RISD's Ellie Cody on Waste Considerations, Workshop Models, and Compassion
Ellie Cody by Jason Arnone.
By Julia Gamolina
Ellie is a designer and educator based in Brooklyn, whose work focuses on architecture and design as modes of stewardship and agency. She currently works as an instructor for DownCity Design’s Summer Studios in Providence, RI, where she facilitates the work of high school interns in community centered design projects. Ellie recently graduated with a Master’s of Architecture degree from RISD, and before that she studied the history of art and architecture at Brown University.
You first studied art and architecture history at Brown, and then went on to RISD for your M.Arch. Tell me the reasons behind both degrees and what you were hoping to do in the world with each?
Studying art and architecture is like tuning into a conversation that humans have been having with each other — and with the materials around them — for thousands of years. When asked why I chose to study it in school, my back-pocket answer has always been that it seemed like the best way to study everything. And yet you only need one question to tune in: What do you see? Without knowing exactly what would come after graduation, I felt sure that by learning to look closely at the world around me — for aesthetic interest, sure, but more importantly for signs of connectivity, and for cause and effect — I would also eventually see the next step to take.
Living in New York in 2019, one of the things I saw most clearly was the housing crisis, having moved to the city just as national rates of houselessness began to climb again after a decade of decline. 2019 was also one of the three warmest years on historical record, while new national immigration policies threw into question the right for people to exist in space and place. I saw in that moment a profound urgency for the intentional creation of spaces to hold people’s stories about the past, present, and future. Two years after receiving my degree in art history, I decided I was ready to ask a new question: not just What do you see? but What do you want to do about it? I applied for architecture school.
Proposal for high-density transitional housing in Woonsocket, RI, called the “Cairn Apartments” for its offset stacking floors. Like the Townhouse, Cairn Apartments is designed using the CertainTeed specs. Here, rooftop terraces and communal spaces on the ground floor provide third-spaces, and every unit has a private terrace.
“Dancing stool” is made from the wood of three different deconstructed chairs. It is a study in material relationships, object narratives, and how to have a great time in the woodshop!
What are some of the most significant initiatives you’ve focused on in school?
While at RISD, I worked with Aleza Epstein — a fellow 2024 M.Arch grad — on a collaborative study project focused on reuse within architecture and construction. We conducted a set of interviews with women working in the realms of salvage and reuse, and further researched the relevant uses of BIM softwares and Life Cycle Assessment tools.
Aleza and I want to encourage designers at all scales to integrate waste-considerations and supply chain factors into their work, and to increase awareness about the state of resource use and waste. Currently, the buildings and construction sector is responsible for 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and waste produced by construction and demolition industries accounts for 30% of global waste. Embodied carbon tied to the production, use and disposal of materials has often fallen by the wayside in conversations about reducing emissions, which tend to focus on renewable energy alternatives and the reduction of energy usage. Meanwhile, approximately three-quarters of material waste in the construction industry carries residual value, and yet is not reused in any capacity. This must change.
In our interviews, soon to be published as a mini-series called Wasteland, we talk with Amy Bauman about the recycling of construction materials back into the building economy, with Amy Seo about material salvage and reconsideration for other uses such as furniture, and with Liliane Wong about the adaptive reuse of building structures. This project led directly to my graduate thesis, titled humbleArchitecture, which was advised by the ever-inspiring and supportive Germán Pallares Avitia. For my final presentation, I developed a set of pedagogical tools, or “workbooks,” alongside a manifesto for an alternative architectural framework.
“Studying art and architecture is like tuning into a conversation that humans have been having with each other — and with the materials around them — for thousands of years.”
When searching for internships and jobs in general, what are you looking for?
My highest priority is being in working environments where there is a sensitivity towards social impact: impact on individuals, communities, ecologies, and even those who you work with. For the last two summers I interned with Springboard Design, an architecture firm in Pittsburgh known for its work with nonprofits, cultural institutions and residential clients. Paul Rosenblatt and Bill Szustak, the firm’s principals, both raised their families in Pittsburgh, and are committed to contributing to the city they call home. While at Springboard, I learned so much about the value of client relationships, and of being connected to the community that you work in. Without a doubt, such engagement with the everyday life of a place is something I hope to find in future workplaces as well!
When considering my daily life as an employee, another defining experience for me was working as a graduate peer advisor for RISD’s Career Center over the past year. The staff in the office has such genuine respect for and awareness of one another, while also bringing incredible care and intention to their work with students. The sense of mutual consideration and investment in the success of every team member had an invaluable impact, making it a real joy to go to work every week.
This colorful rendering shows the interior of my proposed transitional townhouse. Clerestory windows provide multi-directional light without compromising privacy on a dense site.
What’s important to you? What inspires you?
Recently I’ve been really excited about workshop models of knowledge-sharing, and community initiatives for skillbuilding and resource accessibility. I think it’s hugely important to create localized infrastructure in support of individual and collective agency in the built environment. I’ve seen some amazing recent examples of tool libraries, including one of the largest in my hometown of Baltimore, along with a number of new community studios and small workshops across the East Coast, not to mention the ripple effects of long-standing craft schools like Cranbrook and Haystack.
These spaces are entangled with the ethos of reuse, repair and material understanding in a way that feels really encouraging to me. Ultimately, I’m always most inspired by the people who bring these spaces to life — organizers and community members alike — and am looking forward to continuing to find opportunities to participate in and support these kinds of programs. And maybe one day I’ll start one!
What have been some of the biggest challenges for you so far? How did you manage through?
The biggest challenge I faced in graduate school was imposter syndrome! Before going back to school, I hadn’t experienced that level of doubt. The nature of graduate school, and maybe of architecture programs in particular, means learning an incredible amount of new information quite quickly, and also constantly. This experience could quickly develop into a feeling that I didn’t have enough ground to stand on — and the really insidious question: how did I get here in the first place?!
I have found a couple of ways to manage the imposter syndrome, but the most important one has been to make time for things that I love outside of school or work. For me this has often meant just heading to the park with my dogs, calling my partner, or grabbing morning coffee with a friend. When I have had a little more time, I have taken pottery classes, attended a furniture-making workshop, and gone on road trips. After moments like these, I feel more ready to walk out into uncertain terrain again once I have reminded myself that some ground is reliably stable and pretty darn great.
“Sometimes I expect the making will take the form of a building, but a building is not assumed: sometimes the making will produce a chair, a diagram, a workshop, a cup of tea or a patch for a wall. Sometimes the directive won’t be to make at all, I think, but to un-make, or step back and do nothing. All of this, to me, is the practice of architecture, and all can be equally meaningful.”
What do you hope to do in your career?
Here’s the long and the short of it: Samuel Mockbee, who was a professor at Auburn University and founder of Rural Studio, said “It’s not about your greatness as an architect, but your compassion.” In that vein, I want to listen well — to people and our surroundings — and then make things that reflect our experiences and our hopes, regardless of scale. Sometimes I expect the making will take the form of a building, but a building is not assumed: sometimes the making will produce a chair, a diagram, a workshop, a cup of tea or a patch for a wall. Sometimes the directive won’t be to make at all, I think, but to un-make, or step back and do nothing. All of this, to me, is the practice of architecture, and all can be equally meaningful.
My graduate thesis, titled humbleArchitecture, focused on imagining an alternative approach to architectural pedagogy. It culminated in a custom installation that both showcased the “workbooks” I had designed, and offered a space for conversation, reflection and documentation on the day of final presentations. The manifesto, printed on the hanging curtains, begins with the statement “You, too, are an architect.”
Teaching a lesson with the Creative Change Summer Studio at DownCity Design, I am helping interns develop a mind map to organize their ideas in response to their client’s RFP.
Who do you look up to? Both in terms of women in architecture, and in general.
One of the first people who comes to mind is a professor I had while at RISD, Liliane Wong. Liliane has been a trailblazer for the study and practice of adaptive reuse; she, alongside another wonderful RISD professor, Markus Berger, began Int|AR, the journal of Interventions and Adaptive Reuse, in 2008, and Liliane later published “Adaptive Reuse: Extending the Lives of Buildings” as well as its companion volume “Adaptive Reuse in Architecture: A Typological Index.” I also admire the balance — and seeming symbiosis — that she has found between her research, teaching, and professional practice.
I also closely follow the work and teaching of Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores, of Flores i Prats. Like Liliane, Flores i Prats gravitates towards opportunities to work with existing structures. In an interview with ArchDaily, Flores explains the duo’s sense that “When you work with existing conditions your response is like a dialogue. …There are so many questions about what happened in the past. …There are so many clues and traces that trigger your imagination. That’s how a conversation begins.” Being a part of these conversations, with the built environment and with people around me, is what excites me most about going into architectural practice.
Finally, what advice would you give to those in high school now, choosing their field of study?
Pay attention to what grabs and holds your attention, and try to notice why. Also, trust yourself — you already have a sensibility for seeing and feeling in this world. You grew up here, didn’t you? By noticing the things that hold your attention, and especially the things that bring you joy and fulfillment, you will move forwards …and sometimes sideways, but never backwards.
I have an incredible group of high school interns working with me at DownCity Design this summer, all developing a community design project that will be implemented next month. The thing that I love most about collaborating with these interns is their openness to doing things that they haven’t done before, and to trusting that we will sort through it together. It’s a really brave thing to do: to try something new, to trust other people, to be able to sit with uncertainty. And no matter what they go on to do next, these weeks together will have mattered, the work they produce will have an impact, and they’ll keep rolling on. So, try things out … and while you’re at it, look around you: What do you see?