Cynthia Salcedo Wins 2023 Siara Designs Sustainability in Environment, Art and Creativity Scholarship

    DALLAS, TX, December 16, 2023 /24-7PressRelease/ -- 2023 saw Siara Designs open its Sustainability in Environment, Art, and Creativity Scholarship to current and incoming college students. The team wanted to offer $2,500 to a student who expressed a nuanced understanding of the ways creative industries could contribute to worldwide sustainable practices.

Of all of the scholarship applicants, Cynthia Salcedo at the University of Illinois at Chicago stood out.

Salcedo's scholarship essay poses two important questions to its readers: how can people today integrate recyclable designs into their lives, and can recyclable, sustainable architecture alone make a dent in the world's environmental concerns? The first of these questions, Salcedo poses, is easier to answer than the first.

Salcedo addresses the question of commonplace recyclable designs by emphasizing her own sources of recyclable inspiration. She tells the story of seeing a recreation of Mexico's burning heart overcome – deliberately so – with plastic bottle caps.

That statue inspired Salcedo's independent artistic efforts and eventually encouraged her to integrate sustainable lessons into her pursuit of architectural education.

It's amidst her pursuit of education that Salcedo has come to answer the second of her two questions. Her essay recounts a lecture by Dillion Pragner emphasizing how even sustainable architecture today has to contend with a hyper-consumerist, profit-driven economic landscape.

That landscape, both Pragner and Salcedo say, leads to the overuse of poor-quality products. The need to replace those products drives consumers to spend more money, increasing corporate profits while causing environmental harm.

The concept of sustainability, Pragner says, goes against that current system. As such, sustainable activists must market sustainable practices in new ways to encourage actionable change.

Likewise, says one of Salcedo's professors, consumers need to realize that sustainable architecture alone won't make an impact on today's environmental issues. Salcedo concludes that one must look at sustainability not only as a question of designs but as a "collaborative effort across all fields of work."

Siara Designs and its scholarship selection committee applaud this complex understanding of an equally complicated topic. The team commends Salcedo both on the artistic steps she's taken to share sustainable messages and the increasing nuisance she brings to modern sustainable practices.

It's those efforts that make Salcedo more than worthy of the 2023 Siara Designs Sustainability in Environment, Art, and Creativity Scholarship. Having read and taken inspiration from her essay, everyone with Siara Designs wishes Salcedo the best of luck in her continued pursuit of her education.

About Siara Designs

Siara Designs prioritizes unique outdoor landscaping efforts through a combination of evolving sustainable practices and in-house creativity. The team helps residents throughout Texas introduce native and adaptive plants into their local ecosystems, improving the appearance of local homes while reinvigorating the environment.

Siara Designs believes that beautiful landscaping has a direct impact on a person's mental and physical well-being. Clients can expect the team to bring that mindset, paired with years of landscaping experience, to projects large and small. Get in touch today to learn more about the landscaping services Siara Designs can offer you.

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