SAMANTHA MARQUEZ
“When I was a little girl, before I knew the word architecture existed, I always had a passion for designing spaces.”
Inspiring Future Emerging Professionals
By Jamie Intervalo, AIA, 2023 AIA San Diego Vice President
Meet emerging professional Samantha Marquez, recipient of the 2022 Laura Shinn Diversity Scholarship! In this past year, our scholarship awardee has been busy finishing her final year of architecture school at Woodbury University, working, and serving as mentor to future emerging professionals.
Samantha was born and raised in the Indio-Palm Springs area in southern California and is currently a fourth year bachelor’s of architecture student at Woodbury University in San Diego. As a child of immigrant parents from Mexico, she overcame various challenges and is inspired to create architecture that gives back to the community.
Samantha is actively involved in student advocacy and has held multiple internships, including working on a proposal for a public park that reimagines Chicano Park in Barrio Logan as a space that supports recreational and educational activities. She hopes to be involved in mixed-use and affordable housing solutions in the city in her future career.
Samantha Marquez Presenting to Otay Mesa High School Students
This month, AIASD co-directors of EDI+J Dina Gonzalez and Barbara Leon, joined Samantha at a presentation to students at Otay Mesa High School robotics lab. She shared a bit about her journey through school, what school culture is like and favorite skills she learned in design and process, including how she uses model iteration to explore design ideas. The students in the class were enthralled with the new technologies she discussed since many of them have already used Autodesk products in their current high school class.
When we asked the class, “How many students are interested in architecture?,” we were excited to see many hands go up! Needless to say the design work presented and her thought process for design inspired all. She also led the class in a fun origami paper folding exercise examining how tessellated shapes can be used as both design and structure.
The 2023 Laura Shinn Diversity in Architecture Scholarship application opens on December 1st. See link below to learn more about the requirements. We invite all to apply! Industry professionals, please share with ypur networks so we may reach students that could benefit from our scholarship.
Laura shinn diversity scholarship
