About the studio
Top Stair Studio is a solo urban planning and arts practice dedicated to trying new things and challenging our assumptions about the built environment. The studio space is above where I live, under a peaked roof with a window that opens. I work right in front of it where I can feel the air rush in.
I am interested in how people relate to their environments, and I enjoy pushing against established ways of designing and experiencing cities. Thankfully, my family tags along as I run us through experiments living in nontraditional housing types, welcoming the urban wild, and extolling virtues of “ugly” infrastructure.
My art and planning work is an invitation for you to make new observations about your own built environments, and maybe even find a way to appreciate the parts that you don’t like.
ABOUT CINDY
I was raised in Missouri by parents whose Sunday pastime was touring model homes, which meant I got to collect floor plan books and obsess over hand-lettering and drafting in my free time. I have always been drawn to life in art studios and RVs, reasons some cities felt easy to walk around in and some didn’t, and literature about people and place and the effect of each on the other.
I earned a B.A. in English and environmental studies, a master’s degree in landscape architecture, and AICP credentials in urban planning. I happily worked in design and planning studio environments for 20 years. I loved it, but the whole time I imagined living differently: in less, with less, doing less.
In summer of 2019, my husband and I left our jobs, gave away our stuff, and moved with our two kids across the country for a reset. We committed to a low-impact life, and rented a 715 SF one-bedroom ADU for four years.
The smaller, simpler lifestyle supported more freedom, creativity, and possibility, and led to my business making plans and art about the powerful relationships between people and their valued places.
In planning, this means I pay attention to the feelings and experiences of those living in urban areas currently experiencing change, who are often in the tumultuous process of imagining futures that look different from what they now know and love. It also means I make clear, realistic, and practical plans that can actually be understood and implemented by others.
In art, this means contemplating urban places, especially the unpopular ones. I am drawn to physical human impacts like scaffolding, pipes, construction, trash, clotheslines, and industrial structures. I have a fondness for loading docks. I also love dandelions and those rugged plants that thrive in sidewalk cracks or hang onto the sides of cliffs looking old, weather-beaten, and bent.
My goal is to live and work in my city with curiosity, intention, and humility, and make real connections with people and the landscape through my art and planning work. I want what I create to be a breath of fresh air for those who are reading it, looking at it, or otherwise engaging with it. Thank you for visiting!
