CLAIRE MORRIS
Hi there! My name is Claire Morris and I am a 5th year landscape architecture major with minors in sustainable environments and integrated marketing communications at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I have a passion for design and am excited to showcase it through my senior capstone project, Kapule Palms, in June 2018.
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."
- Aldo Leopold
DID YOU KNOW?
YOU CAN FIND ME...
at the beach, any time of day or night. My favorite place to be is at the water, where I can hear the waves crash onto the shore and watch the sun kiss the horizon, day in and day out. You might even find me sketching or painting there!
MY FAVORITE PASS TIME IS...
travel! I recently studied abroad in Italy, studying landscape architecture (and gelato). While there, I visited eight other countries, immersing myself into each culture as much as I could. The travel bug is real!
MY GREATEST LOVE IS...
our very own mother earth. Whether it's hiking through the Grand Tetons or simply walking to class, nature always finds a way to amaze me each and every day. Like I always say, find beauty in everything!
ASK MEÂ ANYTHING
The Answers You’ve Been Looking For
HOW DID YOU GET INTO LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE?
My grandfather, Frank Morris,  was an architect and his best friend, Randy Driscoll, was a landscape architect, so naturally, I was influenced to choose one or the other. I had originally applied to Cal Poly under architecture, but after talking to Randy and seeing his work (he also designed my family home's backyard), I decided to switch to landscape architecture. I've been here ever since, living out the legacies they left behind, and I don't regret any second of it!
WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR BIGGEST DESIGN INFLUENCES?
Over the years, I've found that it's not the design itself that makes a certain place successful, but it's how the user interacts with the space that really tells the story. You can design the most amazing park in the world, but if it doesn't meet the needs of the people that are intended to use it, the design will fail. I look at designing through a marketing perspective; Who is the target market? How is it going to be used? How do we get people to keep coming back? How do we create successful word of mouth? It's all about the user experience.
HOW DID YOU CHOOSE YOUR SENIOR CAPSTONE PROJECT?
Like many, it took me a while to figure out how I wanted to end my college career. I knew I wanted to test my design skills that I have accumulated over the years, so I chose to design a resort in Hawaii. I chose to redesign the old CoCo Palms Resort, as it presented a design challenge that I wanted to tackle. Through a series of sustainable practices, as well as tying in the culture and the history of the site, iI would be able to bring back to life the iconic hotel that CoCo Palms once was.