The foyer on the first floor of Ellison Hall has finally shed its purely institutional look. Sure, the wall-mounted interactive campus map made a welcome change from the bleak directories we used to have, the new marquee featuring infographics about Geography has been a big hit, and the Plexiglas frames for holding poster projects are a lot classier and user-friendly than double-sided tape. Still, the huge expanse of linoleum flooring and the leftover chairs and tables which used to adorn the foyer were unabashedly functional, if not downright bleak.
During some brainstorming by staff on “FedEx Fridays,” Connie Padilla, Geography’s Personnel Analyst, came up with the idea to make the foyer more user friendly and “geographical” in nature. It took a little time and a lot of money, but vive la difference!
Now, if only we could figure out how to feature that fantastic illuminated Dymaxion globe we inherited from the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Santa Barbara City College…
Editor’s note: At right bottom, UCSB geography professor Richard Church is shown sitting next to the Dymaxion map in the lobby of Ellison Hall (Sonia Fernandez / UCSB photo). The strange, 20-sided globe originally belonged to the Buckminster Fuller Institute in Santa Barbara, and when that was moved to Stanford in 1999, the map was given to the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Santa Barbara City College. SBCC gave it to UCSB Geography in 2007, and Geography Professor and Researcher Emeritus Don Janelle built the platform for it. For more about it, see the May 6, 2014 article, “Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map in Ellison Hall.”
