I found my passion for the built environment through photography. I use photography to ask questions about the values that shape the built environment. My work surrounds two ideas about the built environment. In a world of “McDonald’s hamburger buildings”, the answers to these questions are occasionally underwhelming. But, these corporate buildings, and the landscapes they are part of, emphasize the importance of what happens after a building is built. 

The two ideas my work centers around are ‘domicology’ and ‘platform urbanism’.

Domicology is the study of the lifecycle of the built environment, coined by Dr. Rex Lamore of Michigan State University. I am interested at how buildings adapt, or fail to adapt, to new uses and how time affects buildings, neighborhoods, and communities. Platform Urbanism is a new field of study interested in how digital spaces affect physical places. Platform urbanists use placed based data to influence our movement through spaces, but I am interested in how e-commerce, social media, and navigation apps affect our movement or lack of movement to and through physical spaces.

“McDonald’s Hamburger buildings” is a quote from Michi Slick