A Site Plan for the Institute of Urban Studies

My research at UIC is within the field of architecture and design processes, specifically on metacognitive feedback loops and self-criticality within the design process. I've focused my research on visual representation and how various drawing types can be iteratively manipulated and analyzed to develop a project. In this project, I was looking at how various drawing styles can be applied to traditional methods of architectural representation (plans, sections, elevations, renderings, physical models, etc.) in order to generate projects and make discoveries that are relevant in contemporary discourse. A Site Plan for the Institute of Urban Studies began as two drawings of Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti, a communal desert living experiment of the 1960s, each represented in the style of architects Zaha Hadid and Étienne-Louis Boullée. These drawings were abstracted and collaged into a physical model that was further abstracted into a series of drawings that became a new project. Through this process, a site plan was produced that, warping a traditional sense of place, situates the institution as a space within the city and the city as a space within the institute.