This presentation will discuss the generative role of the site plan in the interdisciplinary consideration of the post-industrial landscape as a constructed, cultural artifact. During their investigations, design students at Iowa State University addressed the perceptual aspects and unique strategies of situation and location, through the particular lens of the iterative site plan drawing. As an introduction to dealing with these issues of “site,” each effort involved a careful and multi-scalar examination of environmental phenomena and patterns of use and settlement, revealed and affected by the post-industrial architectural artifact.