ABSTRACT
Design students often regard ‘site’ as a tangible, protected, and hallowed milieu. This chapter sets off with a survey of how leading scholars interpret the notion of site, territory, ground, and terrain as a physical construct. It contrasts absolute, neutral, and normative notions of site, ground, object, and topography with engendered, surrogate conditions by exploring how these theories relate to thinking about alternatives to such conventions. The chapter explores different pedagogical approaches to develop projects that were executed prior to and during the pandemic. Sites of alternate origin offer a high-level of nuanced complexity, adaptation, and rigor to expand students’ views about the future of architecture. During the pandemic, contemporary technology detached design studio culture from site. Students conceptualized ‘site’ as a process of deconstructing different records of racial oppression in various media: printed matter, illustration and photography, or film and social media.
