In addition to his sociological and photographic activities, David Schalliol plays an active role on several websites, including his work as managing editor of Gapers Block and founder and editor of metroblossom. If you ever have any ideas what he should do with theloess.com or mollisols.com, let him know.
A Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago and a visiting assistant professors at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Schalliol is academically and artistically interested in issues of social stratification and meaning in the social and physical worlds.
Big Idea: “The Isolated Building” 
Our capacity to solve problems is intertwined with the way we understand the world around us, but we are often unaware of how our education, routines and presentation format orient our interpretations. Visual media can help us develop creative solutions by allowing us to see the world afresh — but first we need to know how to read a photograph. A typology of urban buildings will start the conversation.