TUDE 460 Studio VII Projects - Spring 2026

Applen, Laurence

This capstone project focused solely within the bounds of the University of Washington Tacoma campus, working to provide solutions to deficits found within the adopted Bjarke Ingels Group 2025 master plan. Our team primarily focused on South 19th between Fawcett Avenue and Market Street, working within the right-of-way and owned campus lots.

Punsalan, Bryden

Bryden Punsalan's designs have developed towards focusing on the whole community of the area attempting to design spaces to engage and areas of collaboration. During T UDE 350, the project was focused on the redevelopment of the Thea Foss Waterway with the development of Maritime 253. The focus of his individual project was the rehabilitation of the 11th Street DIY Skatepark and the railway between St Paul Avenue and E 15th Street. With the development of the project in T UDE 450, we followed a collaborative approach to critique the master plan for the future development of the UW Tacoma campus to generate new ideas for what could potentially be developed. The primary concern that Bryden voiced during class sessions and presentations was the lack of ADA access and parking.

 

Perez, Ariana Orozco

For the 2026 Urban Design capstone project, we were assigned the reimagination of what the future holds of UW Tacoma. Our first quarter on the project, Autumn 2025, was spent analyzing and heavily critiquing the BIG masterplan, where we took away major focal points to proceed with into our design process. In the next quarter, Winter 2026, our group planned and conducted a Community Engagement campaign around student commuting patterns, in hope to gain a better understanding on the needs of students for parking. Our final quarter on the project, Spring 2026, was spent on a collaboration project with the 2026 Senior Civil Engineering cohort to redesign both 19th street and Jefferson Ave with more technical focus, before finally wrapping up the process with individual designs to reimagine different areas on campus.

Eilert, Samantha

With my design approach, I am looking to lean into the character and personality of Tacoma. Tacoma has an old growth forest within it’s city limits (Point Defiance) and is well known for it’s thriving glass artistry being the hometown of Dale Chihuly. As such, I am looking to abandon the viewshed that the UWT Master Plan is proposing and instead looking to create courtyards with relatively dense greenery throughout the campus to mirror the already started micro forest. To lean into the glass art, I am looking to add glass overhangs to buildings and have a glass-covered public space allowing people to enjoy the outdoors despite inclement weather. Finally, I am looking to play with the topography of the site by utilizing creative architecture to move up the hill in an ADA friendly way.

Cao, Nam

Luke Keser and I chose to work on the Public Spaces and Tacoma’s Rain Problem topic because of our interest in using public space design to provide shelter for students and community members during Tacoma’s rainy seasons. We also wanted to address the master plan’s depiction of year-round sunny weather, as presented by B.I.G., which does not accurately reflect Tacoma’s climate.

As future development based on the master plan moves forward, many of the mature trees surrounding the UW Tacoma campus may be removed. The plan currently provides little information regarding the preservation of existing trees or efforts to protect them. Therefore, my focus within this group will be on maintaining natural canopy coverage and exploring ways to preserve these mature trees while still achieving one of the master plan’s primary goals: creating a green corridor that frames and enhances views of Mount Rainier. By balancing environmental preservation with campus development, the project can better support sustainability, biodiversity, and the overall quality of public spaces on campus.

Keser, Luke

In mid 2025, the University of Washington and the Bjarke Ingels group architecture firm released a campus master plan for the UW Tacoma campus, showcasing the schools plan to expand from a commuter college to a full-time university, bringing the campus up to Tacoma avenue and installing new student housing, academic facilities as well as a campus dining hall. This was compiled into a 229 page document which was sent out to students via email. As the first senior cohort to come in after the release of this master plan, it was our task to discover shortcomings and propose our own designs to make a better campus. In terms of design scale, our focus was solely on the University Campus, not beyond. We did put focus onto how the campus will connect with the rest of the city of Tacoma but did not design outside of the campus boundaries. Our focus also was primarily on public spaces such as roads, social spaces, pathways, plazas and parks, not on buildings or interiors.