Chelsea Powell

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Chelsea Powell is a first-year architecture student at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning and the recipient of a $2,000 scholarship from AIA Dayton and the national chapter of the American Institute of Architects through its AIA Component Matching Grant program. Prior to enrolling at UC, Powell had done some volunteer construction work on home rehabilitation and repair projects in her hometown. Now, Powell is finding that life in the studio is about late hours, collaboration, and expanding her creative reach.

Interest in architecture: Mostly through a book. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Sarah Susanka and the Not So Big House series, but I saw it and my parents bought that book. I kept looking through it. It intrigued me more every time I saw it.

Opinion of studio culture: Oh, it’s great. It’s probably the best part of it. My studio and I have gotten pretty close over the last two quarters, but it’s a good group, and we all feed off each other for ideas and help, so that’s cool.

Late hours in studio? Yes. I’m naturally more of a night person anyway. There are a few people in the studio who tend to come in early and then work until class, but I usually come to class and then work afterwards.

Most challenging coursework: Continually stretching myself has been a big challenge. When we do a project that has many iterations, it’s not enough to just do the same thing over and over again. You have to push it further; think about it differently the second time and third time around, so that’s been a difficult thing for me to really push myself.

Most interesting form of practice: I’m not sure about that. I’m still trying to explore all the possibilities in architecture. I think it would be smaller-scale projects, though: residential, office, or even restaurant. Just nothing too big. I have some friends in my studio who want to design skyscrapers, but I don’t know if that’s something I want to do.

AIA Dayton scholarship: I applied for it last spring, and it was awarded in June. It’s applied to tuition over the year. They wanted the usual transcript, activities résumé, letter of recommendation, and financial statistics, but also a one-page essay about my career goals and interest in architecture and a couple of images of my work.

They said it was my essay that did it for them. I guess the committee was somewhat divided about what they thought of me. When they got to the essay, several of them thought it was very bold. I think they even said “cheeky.” They must have thought that bold was a good thing. In the essay, I talked briefly about the current trend of being green and how I want to incorporate that into my architecture, not just as a trend for me but as a lifelong career ideology. I still stand by that. Like I said, I don’t know specifically what aspect of architecture I want to do, but I’d like it to be focused towards sustainability.

Do your classmates agree: Definitely more and more so. My good friend and I are in the recycling club at school. She’s really into that and together we’re trying to get the word out more. There are several people within my studio and also the College of Design who are aware, but then there are a lot more who aren’t, so we’re working on getting out more information about designing sustainably.