It was 1970, the United Sates invaded Cambodia, the Beatles disbanded, and 14 Cal Poly Architecture students flooded building 21’s courtyard.
Cal Poly Architecture was very different in 1970. The College of Architecture and Environmental Design was still two years away from being officially organized and the School of Architecture was headed by George Hasslein, latter he would be the founding dean of the college. George was very involved with the students and faculty. He prided himself on the wide variety of instructors that he recruited from around the world. The Gallery Lab, or the Fish Bowl as it is known today, hadn’t been used by the college for Architecture classes before. But, at the start of the school year Dean Hasslein was using any space available for labs and he assigned a group of 14 students to take an empty room and turn it into their studio space.
