I'm an architect. COD's Palm Springs campus plans rely on big, showy gestures

As an architect, most of my career was spent in the planning and design of large-scale institutional projects, including college campuses. When I first saw the schematic design images for the proposed Palm Springs campus of the College of the Desert, I must admit to being disappointed.

The majority of the site is taken up with an inefficiently arranged surface parking lot. Indeed, with the dramatic image of the four-lane wide entry roadway, one senses that the focus of the design is the automobile.

Because of the site organization, there are missed opportunities for more areas like plazas and gardens, and for a greater emphasis on pedestrians and bicyclists.

In terms of the buildings, there seems to be a reliance on big, showy gestures, such as the extensive roof and trellis overhangs. The need for shading is important in our desert, but what’s shown here seems excessive. More importantly, during the inevitable process of “value engineering,” many of these showy elements will be lost. One hopes that any program elements would not be eliminated, victim to cost overruns.

While there has been justified impatience with the progress (and politics) of this project, there is still time for a needed re-thinking of options for site usage, future expansion and, most importantly, an appropriate and timeless architectural design.

We, and the future generations of students who will study and learn here, deserve to have the best that intelligent design can achieve.

Doug Hudson, Palm Springs

Thank a teacher this week!

If you can read this, you should probably thank a teacher. Nov. 5-11 marks California Retired Teachers Week. One local organization, California Retired Teachers Association Desert Roadrunner Division 43, clearly demonstrates that teachers never stop caring. In the past year, they distributed 30 grants of $100 to active classroom teachers. They awarded 10 scholarships of $1,000 to students graduating from high school and they provided over 15,000 hours of community service in activities as varied as packing food for FIND food bank, participating in the Heart and Stroke Walk and picking up litter on I-10. The website div43.calrta.org gives a more complete description of their activities. Don't forget to thank a teacher, including one who is currently in the classroom.

Helen Smith, Indio

Our democracy depends on you the voter

The Republican chaos in Congress falls on you the voters. Now the Republicans want to blame Democrats, but Republicans are fighting among themselves. It seems Republicans are not concerned with serious issues our country is grappling with like health care, infrastructure, the fallout of Roe v. Wade, plus shoring up Social Security and Medicare. Instead, they are focusing on the radicalization of the Republican Party. Does anyone care what is happening to our country? Doesn’t anyone care that, in my view, the radical MAGA’s want to destroy our democracy?

I do not know about you, but I am freaking out. Again: our democracy depends on you the voter. You can save our democracy by going out and voting for Democrats in our local, state and federal elections. We need President Joe Biden even more in the 2024 election to save our democracy. I really believe this could be our last chance to save ourselves from Donald Trump and his MAGA followers.

Roxie Bivinetto, Palm Desert, CA

Rep. Calvert's take on leftwing progressives is incorrect

A recent op-ed by my House Representative Ken Calvert supports Israel’s attack in Gaza and that Progressives’ “call for a ceasefire is preposterous.” He falsely states that the “progressive leftwing of the Democratic party” suggests that the Oct. 7 attacks “were morally equivalent to Israel’s strikes on Hamas in Gaza.” He offers no support of that claim.

He also ignores that an Oct. 27 poll of Israelis found that 49% supported holding off a Gaza invasion. As for Republicans, the day before Calvert’s editorial Donald Trump posted on social media an article that called Hezbollah terrorist attackers “very smart.”

Finally, Calvert concludes that what he considers “anti-Israel organizations” are “a lot like the early Nazi party…Today we can viscerally see how the Jewish people are once again under attack from the left.” Another claim with no support to back it up. It was Donald Trump who told his chief of staff John Kelly, “Hitler did a lot of good things.”

Never forget that it was Ken Calvert who voted Jan. 7, 2021 to set aside all the votes of Pennsylvania and Georgia in the hope that Donald Trump would illegally become President of the United States.

Michael Friedman, La Quinta

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: I'm an architect. COD's Palm Springs campus plans rely on big, showy gestures