2013 SMArchS Thesis Review | MIT Architecture

review

smarchs Thesis 2013

MIT Department of Architecture

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Architecture 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 7-337 Cambridge, MA USA 02139 617 253 7791 / arch@mit.edu architecture.mit.edu

smarchs The SMArchS degree is an advanced degree that reflects the idea that architecture and its ancillary disciplines are not just professional pursuits but also fields of knowledge and inquiry. The SMArchS program at MIT is administered through six ‘areas of study’ reflecting the different disciplines taught within the Department of Architecture: Architectural Design (whose first students will graduate in 2014); Architecture & Urbanism; Building Technology; Design & Computation; History, Theory & Criticism; and the Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture. Over the years, the challenge has always been to see if the work of SMArchS students could be more than MIT’s many and varied intellectual parts. SMArchS is exactly as diverse as the impact of architecture and art on the world is diverse. MIT offers a unique blend of the cultures of design and research, and the best SMArchS work is synthetic, drawing from the many fields of high specialization that MIT offers. In addition, thesis work such as those you see in these pages are often more than that, true occasions for intellectual invention and surprise beyond disciplinary boundaries that tell us something new about the world and the ways in which it works or may work.

For many students, this work will define their subsequent careers, offering them, in their future challenges, a beacon and inspiration to steer by even as they break new ground in vocational situations that we can perhaps today only dimly imagine.

aga Khan Program for

Urbanism

Jenine Kotob Layla Karim Shaikley

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Alexander F. Keller Jose Ramos

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Moa K. Carlsson Yu Gao Laia Mogas-Soldevila Vernelle A. A. Noel Woongki Sung Thomas Wortmann

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Irina Chernyakova Antonio Furgiuele Samuel Ray Jacobson Mariel Villeré

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Celina Balderas Guzmán Sreoshy Banerjea Michela Barone Lumaga Aditya Barve Andres Bernal Peng Huang Menglin Jiang Aristodimos Komninos Ryan Kurlbaum Yu Jung Nam Kobi Ruthenberg Kristen Zeiber

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Contact Information Notes

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See rear flap for Advisors, Readers & Credits See back cover for Schedule & Map

Jenine Kotob, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture Advisor: James Wescoat, Reader: Azra Akšamija

Layla Karim Shaikley, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture Co-Advisors: Reinhard Goethert & James Wescoat, Reader: Yu-Hung Hong

This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of learning environments in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as administered by private, refugee and public school systems. Learning environments in the OPT are examined with a two-fold methodology: historical and architectural.

The two-fold analysis utilizes a spatial and social framework, where child, building, neighborhood context, and education system, are understood as the four components of a learning environment.

The historical analysis is framed from the Late-Ottoman era until today; and, follows changing theories on education in parallel with the changing relationship between schools and the socio-spatial reality of the conflict. Results from the historical analysis indicate that educational institutions cannot operate during times of crisis, leading local family and teacher networks to develop informal education systems in informal spaces.

It is determined that learning environments must be able to adapt to the conflict and must embrace local communities as architectural, spatial, and social resources. This conclusion serves as a critical foundation for the architectural analysis.

The architectural analysis uses data collected from field work of 24 schools in

The most recent war in Iraq has resulted in a large wave of internal and external displacement, with increased sectarian violence and ethnic tension. Subsequent conflict has exacerbated conditions within the nation and further increased displacement. Throughout the country 1,332,382 Iraqis are currently displaced. Already operating on inadequate infrastructure due to a negligent dictatorship and consecutive wars, over 250 internally displaced person (IDP) settlements have peppered Baghdad’s landscape and aggravated the capital’s weak infrastructure. It is clear that the rapid rate at which informal settlements are being established exceeds the rate in which solutions are being provided.

While current settlements are legally insecure, under-serviced by urban infrastructure, generally have unhealthy living conditions and can be physically unsafe, eighty percent of IDPs in Baghdad prefer to stay in-situ. They have adapted to an urban lifestyle and brought rural traditions to their new urban environment. Communities tend to be well organized and have established internal leadership for representatives to negotiate with authorities to receive essential services.

The organic nature of the informal settlements has resulted in user-initiated incremental housing processes. While houses

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the West Bank in August of 2012 through informal interviews with locals, photography, and journaling. Data reveals that the sociospatial contexts of each school are unique due to divisions of the land. In order to limit the number of variables, special focus was given to three schools in Ramallah, which is a unique enclave that encompasses within it the socio-spatial realities of other enclaves in the West Bank. Results from the architectural analysis indicate that newer UNRWA and public schools are designed in an insular manner, which leads to divisions between community and institution on architectural, spatial, and social levels. While private school architecture acts on the environment and enhances programmatic function of space; breaking insularity and potentially improving socio-spatial conditions.

This thesis concludes with several short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations that stem from revelations in the historical analysis and results from the architectural analysis. Learning environments must span outwards allowing for an expansion of school resources, a broadening of learning experiences for youth, and the unification of Palestinians.

Image: A UNRWA school close to the militarized separation wall.

are overcrowded and construction materials vary in durability and safety, the settlements are flexible and responsive to affordable housing processes. They allow families to extend themselves and improve their dwellings over time. With unstable incomes for many IDPs, this process is ideal.

Within the incremental housing model, each household plans and implements its housing provision according to their specific shelter needs and priorities over time. This provides a “pay as you go” model for housing.

The sequential organization of a home divides the cost of construction for the unit over time based on the spatial needs of a user. It also delivers a basic housing unit in a limited timeframe.

This thesis addresses the following problem: Baghdad is facing an overwhelming amount of sub-standard IDP settlements that are rapidly turning into slums. User-initiated participation can be a solution for Iraq’s overwhelming and sub-standard proliferation of IDP settlements that are rapidly turning into slums. Is upgrading via incremental housing a viable solution for semi-durable IDP settlements in Baghdad?

Image: From the Norwegian Refugee Council

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Alexander F. Keller, Building Technology Advisor: John Fernandez, Readers: John Ochsendorf, Kurt Roth

Jose Ramos, Building Technology Advisor: Leon Glicksman, Reader: John Ochsendorf

Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) have been the subject of research and design applications for several decades. While some large-scale applications have been realized, prohibitively high costs and multiple technical complexities persist. A main cause of these challenges is a lack of system-level design and engineering of photovoltaic (PV) systems coupled with traditional methods of building construction. PV installation remains a highly specialized construction practice and is typically completed by skilled experts in the field who deal with intricate electrical connections like wiring to batteries and inverters. This complicated installation process, in addition to other soft costs like permitting and system components, account for approximately fifty percent of the overall cost of a solar power system. In order to address these issues, the

Federal buildings are required to reduce 30% of their energy use intensities by 2015 and 37.5% by 2020. Despite rigorous efforts, current Air Force healthcare building performance reveals only a 15% decrease has been achieved from the 2009 baseline levels.

Projections similarly reveal full compliance by 2020 may not be achievable, therefore, the need for a comprehensive and more robust effort is proposed.

This thesis seeks to develop a road map for the Air Force’s 68 existing healthcare buildings towards compliance by 2015. A methodology has been developed that leverages the Air Force’s state-of-the-art energy efficiency strategy, the energy performance analysis for 68 healthcare facilities and multi-agency interviews. Findings indicate an energy master plan and a systematic build-

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installation of photovoltaic systems must be simplified and streamlined.

This thesis presents the design, development, and construction of two novel BIPV products. One is integrated with masonry construction, and the other is integrated with pre-fabricated panel construction. By developing power-generating building products that integrate with common methods of construction, existing issues of cost, complexity, and low market acceptance are challenged.

Image: The BIPV masonry units provide remote villages in developing countries with a quick deployment strategy for constructing and energizing communities. Essential appliances like lighting and ovens can easily be powered by the material that the village homes are made of. Image by Keller. Photo by CDRD Project SomaliaBlock.

ing diagnostics approach that targets HVAC equipment and system operations as the most effective strategy. The results reveal that HVAC retrofits and implementation of no cost measures such as temperature set points and setbacks collectively reduce building energy use by 85% and energy use intensities by 50% by 2015.

Image: The United States

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Moa K Carlsson, Computation Advisor: George Stiny, Readers: Anne Whiston Spirn, Diana Balmori

Yu Gao, Computation Advisor: George Stiny, Reader: Ethan Zuckerman

Although the term Geographic Information methods are examined through two general System (GIS) is most commonly associated schemes by which cross disciplinary geowith a computer software, the principles of graphical information is organized, from the GIS existed long before it was implemented perspective of a general user. The two models, on a computer. This thesis hypothesizes that henceforth characterized as “stratified” and the computerization of the formerly analog “destratified” model, both deal with the linking GIS in the 1960s, which emerged with CGIS of cross-disciplinary and geographically refand initiatives at the Harvard Laboratory for erenced information, differ in logic and user Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, can interaction, but are argued to be equally combe read as the establishment of a pre-existing putational. analytical conception of the environment, The motivation behind the presented over its synthetic and holistic counterpart. It research is the realization that to date, the is often claimed that the analytical nature of technological aids available for design in computerized GIS was determined by the cross disciplinary and dynamic environments, capabilities and limitations of the digital com- do not suffice. Whispers of a new designputer. While this techno-centered trajectory oriented platform, which one might of GIS is fairly well documented, this thesis characterize as “Landscape Information aims to open up a new perspective of GIS, by Modeling” or “LIM,” are starting to surface, highlighting an alternative history of modeland the main purpose of this thesis is to ing both natural and artificial, geographical contribute to such discussions. information through the Ecological Method of Ian L. McHarg, the late Emeritus Professor Image: Carl Steinitz, Plan for Delmarva Peninsula. SYMAP computerized map showing of Landscape Architecture and Planning at potential for wildlife (detail). From Chrisman, the University of Pennsylvania.

N., Charting the Unknown: How computer In the thesis, these two parallel trajecmapping at Harvard became GIS (2006), p. 46. tories of analytical and synthetic/holistic

Collaborative production, where people have to coordinate with one another to get anything done, is considerably harder than simple sharing, but the results can be more profound. The process of collaborative production is highly complicated and unpredictable in most cases.

New tools allow large groups to collaborate, by taking advantage of non-financial motivations and by allowing for wildly differing levels of contribution, such as Wikipedia.

However, tools that involve financial motivations have great difficulties in getting multiple levels of contribution. The investigation of the methods in aggregating individual and often tiny contributions for social enterprise grassroots startups may offer new frameworks from which a great range of applications can be established.

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Prior work on collaboration through digital platforms has mainly focused on a centralized collaboration model through highly managed and fixed internet portals. This research will look into the alternative model, such as wiki (a distributed collaboration), to find solutions for the emergence of an evolving collaboration model.

Image: Self-Organized Collaboration, an evolving process.

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Laia Mogas-Soldevila, Computation Advisor: George Stiny, Readers: Mark Goulthorpe, Takehiko Nagakura, Mine Ozkar

This thesis is about human and machinic roles in the early conception of designs where it investigates computational methods that support creativity and surprise. It proposes a new approach to the relationship between human and digital medium in the enterprise of Computer-Aided Design and it discusses Self-Made Computation to empower the designer as driver of digital processes taking the computer as an active collaborator, or a sharp apprentice, rather than a master.

In a design process tool personalization enables precise feedback between human and medium. In the field of Architecture, we tend to evaluate a project by its final result, however there are as many design work flows as designers, and yet current off-the-shelf software has an inflexible built-in structure targeting general problem-solving that can interfere with non-standard design needs. Today, those with programming agility look for customized processes that assist early problem-finding instead of converging solutions. Contributing to alleviate software frustrations, smaller tailor-made applications prove to be precisely tailored, viable and enriching companions in certain moments of the project development.

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Previous work on the impact of standardized software for design has focused on the figure of the designer as a tool-user, this thesis addresses the question from the vision of the designer as a tool-maker. It investigates how self-made software can become a design companion for computational thinking, observed here as a new mind-set that shifts design work flows, rather than a technique. The research compares and diagrams designer-toolmaker work where self-made applets were produced. Critical analysis reveals a common structure to tailor a creative and explorative design workflow.

Its advantages and limitations are exposed to guide designers into alternative computational methods for design processes.

Image: Self-made computation lies at the intersection of tool-using and toolmaking and takes the best from both worlds. Applet-Building is observed as a mixed—passive and active—approach of computational abstraction.

Vernelle A. A. Noel, Computation Advisor: Azra Akšamija, Readers: Larry Sass, George Stiny

Carnival was introduced to Trinidad in 1783

by French planters. After the emancipation of slaves in 1834, the former slaves openly celebrated their newly won freedom in a carnivalesque style, bringing the music, the dance and energy to what is now Trinidad Carnival. Trinidad Carnival has had an impact on the global cultural economy with more than 70 diasporic carnivals around the globe, generating millions of dollars and attracting millions of people annually. The carnival of Trinidad however, is “the most copied, yet least majorly studied carnival in the world.” I am filling a current gap in literature by carrying out design research in the Trinidad Carnival. Wire bending is a traditional art form in the carnival where wire and other materials are bent and connected to construct the form and structure of costumes

in carnival; sadly however it is dying. In this thesis I (1) develop design support based on a comprehensive study of the existing situation, (2) develop a shape grammar to capture and encode the traditional art form of wire bending for designers and educators (3) integrate computational tools and digital technology in the design process for generating and producing design alternatives, and objects to think with, and (4) bridge the current gap between craft and computer so that the culture of making is revived in the Trinidad Carnival.

Image: Wire bender Stephen Derek doing wire bending for a costume.

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Woongki Sung, Computation Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura, Reader: George Stiny

This thesis proposes a new type of digital sketching tool for three-dimensional designs.

Sketching has been used as an effective way of exploring and developing ideas in various design processes. However, when designers deal with volumetric designs in threedimensional space, current sketching means have limitations. For example, conventional physical media such as clay are slow and dirty, while using a typical computer-based modeling tool requires learning patiently how to operate it with non-intuitive software interfaces. By observing the roles of sketching in the design process and reviewing the history of design tools and their interface, this thesis investigates and proposes new digital methods of three-dimensional sketching that take advantage of computer-vision technology widely available today. Two prototype tools have been developed and compared; each is based on a different technology platform and employs a different body-space interaction method. The first prototype has a motion de-

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tecting sensor, projection screen, and gesture recognition software. The movement of the user’s hands becomes an intuitive interface for shaping three-dimensional objects in a virtual space. The second one, a collaboration developed with Nagakura, uses a hand-held tablet computer with marker-based augmented reality software. The hand-held device displays the virtual object from desired angles, and also works as a virtual tool like chisel, plane, drill, and glue gun for shaping virtual objects in three-dimensional space. Testing these two prototypes for use and comparing the resulted objects and user feedbacks reveals strengths and weaknesses of different three-dimensional sketching environments. The proposed systems provide a possible foundation for a novel computer-aided sketching application that takes advantages of both the physical and virtual worlds.

Image: Design samples using Si3D-Mobile.

Thomas Wortmann, Computation Advisor: George Stiny, Readers: Takehiko Nagakura, Rudi Stouffs

Computational design tools currently fall into two broad categories: tools for representation and tools for generative design, including scripting. However, both categories address only relatively formal aspects of designing, and do little to support the design freedom and serendipitous creativity that, for example, is afforded by iterative sketching.

Calculating with visual rules provides an explicit notation for such artistic processes of seeing and drawing. Shape grammars have validated this approach by formalizing many existing designs and styles as visual rule-sets.

In this way, visual rules store and transfer design knowledge. Visual calculating in a more general sense supports creativity by allowing a designer to apply any rule she wants, and to capriciously see and re-see the design. In contrast to other explicit design methodologies, visual calculating defines a decomposition into parts only after the design is calculated,

thus allowing formalization without impeding design freedom.

Located at the intersection between design and computation, the computer implementation of visual calculating presents an opportunity for more designerly computational design tools. Since parametric visual calculating allows the largest set of design possibilities, an improved method for the parametric implementation of visual calculating will allow flexible rule-based design tools that intelligently combine design freedom with computational processing power. As a steps towards this goal, this thesis proposes a graph-based representation for parametric shapes that is compact, strongly supports design freedom, and is close to the original formulation of visual calculating.

different graphs.

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Irina Chernyakova; History, Theory & Criticism Co-Advisors: Arindam Dutta & Mark Jarzombek, Reader: Kristel Smentek

Antonio Furgiuele; History, Theory & Criticism Advisor: Mark Jarzombek, Readers: Arindam Dutta, Richard Nisa, Joao Ribas, Joseph Godlewski

This thesis untangles a system of valuation for architecture that grew from post-Cold War anxiety and shifting relations between environment, politics, and economics. Articulated initially by radical counter-cultural arguments, one sees, in the 1970s, the absorption of these arguments into mainstream forms of economic thinking. Published against the backdrop of the progressive activism of the 1960s and prefiguring the conservative politics of the 1980s, the 1972 Club of Rome report, The Limits to Growth, represented a decisive moment in that it appeared to reconcile critiques of consumerism and capitalism by linking the limits of global consumption to a finite totality of resources on the planet.

As a pre-history to current systems of valuation for architecture, this thesis looks at some of the intellectual tendencies that

A single manageable architecture of the Cloud has been one of the most important technical and social changes of the 21st century.

Having emerged during the US financial crises of 2008, Cloud computing, our newest public utility, is an attempt to manage cultural risk, render the environment of exchanges calculable, seemingly predictable, and most importantly into a new form of capital.

Cloud computing is a system of virtualization of data storage and program access into an instantaneous service utility. The transformation of computing into a service industry is one of the key changes of the Information Age and its logic is tied to the highly guarded mechanisms of an architecture machine, a fully automated factory of information, or more commonly known as the data center.

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undergirded mindsets such as those manifest in the report. More importantly, it traces a genealogy of the infusion of systems thinking into architectural practices that begins with the energy language established by Jay Wright Forrester, a systems dynamics engineer, and Howard T. Odum, to its manifold ends.

Navigating through a series of international conferences in which these principles were substantiated, the thesis looks at the ramifications of systems thinking in the present.

Image: Frame from Howard T. Odum, “The Energy Game,� ca.

1980, as reported by John Thomas.

University of Florida Archives,

The project positions the Cloud and the data center into the architectural discourse, both historically and materially, through an analysis of its relationship to an emergent digital sublime and how it is managed, controlled and propelled through the obscure typologies of its architecture and images.

The study of the Cloud and the data center through the historical notion of the sublime, and the organizational structures of typology we can more critically assess architecture’s relationship to this new phase of the Information Age. Image: The Cloud notation functions and literal, that the current information lies in the hands of the expert, the one that wields both technical

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documenta

Sexuality & Space

Mariel Villeré; History, Theory & Criticism Advisor: Mark Jarzombek, Reader: Caroline Jones

Samuel Ray Jacobson; History, Theory & Criticism Co-Advisors: Mark Jarzombek & Caroline Jones

Sexuality & Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), the proceedings of a 1990 conference of the same title, held at the Princeton School of Architecture, was both the first and last book-length publication dedicated to a comprehensive discourse on sexual identity and the discipline of architecture. Symposium organizer and proceedings editor Beatriz Colomina writes in the proceedings’ interdiction that the occasion’s effort to “raise the question of ‘Sexuality and Space’” was but “one small event” in an ongoing discourse. History tells us that that conversation failed to materialize. The reality of historiography is that from text alone there is no way of knowing why this should be the case. However, by carefully examining the construction of the constative within the publication Sexuality & Space, I have come to a better understanding of how that publication was both the beginning and end of the discourse it sought to inaugurate.

To these ends, “Heteroglossia and Historiography after Silence: Notes on Sexuality & Space” investigates three related essays from that publication: Laura Mulvey’s “Pandora: Topographies of the Mask and Curiosity,” 13

Beatriz Colomina’s “The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism,” and Mark Wigley’s “Untitled: The Housing of Gender.” By paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which ideas unfold as they are read, I have developed a comprehensive narrative of how three essays in Sexuality & Space, together, both instigate and negate a shared intellectual framework. Taking some liberties with Colomina’s introduction to Sexuality & Space: to the extent that “feminist theorists… conspicuously ignored in architectural discourse and practice” are addressed by Sexuality & Space, the “interdisciplinary exchange in which theories of sexuality are reread in architectural terms and architecture is reread in sexual terms” by its essays does no more than to reassert the very silence that its inquiry ostensibly alleviated. To these ends, thesis raises serious questions about what it means to have historiography after silence, and what it means to re-open an already closed discourse.

Image: Untitled

Kassel was named “the scene of the year” in a March 1955 tourism article in the New York Times, attracting international visitors to the once quaint town near the new East/ West border dividing Germany. From the main train station, rising modernist buildings guided visitors down the stepped pedestrian way of the Treppenstraße (stepped street), to Friedrichsplatz, the large open plaza capped by the Museum Fridericianum hosting the temporary documenta exhibition of “Art of the Twentieth Century.” Just beyond Friedrichsplatz and down the hill in the baroque Orangerie and surrounding Karlsaue Park, the Bundesgartenschau (National Garden Show) had arrived after building great enthusiasm and anticipation, both local and international, for its promise to spur recovery from Kassel’s urban park outwards, planting roses over ruins.

Arnold Bode, a designer, painter and professor of exhibition design at the Art Academy in Kassel took advantage of the Bundesgartenschau exposure and funding to install an exhibition of modern art in the damaged neoclassical Museum Fridericianum. The thesis focuses on the architectural

move to repurpose the impressive, grounded architecture for an equally inspiring, yet complicated historical alchemy for an exhibition of abstract art. In displaying the architecture as part of the exhibition, Bode resurrected the Enlightenment ideology that birthed the building and reinterpreted spiritual and cultural sentiments for a postwar subject.

Overlooked in the prevailing art historical narrative, the thesis puts forth the details of the building’s restoration and documenta’s intrinsic connection to the Bundesgartenschau in an attempt to reposition the exhibition design in an architectural history. I argue for the influence of Kassel’s urban and landscape history on the staging of documenta, and in turn, the exhibition’s dialogue with the form of the Bundesgartenschau, Kassel’s modernist urban planning and the urban dimension of successive documenta exhibitions, which have since continued on a five year schedule.

Image: Visitors to II. documenta in 1959 see a sculpture moved outdoors to the redesigned Karlsaue park and the ruined baroque Orangerie, the site of the Bundesgartenschau in 1955. Photograph

by Günther Becker, documenta archive.

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Sreoshy Banerjea, Urbanism Advisor: James Wescoat, Reader: Julian Beinart

Celina Balderas Guzmán, Urbanism Co-Advisors: Alan Berger & Andrew Scott, Reader: Heidi Nepf

As a result of conventional infrastructure and the degradation of natural hydrologic systems, most American cities suffer from compromised hydrology, particularly problems with storm water. The consequence is externalities at multiple scales: increased disaster vulnerability, climate change, poor water quality, habitat loss, etc. Because upgrading conventional single-purpose infrastructure has become an increasingly cost-prohibitive option, cities are finding that reincorporating natural systems can be more effective. In the last 20 years, constructed wetlands have arisen as a promising multi-purpose solution to storm water problems. Constructed wetlands are artificial systems designed to mimic natural wetlands by using the same physical, biological, and chemical processes to treat water.

They are relatively large, but their size gives them high ecological potential and numerous other benefits, such as flooding protection and recreational spaces, while having low life-cycle costs.

Since the effectiveness of constructed wetlands comes from mimicking natural wetlands, then the analogy to nature should be extended as far as possible. In nature, 15

wetlands are a system connected to a regional hydrologic network. Therefore, constructed wetlands distributed systemically throughout a watershed have potential to deliver more networked benefits than the current practice of dispersed and disconnected wetlands for individual sites. Yet little research exists examining the implications of urban constructed wetlands in design and planning terms, at multiple scales. In fact, few urban constructed wetland projects for storm water exist in the first place.

This thesis proposes a framework for understanding the potential of systemic constructed wetlands as landscape infrastructure in cities. Based on an understanding of science, engineering, and urbanism, this thesis identifies the urban zones of greatest potential for storm water constructed wetlands, and considers how urban design and wetland design can merge. Finally, this thesis suggests the benefits that could arise out of an urban constructed wetland system, beyond simply water treatment.

In India, rivers hold profound meaning formed by sacred rituals, and traditions.

Today, urban waterfront degradation has led to a focus on the greater good implemented through modern objectives of development, leading to a tension between past and present modes of city-river interface. In the state of Gujarat, India, the Sabarmati Riverfront divides Ahmedabad into the east and the west, the old city and the new city, characterized by populations varying in religious, social, and financial status. Due to the tension between the two sides, the river is a physical and sociological barrier between the two ‘worlds’. Howard Spodek in Shock City portrays Ahmedabad steeped in shocking contradictions: a city of extraordinary economic growth and innovation, horrendous communal violence and appalling poverty.

In order to demonstrate a new cultural model of riverfront development, this thesis takes inspiration from multiple perspectives

via three analyses. Firstly, a historiography of India riverfront urbanism leads up to the analysis of the Sabarmati Riverfront Development. Secondly, a conceptual framework is created via an analysis of a more authentic site along the Sabarmati, the Gandhi Ashram.

Thirdly, a downstream sites’ contemporary relationship with the Gandhi ashram is traced in order to propose and develop a new riverfront design framework through a cultural approach which integrates across multiple scales. This strategic focus area is developed as a contemporary embodiment of the inclusive spirit of the ashram, resulting in a landscape which is truly exemplary of the consciousness of unity, communal identity and diversity which can lift Ahmedabad beyond Shock City, beyond the current SRFD, and beyond the Gandhi Ashram today.

Image: Downstream site, a cultural model

Image: Proposed marsh zone for a suburban constructed wetland.

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Michela Barone Lumaga, Urbanism Advisor: Larry Sass, Readers: Brent Ryan, Gediminas Urbonas

The revolution in modes of design and production anticipate a liberalization of material and fabrication that can potentially allow the masses to take control of the design of urban space. Historically with each technical invention, writing, printing press, and videocameras, came not only the possibility for new creative practices but also the formation of the sociopolitical structures to allow such new praxis to mobilize and become effective.

For example, with the advent of the printing press, publishing houses organized the literary world, selecting culture for mass consumption. Likewise, the film and television industry grew to broadcast programs and movies.

During the 1990s, theories of virtuality and

the commercialization and privatization of public spaces, were seen as potential dissolvers of physical public places. Now we should acknowledge the power of networked media and digital fabrication for their potential on physically building public good.

This thesis explores and proposes a method to create urban places: publishing a set of drawings online of selected public objects that can be easily fabricated with a CNC router which will allow a digitally networked audience to participate in the physical making of space in their cities.

Image: Networked design experiment, instructions for customization

Aditya Barve, Urbanism Advisor: Miho Mazereeuw, Reader: Brent Ryan

Waste is an integral part of our contemporary civilization based on consumption and material culture. From an empty soda can to the spent nuclear fuel rod, we define waste as the matter without immediate use: rotten, broken, unwanted. The notion of waste is also spatial—waste is simply matter in the wrong place and consequently of no value. One defining feature of globalization is the flow of waste to the places that extract value out of this otherwise worthless matter. Situated on the western shore of the Gulf of Cambay in India, Alang is one such place. Alang owes its existence to the rise of modern maritime industry. Here obsolete end of life ships are broken, by manual labor, to transform them into a reusable commodity- steel. With an average lifespan of 25 to 30 years, most of these ships, often full of hazardous waste at the end of their working life, end up on the beach of Alang to be dismantled for their steel. Taking advantage of its unique geographical condi17

tions, cheap migrant labor, and lax environmental regulations, Alang recycles half of the world’s scrapped ships. It is the epicenter of a scavenger economy that turns obsolete vessels into reusable commodities for a rapidly developing economy.

With the example of Alang, this thesis asserts that, due to their intricate connectivity to the global networks, places of resource extraction acquire an extra-territorial urban character. Only by acknowledging the urban nature of such places can we start to design for these flows of waste, migration and resources. This thesis aims to explore the potential for urbanism to intervene into an industry like Alang to develop a regional strategy of urban metamorphosis.

Image: A worker supervising a furnace that will eventually turn steel plates from the ship into reinforcement bars.

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Andres Bernal, Urbanism Advisor: Miho Mazereeuw, Readers: Brent Ryan, James Wescoat

Bogota’s most iconic feature Los Cerros Orientales, a ridge of mountains that spans the eastern edge, have directed the city’s growth and dictated its form. Because of their visual prominence and symbolic quality, numerous attempts to preserve them in a natural state have been proposed over the years. Simultaneously, from the city’s outset Los Cerros have been an important resource generator and subject to extraction, ecological transformation and most recently urbanization. The first legal attempt to halt development in Los Cerros came in 1977 when the government created an urban growth boundary along the eastern edge of the city. While curtailing some growth, the boundary did not prevent informal and formal development to continue to expand into protected land. Other similar 19

contention strategies have followed and have been equally unable to prevent urbanization from expanding.

This thesis aims to reexamine Bogota’s urban boundary to devise alternative strategies that can better address the inevitable urbanization of Los Cerros. The thesis departs from the premise that social, economical and political realities in Bogota will prevent contention policies from succeeding. As a result, urbanization is acknowledge and used as a proxy to design strategies that will bolster and improve existing social and natural ecologies.

Peng Huang, Urbanism Co-Advisors: Julian Beinart & Michael Dennis, Readers: Alexander D’Hooghe, Miho Mazereeuw

World famous as shopper’s paradise, Hong Kong itself is becoming the shopping complex of mainland China. However, shopping malls with endless elevated pedestrian system have strict limits and constraints of social activities and only serve as economic space.

Hong Kong is gradually losing its diverse civic space since the government launched the “privately owned public space” (POPS) policy to promote the development of open space.

Managed by private developers, the priority of such POPS is given to economic space rather than to civic space. By exploring the

ambiguity of open space through examining both traditional and modern linear pedestrian networks that associates with different categories of shopping space, the thesis aims to design a diverse civic space which truly matches Hong Kong.

Image: An illustration of the interface.

Image: Architectural intervention at formal/informal transition.

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Hellinikon Menglin Jiang, Urbanism Co-Advisors: Adèle Naudé Santos & Yung Ho Chang, Reader: Tuney Lee

The walled communities as one kind of special housing area came from the increasing requirements for living spaces during the 1980’s in urban areas of China. The closed model of walled communities itself results in less opportunity for the inhabitants who do not live there to enjoy the city features such as city wall, mountain, water system and conservation buildings, which they occupied.

Therefore, making these walled communities open should have the high ranking during the process of the old town’s renewal and renovation. Moreover, how to maintain the privacy of the housing in the communities when they are open is the challenge for the thesis.

This thesis contains three parts. The first defines the main issue and proposes the basic solution strategies. The second defines the

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theoretical issue behind the design issue and outlines the spatial composition and section design as the open organization approach for walled communities through case study and drawing analysis. The third part identifies appropriate walled communities and functions in the old town area that are suitable for new design strategies. All the efforts are trying to open up the walled communities to make the city features better connect to the urban space and meanwhile maintaining the privacy for the housing itself.

Image: The site

Aristodimos Komninos, Urbanism Advisor: Michael Dennis, Reader: Brent Ryan

The intention behind this thesis is to examine how the latest socioeconomic crisis, in Greece, Europe and the world affects our cities. This thesis is an attempt to invent strategies for the declining city of Athens and trace the opportunities offered by the Athenian landscape and the recently closed airport of Hellinikon.

Twelve years after the cease of its operation, Hellinikon remains the largest abandoned urban void in the fabric of Athens.

Neither the public demand for a metropolitan park nor the state-driven privatization attempts have yet proven to be fruitful. In a critical time of economic recession and social segregation, the question of the large urban void emerges and traditional redevelopment practices are questioned.

The answer to the question of the large urban void lies next to grassroots initiatives currently active within Hellinikon that creatively exploit the public land.

This thesis argues that spontaneous and individual activities can shift into a holistic

self-instituted narrative for the Hellinikon area, constructing a new urban vision; the “Collective Superstructure.”

The “Collective Superstructure” is an alternative, bottom-up scenario for the future development of Hellinikon. The goal behind this initiative is the fair redistribution of public land to those in need and the development of the much-anticipated metropolitan park through collective and voluntary action.

The urban narrative commences with the gradual occupation of the former airport’s territory and evolves as a community-based development, relying on the use of local natural resources, water-management systems and the re-use of facilities found on site. The community acquires a polemical form over time that reflects its self-sufficiency, self-institution, and its resistance to the pressure exercised by the market and the state.

Image: The “Collective Superstructure,” a bird’s-eye view looking east.

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Namdaemun Market District Yu Jung Nam, Urbanism Advisor: Michael Dennis, Reader: Julian Beinart

Ryan Kurlbaum, Urbanism Advisor: Alexander D’Hooghe, Readers: Alan Berger, Brent Ryan

“…all of these projects, all of this work that we are doing, spring from a necessity, a definite human need, a need of this generation, a need of the year in which we live and of the last year, and the year before.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (on the WPA) “(Infrastructure): public assets that facilitate production” John Maynard Keynes Current urbanization patterns and aging transportation infrastructures have marginalized millions of US citizens. The result is 14.5 million US residents live within 100 meters of a four-lane highway and have become bound to communities which endure social hardship and environmental detriment. For too long, the physical form of the city has taken a relaxed position on these endangered and often hazardous edges of the city. The central argument of this thesis is that architecture built along major transportation corridors must respond to the scale of the infrastructure itself.

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Dense concentrations of pollution and rising transient populations (homeless, working poor and chronically unemployed) surrounding transportation infrastructure call for a new approach to contemporary urbanism.

The thesis Social Infrastructure investigates an elevated one-mile stretch of I-93 in South Boston—an infrastructural remnant of the 14.6 billion dollar “Big Dig.” The elevated highway built in 1955, has formed a number of under-utilized and vacant sites along and under the I-93 corridor. This thesis explores a new mode of urbanism, which leverages policy, urban design, landscape, and architecture to embrace the infrastructural scale and to offer new potential for this bleak urban condition.

The result is a set of three formal typologies and three performative landscape strategies all of which seek to resolve social inequity, remediate environmental pollution, and utilize infrastructural space.

This thesis begins from the premise that public spheres are currently disappearing and losing their social role in the city; it focuses on traditional market places in Seoul, Korea.

Its aim is to explore the possibilities for the re-design of traditional market places, so that they may better serve not only their economic role but also become proper public spaces in a city. Although Korea has achieved impressive economic, social and cultural evolution, traditional market places are not keeping pace; rather, these places have been lagging and have declined, including the Namdaemun Market District. Currently, large-scale traditional markets have little future in their present form since changed consumption patterns mean that most people no longer visit them. Besides, 50 year old market buildings do not interact well with market streets, and the tangled streets could hardly cope with the problems brought by more stalls and a larger number of visitors.

This thesis will start with a conceptual framework for comprehending the current situation, exploring the potential of the traditional market place in Seoul and seeking architectural solutions to the absence of ‘publicness’. With these solutions, I will suggest what changes in the ‘spaceness’ are needed in traditional market places in order to meet the requirements of the present day and people’s changed sensibilities. The thesis suggests that a new version of the traditional market place could be developed that is combined with other programs, especially tourism spot, that are better adapted to meeting modern requirements. It would focus on social demand and fixing market problems, thereby reviving its own inherent competitive advantage as a space for commercial activities and interpersonal communication.

Image: View of the market.

Image: Southwest axon

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Kobi Ruthenberg, Urbanism Advisor: Alexander D’Hooghe, Reader: Miho Mazereeuw

Kristen Zeiber, Urbanism Advisor: Julian Beinart, Readers: Alan Berger, Brent Ryan

The Central Business District (CBD) is the monument of the regional urban condition.

A monument, which is expressive of financial competence and global connectivity. A monument for capital accumulation. The CBD of the global city is a representational tool manifesting bureaucratic capability and economic ambition. Historically originating in the United States, the CBD grew in an organic manner out the city’s core and thus articulated a natural tie between congestion and financial growth – embodied in the typological invention of the skyscraper. Today the CBD of the developing city rises as a “pure” device of the planning and political authorities, a projection of the western paradigmatic “downtown” models into foreign contexts that fail to embody or represent the idea of their city or the collective domain of its inhabitants. Manifested as a cluster of towers, this urban and architectural project has seemingly detached itself from both context and content and appears to be increasingly self-sufficient.

Yet while the CBD plays an essential role as a designed urban element that expresses financial progress, this thesis would contest

As the flagship of the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was a triumph of regional and environmental design that has since fallen on hard times. When writer James Agee toured the region in 1935, he described the massive dam construction underway as a great skeleton across the valley, to be fleshed with social programs; economic incentives; navigation; flood control; power; and economic development. There were planned towns, parkways, jobs, and cheap energy – a regional utopia.

Eighty years later, what remains of that skeleton is a static system of dams and their reservoirs, and an aging power grid more reliant on heavily polluting fossil fuels than hydroelectric power. The program is heavily in debt, regularly challenged to privatize and decentralize. Meanwhile, the TVA’s region has reoriented itself along new programmatic and spatial lines, increasingly relegating the TVA to irrelevant anachronism.

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its emphasis on the production of aesthetic contrast and uniqueness, and propose to consider it first and foremost as an operative device with real economic and social validity – not merely a representation of business but a business and an urban asset by its own right.

Thus this thesis proposes a strategic revision of the typical CBD models by formulating a set of principles to correspond with key planning and design challenges, namely issues which are: Dimensional, Social, Symbolic and Organizational. These principles would hypothetically promote the mediation of contrast between the global capitalist drive for geographical expansion and the local circumstances that are often facing a process of radical transformation, while maintaining the necessary morphological flexibility and programmatic structuring, which is fundamental for the proper operationally of the CBD. Image: Bird’s eye view of regionally distributed business centers.

This thesis revisits the original goals of the TVA and critically examines their contemporary incarnation, asking two main questions: first, what actionable relevance does the toolkit of the TVA still hold today? And secondly, what role can design still play along this otherwise-unremarkable river?

The thesis critically examines the original goals of the TVA against the current conditions of its region, mapping its remnant components and, ultimately, seeking possibilities for repurposing its riverfront infrastructural network into a recalibrated regional plan. In this way, the project identifies points of entry for grafting contemporary uses and meanings onto the TVA’s remnant spine.

Image: The Tennessee River in its current state: less a holistic regional network than a collection of disparate remnants along an otherwise-unremarkable river.

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Celina Balderas Guzmán celina@mit.edu celina.mit.edu

Aristodimos Komninos komninos@mit.edu ariskomninos.com

Sreoshy Banerjea sreoshyb@mit.edu

Jenine Kotob jkotob@mit.edu

Michela Barone Lumaga mblumaga@mit.edu

Ryan Kurlbaum kurlbaum@mit.edu

Aditya Barve asbarve@mit.edu asbarve.com

Laia Mogas-Soldevila dumo@mit.edu

Andres Bernal abernal@mit.edu abernal.net Moa K. Carlsson moac@mit.edu Irina Chernyakova ich@mit.edu Antonio Furgiuele af2@mit.edu Yu Gao gaoyu@mit.edu Peng Huang hp_9@mit.edu Samuel Ray Jacobson srj1@mit.edu samuelrayjacobson.wordpress.com Menglin Jiang jiangml@mit.edu Alexander F. Keller akeller@mit.edu alexkellerdesign.com

Yu Jung Nam nyj5021@mit.edu Vernelle A. A. Noel vernelle@mit.edu vernell5.wix.com/vernelle Jose Ramos jiramos@mit.edu Kobi Ruthenberg kruth@mit.edu Layla Karim Shaikley shaikley@mit.edu Woongki Sung noclew@mit.edu noclew.net

Azra Akšamija Diana Balmori Julian Beinart Alan Berger Yung Ho Chang Alexander D’Hooghe Michael Dennis Arindam Dutta John Fernandez Leon Glicksman Joseph Godlewski Reinhard Goethert Mark Goulthorpe Yu-Hung Hong Mark Jarzombek Caroline Jones Tuney Lee Miho Mazereeuw

Takehiko Nagakura Hedi Nepf Richard Nisa John Ochsendorf Mine Ozkar Joao Ribas Kurt Roth Brent Ryan Adèle Naudé Santos Larry Sass Andrew Scott Kristel Smentek Anne Whiston Spirn George Stiny Rudi Stouffs Gediminas Urbonas James Wescoat Ethan Zuckermann

Mariel Villeré makv@mit.edu Thomas Wortmann wortmann@mit.edu Kristen Zeiber kzeiber@mit.edu

Irene Hwang, Project Lead Kyle Barker, Designer Mariel Villeré, Editorial Assistant Printed by Puritan Press; Hollis, NH Special thanks to: Nader Tehrani, Department Head Arindam Dutta, SMArchS Director The 2013 SMArchS Graduates

Dept HQ

Men’s

9-451

9-455

To Women’s

9-450A

9-450B

Mass Ave

Stella Room

9:00–9:40

9:00–9:40

9:00–9:40

Menglin Jiang

Alexander F. Keller

Samuel Ray Jacobson

9:50–10:30

9:50–10:30

9:50–10:30

Celina Balderas Guzmán

Yu Gao

Michela Barone Lumaga

10:40–11:20

10:40–11:20

10:40–11:20

Ryan Kurlbaum

Laia Mogas-Soldevila

Antonio Furgiuele

11:30-12:10

11:30-12:10

11:30-12:10

Kristen Zeiber

Jose Ramos

Mariel Villeré

12:20-1:00

12:20-1:00

12:20-1:00

Irina Chernyakova

Kobi Ruthenberg

Layla Karim Shaikley

1:50-2:30

1:50-2:30

1:50-2:30

Peng Huang

Thomas Wortmann

Jenine Kotob

2:40-3:20

2:40-3:20

2:40-3:20

Aristodimos Komninos

Vernelle A. A. Noel

Yu Jung Nam

3:30-4:10

3:30-4:10

3:30-4:10

Aditya Barve

Woongki Sung

Sreoshy Banerjea

4:20-5:00

4:20-5:00

4:20-5:00

Andres Bernal

Moa K. Carlsson

Leonidia Garbis