Independent Studio Proposal

I have proposed a project for an independent studio / mini thesis for the spring. I am pretty excited, though nervous about it, and have still not decided whether it would be wise to pursue it. I will have a pretty intense courseload (18+ credit hours, as usual), but all 3 electives are very reading-and-paper heavy... on top of looking for jobs, teaching dance, and hopefully having some sort of life.

My goals for the project are a bit broad:
I would like to work on a project to explore some of my interests around vegetation, sustainability, and small design. I would like to have a building at the end, but would also like it to have a key smaller element that I could potentially fabricate. I would also like to spend some time becoming familiar with local ecology.

Though I haven't settled on a final idea, I have been thinking along the lines of a heavily research / experiment based design of a living machine for some aspect of Chicago/ Illinois ecology.

1)Research
-pinpoint and attempt to understand some aspect of suffering local ecology, and how living aspects (including humans and built world) relate to it.

2) Experiment
-develop a working prototype of living machine

3) Design (fanciful or realistic)
-fanciful: using the research and prototype as a starting point for a narrative, write a short fiction and design the building associated with it. I.E. Crazy environmental scientist starts building these living machines that grow and grow and become a self-contained, self-sustaining crazy-vegetated fantasy land on a random parcel in urban Chicago (like biospehere? Could have some fun images!).
-realistic: prototype becomes one element of something like an education center for the Chicago Park District, or a facility for cleaning up the lake shore, etc.

I'll be meeting with Tim Brown, the professor I'd like to work with, sometime this week to discuss the proposal.