Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Jacob Mitchell
Second Advisor
Claire Fellman
Abstract
The architectural disciplines, and particularly that of landscape architecture and urban design, have shifted into focusing on “revival” of public and urban spaces but what does this truly mean? On the surface it can look like taking warehouse districts in a city and creating a master plan to turn them into artist villages or taking space underneath a highway to turn into a linear park. But what is lost in the process of doing so? The question is much bigger than myself but in the case of Chicago, the city has been home to vibrant music and art communities that are incredibly unique to the city itself. But with a new process of urban renewal for the city, many of its arts and music staples have been transformed into the sterile and unrecognizable. Using the lens of house music, a derivative of disco that was born in Chicago in the early 1980s, we can begin to document and see how our rapid expansion and renewal of a city has transformed the once vibrant creative city into fractions of a city that can be found anywhere in the world, far removed from its context.
House music in Chicago was born from warehouses, underneath highways, and in long forgotten about shoreline parks. What made these places of creativity so viable for artistic expression? Carve, Release, Expand aims to understand the reasons why specific urban spaces are successful for fostering community but seen as “dilapidated” by city entities or outsiders. Through a series of abstracting and dissecting music made in Chicago as well as understanding spatially how music venues were situated in their prime and where they are today, a clearer picture emerges of steps we can take as designers to understand how to preserve and foster urban spaces that are for a city, by the city.
Recommended Citation
Lesh, Katie, "Carve, Release, Expand: A Spatial Exploration of the Clandestine Music Spaces of Chicago" (2026). Masters Theses. 1677.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1677
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Landscape Architecture Commons, Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons