part to support from The Alliance community, through generous donations to the Hasslein Fund for student-led interdisciplinary projects.

The project team constructed an entryway and donor recognition sign welcoming visitors to the Poly Canyon “Experimental Practices Laboratory.” The project gained University-wide recognition and was featured in a Summer 2018 “Rites of Passage” article in the Cal Poly Magazine. As part of the grant, The Alliance requested that the students create a special video documenting their project progress in addition to the excellent final report.

The students joined us for an interview in March 2018 and shared the story of the genesis of their project. While volunteering with the College to clear out space within desks and shelves that were being repurposed, they stumbled across a book called “The Vision” which told the story of the history of the College, the legacy of Founding Dean George Hasslein, and the special spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration that is the cornerstone of the magic of the Cal Poly education.

The Vision book became a powerful inspiration throughout the evolution of their project and created the impetus for the students to create a lasting permanent project on campus. They were inspired by the stories of the earliest generations of students who are now captains of industry, and the amazing student-designed and constructed projects they created while studying at Cal Poly, such as the Building 10 pedestrian bridge, and the creative structures in Poly Canyon including the shell house, the elephant domes, and bridge house,

The students were concerned that legacy of learn-by-doing that was so energized in the 60’s and 70’s when most of the major Poly Canyons structures were created was fading, and that the academic curriculum rarely shared this rich history. They lamented that students today are too quick to refer to Poly Canyon as the “architectural graveyard,” and they set out to redefine the place as a central purpose of their project, as the “Experimental Practices Laboratory”, as it was referred to by George from the very beginning.

So they went to work on a visionary placemaking project, collaborating with the inspired landscape architecture vision of Patrick Kelty, and the architectural engineering problem solving of Antonio Baldazo. Over the course of several months this student duo succeeded in reviving the vitality of the Poly Canyon entry way and engaged their own educational journey with the special interdisciplinary, hands-on, profession-connected education that George Hasslein ensured was a central part of the Cal Poly CAED pedagogy throughout the formative years of the College.