The need for communal space in a design program is essential, the ability to visually be in an environment without physically occupying the space will allow for the private needs of the student but the collaborative needs of the urban design institute. 

This project derives from the self referential program of the Urban Concept. It compares the irony of an urban design school being same as the city it is in. The site is important due to it being in a kind of mi- cro-city. The comparison between street and building can relate to the comparison of studio and pin-up space and so forth. The importance of transparency and openness will come into play in this project as the physical body and visual mind begin to blur. The communal spaces will allow for the city outside the walls of the school to populate within. The interior of the institute will become an urban study in itself. The population, circulation, distribution of spaces, how it is occupied and shared, will be the way the building will reference itself to the larger urban scale.