Mapping IIT Dining Relationships

The goal of this project was to uncover the abundance of dining-related assets within IIT, including knowledge, relationships, people, equipment, and spaces. The first seven weeks were spent speaking with IIT leaders and staff to identify all existing assets on campus. The following seven weeks were dedicated to refining the perspective and physical format for communicating the findings.

The resulting physical map displays the relationships between IIT and different food service providers in current and hypothetical states. In the current state, financial flows are emphasized to highlight the extractive nature of IIT Dining’s current model, where profits flow out of IIT’s campus to New York and then to the UK. Local food providers and organizations are excluded from the current state.

The base map and local assets are fixed, while relationships are displayed on a sliding transparent layer, emphasizing that the same assets exist in both scenarios. The hypothetical scenario does not propose any new assets.