Contact: Tom di Santo
805-234-1727; tdisanto@calpoly.edu  

SAN LUIS OBISPO — Cal Poly’s College of Architecture and Environmental welcomes visitors to the 22nd annual Vellum Furniture Design Exhibition and Competition, a juried competition of hundreds of original student furniture designs, in downtown San Luis Obispo on Nov. 7-8.

Vellum Design Build, a San Luis Obispo design-build firm, is partnering with the college and the Architecture Department to sponsor the annual competition, which challenges students to conceive and construct projects ranging from tables and chairs to light fixtures, toys and other furniture design solutions.

The reception will begin at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, and the display will remain open Saturday, Nov. 8, from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Both are free and open to the public. This year’s venue is at 876 Marsh St. (the site of the former California Pizza Kitchen), near the Downtown Centre 7 Cinema.

“This competition reconfirms the notion that students can seek validation in their work through the design and fabrication of small-scale full-scale realizations to refine their design language and to test out body-scaled straightforward use programs such as seating, lighting and tables,” said Tom di Santo, Vellum co-organizer and a Cal Poly architecture professor. “It is amazing to see so many brilliant examples of Learn by Doing that the students achieve in such a short period of time.”

The Vellum competition provides a real-life test case, employing budgets, materials and engagement with suppliers, fabricators and manufacturers, along with real design timelines and construction schedules, which are not typically incorporated into academic enterprises, he said. The beauty of the annual competition is that roughly half the entries have a critical take, pushing the agenda of the students’ design discourse; the other half are beautiful works of functional art. Going further, most of the pieces support a critical argument in design while also providing unique examples of the Vitruvian triad of firmness, commodity and delight.

About 200 Cal Poly students are participating in this year’s exhibition. Designs must be original and fabricated by each student or team of students. Their projects will be judged on function, individuality and beauty by a panel of experts in their field. The student or team of students who design the top project (The Space Architects’ Milano Grand Prize) will have the opportunity to travel to Milan, Italy, next April for Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the world’s largest furniture fair.

The Vellum Furniture Design Exhibition and Competition opening will coincide with San Luis Obispo’s “Art After Dark,” so visitors are in for a creative evening of functional and visual art.

About the College of Architecture and Environmental Design

With more than 1,900 students, Cal Poly’s acclaimed College of Architecture and Environmental Design is the only program of its type in the nation with nine-degree programs in five closely related departments: architectural engineering; architecture, city and regional planning; construction management; and landscape architecture. For more than half of a century, the CAED programs and 16,000 alumni have been a positive influence on the forces that shape the planning, design and construction worlds.