LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Intersight is an annual collection of student work from the School of Architecture and Planning. The journal bridges and contextualizes the work with conversations and stories that have emerged in the studios, classrooms, and numerous sites out in the world that have come into the focus of our intellectual and creative curiosities. This edition highlights our collective work from the 2022 calendar year through the conceptual lens of care. Moreover, just as the previous 24, this milestone 25th edition of Intersight aims not only to reflect on our past conversations, but also foster new dialogue.

Care

Intersight 25 examines and documents the various ways we care for our work, each other, and the world. This year’s book celebrates the inceptive processes and potential impacts of student work just as much as the finished product: bringing to light the messy struggle of design, planning, and collaboration; emphasizing all that remains concealed along the pathways of process; framing how our work relates to and shapes our world. Dissecting the concepts that push us to take specific approaches uncovers the passion students have for their work. Positioning care as a framework for our design process reveals linkages to large-scale social and cultural effects.

Much of this perspective derives from our shared experience of a debilitating pandemic. As a School and larger community, we were compelled to adopt a new culture of care, prioritizing our social relationships and collective environment. Re-evaluating ourselves required asking tough questions. Did students still care about learning as they did before the pandemic? Did faculty members lose their will to teach in a Zoom room, staring at blank screens? Were we ready to return to our communities, or did we prefer to remain isolated?

Intersight 25 addresses these questions by investigating student work from 2022 and recording first-hand accounts of student and faculty experiences. Understanding how projects progress from ideas to reality illustrates how the unseen work can impact the communities the School of Architecture and Planning serves.

Each featured project or course is accompanied by a matrix diagram that further explains how this project addresses an aspect of “care” through the eyes of the editor. Each body of work represents multiple aspects of care. Ultimately, Intersight 25 reveals 36 unique combinations of care, providing insight into the concepts explored within the work.

Care For Our Work

The projects included in this book attest to the fervor students have for the work we create. Dissecting the care we show for our work through rigor and exploration exposes how we define the why. Rigor points to the conceptual and methodological clarity, ingrained in first-year students and carried through to the graduate level. Exploration speaks to curiosities developed through experimentation and debate, investigated through iterative work and new technologies— forming evolving bonds between author and product.

The by-products of our thinking—as students of architecture, urban planning, real estate development, and environmental design—are captured in the study models, tracing paper, and questions we have raised and kept to ourselves—often changing our collective understanding of an issue or prompt. From this ideation and internal debate, we convey a message. Looking beyond our devotion to our work, Intersight 25 wants to acknowledge the invisible - the part we do not pin to the wall.

Care For Our World

The ability to care effectively for our world lays the foundations for the meaningful impacts we aim to achieve. Caring for our world requires us to learn with and from the communities we work in. As such, care is about culture and relationships. Culture frames our outlook on human lifestyles and conditions our design decisions. Relationships speak to our engagement with communities and contexts, embracing their complexities.

We have embraced working with communities and along existing local initiatives rather than for or despite them as the norm for developing more meaningful projects. In this sense, how we, as designers, planners, and thinkers, engage in active methods of care within our School correlates with our collective perspective on how to position our efforts in the world.

Care For Each Other

The relationships among students, faculty, and staff profoundly affect with whom and how we engage. We recognize the crucial bonds and support networks that characterize our social environment, and how they serve as a significant ingredient in students' journey through the School of Architecture and Planning. We often witness how much time and attention go into creating spaces where students feel safe and comfortable. These spaces are intended to encourage discussions and collective efforts to develop and reflect on our work. Collaboration over competition is the norm. Building on principles of mutuality has fostered cohorts committed to sustaining the health and well-being of those most important to us.

The conversations in Intersight 25 explore this space and the mutual support systems on display. The conversation prompts and groupings were deliberately constructed to reveal students' and faculty members' insights on elements of care exercised at the School of Architecture and Planning, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Rigor

The conceptual and methodological clarity behind student projects, ingrained in first-year students and carried to the graduate level.

Exploration

An investigation of new technologies and student perspectives, creating a bond between author and product.

Culture

Outlooks analyzing human lifestyle and the impacts our design decisions have on the natural or built environment.

Relations

Engaging with our communities and contexts, further embracing their complexities and municipalities.

Conversations

Student groups discuss on UB's School of Architecture and Planning culture of care.

Freshmen + TA Seniors + Professor Planning Students 3.5 yr. + International Students