A student hovers closely as Daniel Richardson, with his glasses on and a pencil in hand, reviews the student’s design in Room 202 of the Industry Technology Education Center Building.
It is the kind of thing that would usually be nerve-racking, if it wasn’t El Camino College Architecture Professor Richardson’s class. He gives students words of encouragement and a renewed sense of confidence because for Richardson it is more than just his career.
Richardson hopes to instill the same passion for architecture he was brought up on.
“It’s always been architecture,” Richardson said, “since I was nine.”
Richardson’s great-grandfather was a builder who had built his childhood home and even became involved in remodeling projects his parents would do.
“I remember rolling the plans out on the floor at home and just looking at them for hours,” he said.
He was hooked on the feeling. He would come home from junior high and write down everything he had learned from his architecture drafting class.
His colleague, assistant professor Marc Yeber, describes Richardson as the “Design Build Guy”, meaning you are designing as you’re building.
“Dan is really good at type five construction [Wood Frame Construction], he knows the codes like the back of his hand, so he’s really good at it,” Yeber said.
Richardson practiced architecture at El Camino College in the 60s and transferred to California State University, Dominguez Hills, to expand his studies to environmental design.
“Not just create a jewel box, but create an environment because it’s not just about the house,” Richardson said, “It’s about the position of the house, the orientation to the sun, to the seasonal adjustment, to views, to wind, to noise, to all the things that go into it.”
Current ECC architecture students Veronica Petts and Jemina Llosa were also struck by the building bug, yet their journey remains in their early stages.
Like many new and continuing college students, Petts didn’t have a definitive major.
She considered journalism, political science, but somewhere a gut instinct told her to land on architecture. It was on to building from there.
Petts truly cemented herself in the architecture community when she ran for vice president and then president of the Architecture club.
She was touched when the community she’d contributed to gave back to her. Petts said, “I was really struggling with a final project to the point that I did cry.”
Architecture professor Gary Garcia gave her a little advice: Start with a basic shape, break it into other shapes and then put it together into something new.
“They’re always really encouraging to all of us in the program and I think that they’re also really receptive of our individual needs,” she said.
It doesn’t stop at advice sessions. Faculty that works in the department created a space where students can feel a part of the same experience they’d receive at a four-year university by giving access to studio and expanding resources.
“It represents that we’re playing in the same ball park [as four-year universities], we’re not trying to prove that our students are worthy of their consideration because it is being demonstrated in their portfolio,” Yeber said.
According to El Camino’s Academic Program review dashboard, the overall Spring semester course success between 2022-2024 has been 71%. In a 2024 ranking done by Best Community Colleges, El Camino’s architecture program is ranked No. 4 nationally.
As of 2024, the Architecture program offers a sustainable design program where students can learn about building on green fields, environment and regional planning and landscape architecture.
“Adding the sustainable design program takes us light years ahead of our sister campuses, because now we’re looking at building technology and how it responds to the environment,” Yeber said.
