Focused on seeing the world around us, the end of first year studio draws the students to realize their own process of seeing – that seeing is an act that precedes definition, a kind of pre-action controlled through intentionality, interpreted by an internal filter that appropriates meaning. Part of what makes a designer “good” is their ability to dislocate their own subconscious gaze in order to see the problems they are solving through the eyes of those they are designing for. A doghouse does not have to perform like a human house (although sometimes it does), and so on. This project, dubbed “The Lighthouse,” challenged the students to design something architectural that brought others face-to-face with their own inner sight.

My design process started at the required site, on the east bank of the Mississippi River levee, west downtown Baton Rouge. The site is a very long, narrow stretch of sloped grass buffering the city from the river. At my first visit to the site, much to my surprise, I learned that the land is still used by local farmers to raise cattle. In my research I discovered that before the city had sprawled south to its present location, the entire area was all cow pasture. Now, seeing these cows confined to such a restrictive environment really contrasted my engrained sensibilities of the field wandering cattle ranch. Given this environmental change over the last 50 years I wondered what cattle farming would be like at this site given the city’s growth projections. Whereas currently the prairie land has been shrunk down to a grass alley, in the future the grass alley might become a grazing conveyor belt, much in the way people now exercise on treadmills. While openly conceived as a satirical endeavor, this last project of my first year resides somewhere between industrial architecture and a Stanley Kubrick picture.