Bellevue Arts Museum 2021 Biennial : Architecture & Urban Design
The Phoenix Co-op at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington, USA

This series of digital collages, architectural drawings, and unfired clay models explores and communicates the pressing need for equitable and sustainable neighborhoods, especially in suburban areas facing the environmental challenges posed by extreme heat. The project is visualized using simple post-digital techniques that evoke a sense of materiality while proposing a slightly cheeky utopian vision for an urban eco-community located in Phoenix, Arizona. Urban gardens, goats and chickens, and multi-generational co-housing clustered around shared amenities, are mapped over an eighteen-hole decommissioned golf course. The designs for the Co-op dwellings–single family houses, micro(w) houses, and multifamily apartment buildings–are presented in the exhibition as scale models made from locally sourced, unfired clay (greenware), recalling characteristics and tactile qualities found in traditional earth-based construction of the region.