Justin Stanley, MArch '23

ARCH 616: Degree Project

As part of fulfilling their degree requirements, Master of Architecture students initiate independent design and research projects, such as Justin Stanley’s approach to a site on the East St. Louis riverfront.

Reshaped Grounds: Soil Remediation Prototype investigates the future role of post-industrial wastelands found throughout the built landscape of East St. Louis. Littered with ruin and decay, the chosen site has been polluted as the railroad industry of the past has vanished. An incubator for reuse and spatial reinterpretation, the site, located on the Illinois riverfront, responds to this landscape by proposing soil remediation as the ecological and programmatic initiator in the formation of an architectural response that activates a new symbolic dialogue with the city’s riverscape.