Documenting Site Visits

A couple of weeks ago, our studio group visited our two very different sites: Chester Farms in Chester, New York, and our urban housing site on Fulton Street in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. We also stopped by the Brooklyn Grange at Sunset Park, which was an amazing precedent visit to learn about urban farming and rooftop food production. Each place offered a completely different perspective on land, community, and design.

The Chester site was completely new to me. I had never been to that area before, so I was seeing the landscape with fresh eyes. The hills, open fields, and dynamic rhythm of the shared farmland were fascinating. While documenting the site, I took photos of scenes from the farm that I found important, from landscapes such as the wide stretches of agricultural land to precedent-relevant moments such as the piles of decomposing food waste. I wanted to use the photos to help document this waste, thinking of how it can be reconsidered as a byproduct material, something that could become part of the design process instead of being discarded. Spending time there helped me understand how the cycles of land, labor, and materials are all connected.

In New York, the experience was much more personal. Clinton Hill is where my best friend and her family live, I call them my second family, and it is where I feel most at home in the city. Visiting our site there with an architectural lens was fascinating because I already know the neighborhood so well in a personal way. I started to notice details I had never paid attention to before, like the way people move through the space, the playground nearby, the mix of old and new buildings, and how daily life unfolds along Fulton Street. I wanted to understand what this neighborhood feels like as an everyday home, and how design might strengthen that sense of community and belonging.

Seeing both sites, the rural landscape of Chester and the dense, familiar streets of Clinton Hill, helped me think about context in a new way. One was a place I was experiencing for the first time, and the other was one I already felt deeply connected to. Together, they reminded me how much our sense of place comes from both observation and memory.

The images I shared as part of this post capture these different ways of seeing and experiencing space.