LOADING PROJECT

Hesperovida
Species-Inspired Joshua Tree Hiking Shelter

Utilizing the traits of two species local to California's Joshua Tree National Park, one a plant and one an animal, students worked towards designing a hiking shelter on the same desert site where people could stop for temporary resting. Hesperovida's two species of inspiration are the Hesperocalus Undulata, a white lily, and the Sceloporus Occidentalis Longipes, a type of dessert lizard. While both species are, overall, greatly different from one another, they share many common traits, such as intraconnectivity (that is, they are highly social only within their own species, as opposed to interconnectivity), hiding underground for temperature regulation, as well as the ability to store massive reserves of water within themselves. Hesperovida, literally "Hesperocalis Undulata + Vida", is a tailored experience of what it'd be like to live in one of these species; to live in the underground layers of an aquifer-like body that shimmers to life when reflecting back on the dry desert landscape.

ELAC Environmental Design 102 / June 2021 / with Professor Alexis Navarro