Brett Snyder Publishes California Changing: 50 Sites of Climate Change in Augmented Reality
Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design alumnus Brett Snyder (BA ’95) has released California Changing: 50 Sites of Climate Change in Augmented Reality. This book takes a small-scale approach seeing the ways that climate vulnerability and resilience has changed and is changing the very places we reside. Through a combination of research, architectural illustration, and augmented reality, the book offers readers an accessible and visually engaging way to understand the interconnected systems influencing the state’s future.
Snyder describes the book as “a tour of California, showing how climate change is both shaping—and shaped by—the built environment.” Sites featured in the volume are paired with drawings and an AR component, accessible through the Artivive app, that allows readers to view temporal and spatial transformations directly on their phones.
Origins in Teaching and Roots at CMU
The project grew out of Snyder’s course Graphitecture at UC Davis, where students examine architectural sites through the lens of climate change and develop drawing strategies to make those relationships visible. The class brings together research, representational techniques, and experimental time-based imagery—an approach Snyder traces back to his early design education at CMU.
He recalls working closely with classmates Mimi O Chun and John Kunichika under the guidance of faculty member Dan Boyarski, exploring unconventional image-making techniques. “You could say I’m still working on that thesis project,” Snyder notes, reflecting on how those formative experiments inform his work today, now expanded through digital and interactive media.
Making Climate Change Legible
One of Snyder’s core aims is to help readers perceive climate change in more concrete and connected ways. “Climate change is at least in part a legibility problem,” he explains. While its effects shape daily life, they remain difficult to see or interpret without context.
California Changing highlights locations where environmental pressures, infrastructure decisions, and community responses intersect. Snyder’s examples range from historic sites damaged by wildfire and drought to emerging sustainability projects and habitat restoration efforts. By examining such sites collectively, he hopes readers will begin to recognize the systems that link them—and understand how climate-related issues affect their own neighborhoods.
A Lasting CMU Influence
Snyder speaks fondly of his time at Carnegie Mellon, citing the culture of critique, collaboration, and experimentation that shaped his approach to design. Time spent in Margaret Morrison and the Reese Computer Lab, along with a rigorous foundation in typography and visual hierarchy, continues to inform both his professional practice and his teaching.
He recently returned to CMU as a guest critic for the School of Architecture and noted the strength of student work on display, observing that the school’s distinctive design culture remains vibrant.
Design’s Role in Climate Futures
For Snyder, designers play a vital role in helping communities understand and respond to climate change. By making complex systems legible, designers can help bridge the gap between data, lived experience, and public decision-making.
With California Changing, Snyder offers not only a compelling visual study of California’s shifting landscapes, but also an invitation to see climate, infrastructure, and place through new eyes—an invitation rooted in the same design sensibilities he began cultivating at CMU nearly three decades ago.
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