When I was in graduate school at the Stanford Graduate Product Design Program a few classmates and I decided to redesign the way the courtyard outside of our studio and the Product Realization Lab (aka the machine shop) was used. We refinished the benches, added lights, and built a brick pizza oven on top of a neglected planter, affectionately nicknamed L’Oven.

The oven became our gift to future students of the design program and has been well used in the years since. My fellow collaborators were Kevin McElroy, Gabrielle Guthrie, Dan Somen and David Bordow (who was conveniently a professional chef in Italy and Berkeley prior to coming to Stanford).