Winner Non-Registered

Roland Escalona

Roland Escalona’s sketch was, without exaggeration, a lifetime in the making. “I grew up in Manila, the Philippines,” said Escalona, “where shanty housing is part of the landscape.” The memory of that landscape stayed with the young architect and was the subject of his B.Arch. senior thesis at the University of Southern California. The idea for the sketch struck him when he came across his old thesis and reimagined that dense landscape using the meticulous precision of photographic mosaic, one of his artistic hobbies. Escalona recounts that “the image of shanty living was stuck in my mind.” But now that landscape has been distilled by hand for us to interpret.