An exploration of the West Coast Through photography

Living Structures was a spring travel opportunity for Spring 2022, where a small group of students led by one professor travelled up the west coast from L.A. to Vancouver over the course of one month.

The focus was on studying the emergence of mass timber building, but each student was to pick their own theme to study through photography and documentation in a travel journal. There were several phases of trial and error, but one theme consistently in all of the sketches and writings was the path in which architecture and landscape took. Or at least the one the eye followed when first seeing it. 

From the more obvious of a building twisting a sprial around itself to the more hidden in ceiling details, it was wonderful to find movement in the inanimate around us. Nature has a sort of architecture of its own the way it gets built up and carved out, with time being the architect. 

We explored sites in nature, urban, and rural spaces. Each of these types had threads connecting them, and by having the project of finding site lines, or “plotting my gaze”, I was able to feel a stronger relationship between all of them.