Cookbook Creation: Ella Parsons ‘27 B.Arch

Bachelor in Architecture student Ella Parsons shined in a recent student review as part of Lecturer Christopher Tucker’s “ABIOTIC” course. 

We spoke with her about the inspiration and process behind her “cookbook.”

1. Why did you choose CAPLA? 

To be honest, I never really chose CAPLA, it was more like I stumbled into it. I am from Tucson, and for most of my life, I knew I was going to attend the University of Arizona. I have always had an eye for design, but felt so unsure of what that meant for my future career. I knew a lot about CAPLA from a very close friend whose sister was in her fourth year at the time, and I was hesitant because I heard how rigorous the program was. 

I started college as a business major with a plan to double major in graphic design and marketing. During this time, I felt so off. I knew I wasn't where I was supposed to be. After about two months, I applied to CAPLA and started foundations in the second semester of my freshman year. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. 

2. What are your career aspirations? 

I am still figuring out exactly what my career path will be, and I am open to the possibility that it may not fit neatly within architecture alone. What I do know is that I want to keep making, creating and designing in whatever form that takes. I care deeply about architecture, but I also care about ecology, material, place and the larger world we inhabit, and I want my future work to exist somewhere within that overlap. 

I have become especially interested in the desert, and I hope to continue working in arid regions, where the challenges facing architecture feel both urgent and meaningful to my background. 

3. Please briefly summarize what your assignment was.

The first portion of the semester was to produce an ecological cookbook, which is a kind of site analysis that looks at a place through ecology, time, and narrative rather than just the standard architectural methods. 

Christopher Tucker’s cookbook framework treats the site almost like a collection of recipes, stories and diagrams, similar to folk-art cookbooks from Appalachia, where the process of gathering and telling reveals something deeper about the people, histories and environmental forces of a place. It was a way of analyzing the site through conditions that are often overlooked, and of building a narrative that made those hidden relationships visible.

4. Can you describe what you submitted and what the process of creating it was like? 

All of the CAPLA professors I have taken courses with have been amazing and all seem deeply excited to teach their specific subjects. I would like to especially thank Dr. Nataliya Apanovich, Dr. Philip Stoker and Dr. Kristina Currans. 

So far this semester, I have created an ecological cookbook about the grotesque that works as a site analysis for the beetle. Alongside that, I submitted a site model and two ceramic form exploration models. The process of making the cookbook has been a real rollercoaster of exploration, because the questions I have been asking have constantly shifted and grown over the course of the semester, and my drawings have evolved with them. 

Each drawing came out of a very different process, but they all exist in conversation with one another, almost like a network, so each one depended on the discoveries of the one before it. I have been experimenting with new mediums and types of drawing in order to express each of those questions as fully as possible. The cookbook brings together graphite and pen drawings, magazine collage, ink on canvas collage and ceramic models. 

5. What was your inspiration? 

My inspiration was found through the research that stayed constant throughout the project, as well as the site, Gordon Hirabayashi Campground, and the complex history that it holds. 

I found inspiration for my drawings through various architects and artists, including Hernan Diaz Alonso, Lebbeus Woods and Jackie Mulder. 

6. What did you find challenging about this project? 

The most challenging part of the project was definitely the beginning. Christopher’s approach asked us to work in a way that felt very far from the kinds of methods I had been taught before, so there was a real sense of uncertainty at first. 

Researching a specific species without knowing where it would lead was daunting, especially because it required me to let go of the idea that I needed a clear answer right away. But that challenge ended up becoming one of the most valuable parts of the process. It pushed me to ask unexpected questions about disgust, decay and alternative forms of beauty, and those questions became the foundation of the project’s narrative. 

7. What lessons did you learn from this project? 

The cookbook taught me to trust exploration more deeply. I learned that some of the most meaningful ideas come from following a question without needing to know exactly where it will end. It also expanded my understanding of what site analysis can be. 

Through the cookbook and the beetle, I learned to look at a place through narrative, ecology and nonhuman experience, rather than only through the conventional methods we are usually taught. The project pushed me to see beauty in more complicated terms and to think about architecture as something that can reveal overlooked forms of life, strange ecologies and alternative ways of perception