Pictured: A fishing boat on the Sitka Channel, reflecting the town’s close relationship with the water.
This summer, March Studio Principal Todd Erlandson spent three weeks at the Outer Coast Summer Seminar in Sitka, Alaska, leading Making Place: Belonging, Repair, and Design in Sitka.
Using Sitka itself as the classroom, the seminar asked students to slow down and understand a place before attempting to design for it. Students walked the town, documented what they encountered through photographs, sketches, maps and field notes and gradually began connecting their observations into larger questions about community, landscape, history and everyday life.
Those questions eventually shaped collaborative projects, with students moving from observation and research into prototyping and making. Rather than working toward predetermined architectural solutions, the focus was on creating thoughtful responses grounded in what they had actually learned from Sitka.
Pictured: Outer Coast students preparing for a kayaking exercise in the Sitka Channel.
Life beyond the studio was equally important. Outer Coast combines academics with service, self-governance and adventure, giving students opportunities to participate directly in the community around them. From supporting local organizations and learning about Alaska Native culture to kayaking the Sitka Channel and simply getting to know the rhythms of a small town, the experience reinforced a central idea of the course: you cannot fully understand a place by studying it from a distance.
Pictured: Students sharing their observations and emerging ideas during the Making Place seminar.
The seminar concluded with a public review and open studio where students shared what they had learned with the Outer Coast community.
For March Studio, the experience reinforced something central to our own practice: good design begins with listening, paying attention and understanding the people and places already there before deciding what the answer should be.
Pictured: Todd with the Outer Coast students at the conclusion of the Making Place seminar.