lines on maps

[group base map : natural systems]

The site : Jefferson and Cass



Mapping Exercise : 24" x 36"

Printed base map with plastic lead on mylar overlay

the myth

I received my studio assignment last week:

Pruitt-Igoe Pasts + Futures

"The studio will reach across scales and time to map histories and design futures for the long-time vacant site where the Pruitt-Igoe housing project once stood at the edge of downtown St. Louis City."

The studio is billed as both a landscape and urban design effort.

I've had a fascination with the story of Pruitt-Igoe since I first came to St. Louis; it's been building, I feel, since I saw The Pruitt Igoe Myth: an Urban History.  

http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/

For now, I'm engrossing myself once again in the mythology of Pruitt-Igoe, trying to find a way into the project.  

  

Last fall, during a review of my portfolio, I was posed the question-

"What is your story?"

Because it was clear to my interviewer that the portfolio of my undergraduate work, though clean and sharply detailed, was just that - a portfolio; a collection of images, of glossy final products.  The work in process - driven by scrap-paper sketches and late-night study models and all the other trappings of an architecture studio - was lost.  

What follows is my story - the unabridged, uncensored record of the final studio of my undergraduate career.  The work in process.