Sam Owen
Sam Owen is a designer and urban researcher with a special interest in resilient and regenerative urban design through the lens of systems ecology. As a first year SMArchS Urbanism student at MIT, his research confronts the metabolism of urban infrastructures, identifying leverage points that could alter these systems of material flow to foster resilient ecosystems and communities. Specifically, Sam's recent work addresses questions of material circularity and self-sufficiency at a neighborhood and regional scale.
Prior to MIT, Sam was a research assistant at the University of Arizona, publishing grant-funded projects including a collaboration with the College of Astronomy to develop a novel fabrication method for double-curved aluminum panels. He was also a key contributor to Re-membering the CIV (Centre d’Identification de Vincennes), an AR and video installation to speculate on how a site-specific event can expand engagement with the phantom CIV into an embodied, collective, performative, and spatial act of re-membering. During his time at the UA College of Architecture, he also sat on reviews and assisted with design studios in the graduate program.
As a member of desertWORKS Studio, Sam has had the opportunity to explore interactive material assemblies in public spaces, completing multiple commercial projects. He also operates a solo practice (Sam Owen Design), with projects ranging from self-sufficient residential to adaptive reuse of historic commercial structures.
Sam holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arizona, graduating magna cum laude from the W.A. Franke Honors College.
This project is currently in progress as part of the Contemporary Urbanism Proseminar, under the instruction of Rania Ghosn.
To become a resilient city, the Phoenix metro needs to cut ties with the Central Arizona Project, which provides 36% of the city’s water demand while holding it hostage to changing rainfall patterns across one of the continent’s most drought-prone watersheds.
This dependence would be negated by capping the metro population at 3 million - placing PHX in alignment with the carrying capacity of our local Salt/Verde water system. Next, the PHX metro can refocus development on two urban cores concentrated on existing population centers (Tempe + Downtown Phoenix), both densified over time into transit-first walkable communities.
Winner of The Capstone Award (2022), Capstone Distinguished Project (2022), and exhibited at AIA Arizona State Conference (2022)
How can cities transition from the world’s largest importers, polluters, and waste generators into centers for production and waste reclamation?
This proposal advocates for Barcelona to refocus investment away from vague “innovation centers” and back into self-sufficient neighborhood economies built on cooperative production and the Catalan vaulting tradition.
I assisted Dr. Beth Weinstein with the creation, texturing, and AR implementation of the 3D camp model based on historical drawings and imagery, and also created a video walkthrough of the camp as a supplement to the AR exhibit. This work was published as conference proceedings for the ACSA 2022 Empower Conference.
