Master of Architecture Final Thesis Reviews, January 5, 2021
MARCH DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE • MIT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING • SA+P 1
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Master of Architecture Final Thesis Reviews, January 5, 2021 4 Arditha Auriyane Post -arium 6 Adiel Alexis Benitez Priced Out of Paradise: Reconsidering Cooperatives in Response to Climate Gentrification in Miami’s Communities of Color 8 Chen Chu To Know is to Empower: Chagos Institute of Environmental Humanities 10 Sydney Cinalli Reclaiming the Estranged: Imagining an Architecture of Excess
MARCH 12 Charlotte D'Acierno, Clarence Lee, Jaehun Woo Ferrous Futures: Scenario Planning for Global Steel (joint thesis)
14 Isadora Dannin Seven Ways of Reading The House of the Seven Gables 16 Nynika Jhaveri Gardens of Resistance
18 Kailin J. Jones After Aura: Authorship, Automation, Authenticity 20 Melika Konjicanin The Factory of Coexistence 22
Jeffrey Landman Screen Time
24 Emma Pfeiffer Architecture for Revision 26 David Allen White Thorough DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE • MIT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING • SA+P 3
Post -arium Arditha Auriyane Advisor: Mariana Ibañez Readers: Les Norford, Kiel Moe Post -arium is a search for a new form, an exploration of new standards and other ways to produce comfort. If -arium is a suffix denoting a location in which things are kept, often alluding to architecture as containers of comfort sustained by carbon forms, in Post -arium, we question comfort: on whose and what terms are we basing it on? In the face of temperature change, we need a new kind of comfort; ask for new standards, idea, strategies and form; probing further what is comfort or discomfort, how we can achieve it, and who can achieve
ter through the rivers and canals of the city, before all
it. Post -arium looks at the flow of energy (often felt as
the water drains out to Jakarta Bay. Specifically, the site in
heat) between the “source” and “sink” states, and fur-
discussion is Muara Baru, a crucial end point of the water
ther using this as a methodology to explore its possible
routes in North Jakarta, a small reservoir with a water
forms. Here, we discuss an issue relating to housing and
gate that pumps out to the sea. Like many other bodies
flooding in Jakarta, Indonesia, through the lens of Post
of water in Jakarta, informal settlements have developed
-arium. As a low-lying delta, surrounding cities send wa-
around the edges of Muara Baru reservoir. The gap between the high-rise lifestyle of the rusunawa (low income housing flats) and these informal settlements calls for a hybrid between urban living and its need for densification, with models of housing that aligns with the cultural desires of the residents. Post -arium looks to bring into the site the strategies for densaity that are sensible to the cultural aspirations and environmental reality, and thus challenges the notion of comfort thermally and culturally. 4
Images 1 and 2 (Opposite): Understanding the juxtapositions of village practices and urban life and viewing them as energy entities, at the building scale and in cultural programs such as food processing, cooking, selling, and informal en-
counters; and how contemporary architecture can support this cultural activity. Image 3 (Above): A retrofit strategy for existing housing in Muara Baru. Images are courtesy of the author. 5
Priced Out of Paradise: Reconsidering Cooperatives in Response to Climate Gentrification in Miami’s Communities of Color Adiel Alexis Benitez Advisor: Miho Mazereeuw Readers: Marisa Morán Jahn, Susanne Schindler Our current global health crisis has clearly rendered
redlining, and urban renewal in its most vulnerable
how a lack of stable housing, access to care, and the
communities. Today, the city’s muddled past has been
effects of climate change, disproportionately affect our
compounded with its uncertain future.
communities of color. Contemporary development
Despite palpable climate change, construction con-
patterns demonstrate the inadequacies of unchecked
tinues along the Miami waterfront, fueled by foreign
neoliberalism, and its adverse effect on the develop-
investors who park capital in luxury real estate. For
ment of equitable housing. Within this context, Miami
local residents, both low and mid income, the cost of
presents itself as a vulnerable coastal city exemplar. A
living continues to rise along with sea levels. Miami,
growing city, Miami struggles with an endemic afford-
outwardly marketed as a tropical oasis, is now regard-
ability crisis, and the long lasting scars of segregation,
ed as one of the country’s most inequitable cities. This thesis takes issue with the commodification of housing, and its adverse effects on the vulnerable communities of greater Miami. While Miami’s surplus of luxury real estate swells, climate change and speculative development have combined to threaten the stability of the city’s multi-ethnic core. Instead, it re-considers the cooperative as a mechanism by which communities can reclaim agency within hostile markets, and open up access to stabilize housing in 6
response to climate gentrification, as well as opening up access to other forms of social and financial capital. This thesis works to re-contextualize the cooperative ownership of housing within the Miami context, considering its deployment as an architectural response who’s programming and spatial organizations respond to both collective use and collective need.
Image 1 (Opposite): Speculations on cooperative living, cyanotype 9x12” . Image 2 (Right): Our Communities, Not for Sale, cyanotype 12x9” . Both images are courtesy of the author. 7
To Know is to Empower: Chagos Institute of Environmental Humanities Chen Chu Advisor: Miho Mazereeuw Readers: Nasser Rabbat, Delia Wendel Chagos Archipelago was sanitized in the 1970s for a US
by the planetary-scale military-colonial network. Of all
military base on Diego Garcia, following a secret “ex-
the denounced legal ammunition, the Chagos Marine
change of notes” that escaped legislative approval. 1500
Protected Area (MPA), along with its fiction of terra nul-
Chagossian evictees, “dumped” in Mauritius and Sey-
lius, commits dual violence in legitimizing environmen-
chelles, have since become surplus population dwarfed
tal fortification and denying 200 years of Chagossian inhabitation. The assemblage of the military, security and scientific institutions, by defining the Chagos MPA as an “organic rationality,” deploys a generalized and abstracted sense of ecological insecurity in aspiration for global environmental administration and in opposition to traditional bodies of government. How can design rearticulate a relationship to land and ecology that is diverse, specific and un-generalizable to counter this militarized environmentalism? This thesis proposes the Chagos Institute of Environmental Humanities that is duplicitous in function. While staging apparent conformity to restrictions and regulations imposed by the UK-US alliance, the Institute quietly supports an undercover subversive project of decolonization. This involves not only strategic building and reconstruction that affirm Chagossians’ right of abode and that assist future resettlement but, more unsettling, the decolonization of environmental science, shifting from a romanticized pristine ecology to an inhabited landscape as a source of knowledge, vitality and livability. This is 8
not another savior project. It is not converting Indigenous politics to a Western doctrine of liberation. Chagossians have already demonstrated superb capabilities in mobilizing political support, advancing legal claims, sustaining cultural ties and heritage across generations even in exile; they are just not heard by us. The Institute facilitates dialogical actions through which both Chagossians and Western scientists cultivate oceanic literacy and botanic
Image 1 (Opposite): Storied landscape as a source of knowledge. Both images are courtesy of the author.
sensibility, capitalizing on the land, the plant and the sea
Image 2 (Below): The blue-washed Chagos as a territorialized node of de-territorialized powers.
as pedagogical and mnemonic devices.
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Reclaiming the Estranged: Imagining an Architecture of Excess Sydney Cinalli Advisors: Brandon Clifford, Deborah Garcia Reader: Cristina Parreño A consumer’s contact with plastic is typically a brief affair, while plastic’s intimacy with the earth is immortal. Our initial fondness fades into estrangement - much like a tragic love story. We essentially ghost our waste by disassociating from it entirely and in result, we force it beyond our immediate cone of vision. Our waste streams then veil plastic’s journey into landscapes around the world, drawing it further out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
Humans have become experts in us-
ultimately confines design to values
ing, abusing, and discarding earth’s
held by the construction industry.
natural resources. Our pricking and
Blanketing their concerns for capital
prodding of the earth coupled with
in false claims of sustainable building
the habitual estrangement of our
practices, the construction industry
waste has induced “slow violence” on
deliberately fetishizes material optimi-
our landscapes at large (Nixon 2).
zation. However, when these building
This estrangement also occurs at the
materials reach their expiration date, a
scale of our built environment. Ar-
collective admiration once again fades
chitects are habitually situated down-
into disaffection.
stream of material production; this
This thesis reframes plastic waste as a resource rather than a contentious collection of artifacts. By speculating on its life beyond estrangement, this perversion is explored by conflating plastic’s lifespan with socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental conditions unique to the Hawaiian Islands. These speculations actively consider site conditions that influence the built environment long after the architect leaves the table by acknowledging plastic as a material that operates across deep time scales. These themes
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are explored within three parafictions; each follows an oral history of an architectural intervention.
nity to do what we, as humans, do best. We can use more - not less - around this collective resource of plastic.
newfound intimacy? What new forms of cultural value could these interventions engender?
In the case of waste, more is more. With that said, we have the opportu-
What if our deliberate estrangement from plastic waste was replaced with a
Both images are courtesy of the author.
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Ferrous Futures: Scenario Planning for Global Steel (joint thesis) Charlotte D'Acierno, Clarence Lee, Jaehun Woo Advisor: Mariana Ibañez Readers: John Ochsendorf, Mark Jarzombek 2 trillion kilograms of steel are produced around the world on an annual basis, enough to construct 17,000 Birds Nest Stadiums, 31,000 Empire State Buildings, or 480,000 Guggenheim Bilbao skeletons. If all of this steel were to fill Central Park, this single ingot would be nearly 10 meters tall. If this steel were to wrap around the earth, it would circle the equator more than 3 times. But this steel is much more intimately connected to the earth from which its base elements are extracted. Examining the hidden connections of the steel ‘machine’ is at the heart of this thesis. The ultimate goal of this project is not the impossibility of exposing every single detail of these tangled histories, but to question steel’s ascension to the top of the architectural material pyramid. This thesis combines methods from scientific research and scenario planning to develop a series of speculative futures as a response to an everchanging and challenging environment. As populations grow and urban centers densify, so too will our material dependence. These three Scenarios
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provide plausible futures that operate within the confines of the current capitalist system; they highlight the absurdity of our current practice without becoming absurdly unrelatable. The goal of scenario design is not to produce an alternative material but to question the consequences of our current practice, which so often takes steel at face value. In imagining the effects of these scenarios, we reconstruct our material culture and the effects that these speculations might have in the complex networks in which this material is embedded.
Image 1 (Opposite): Steel Storage Warehouse at Pier 53, viewed from the HighlineS. Image 2 (Right): Demolition of W.R. Grace Building viewed from 6th Ave. Both images are courtesy of the authors.
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Seven Ways of Reading The House of the Seven Gables Isadora Dannin Advisor: Mark Jarzombek Readers: Azra Akšamija, Rosalyne Shieh The House of the Seven Gables is the name given to a
story to a “castle in the air”: a fantastical construction and
house in Salem, MA, constructed in 1668, that now, argu-
metaphorical container for the moments of crisis where
ably, has seven gables. It would seem logical to assume that
history repeats itself. In other words, it shouldn’t be read
the book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1851, titled
into as a real thing. Of course, this denial can’t be taken too
with the same name, would be about this house. However,
literally. The property on Turner Street was indeed once
the timeline of these namings is backwards, and the writer
owned by a cousin of Hawthorne’s, and his time spent play-
strictly denies the relation, instead likening the house of the
ing cards in the parlor is well documented.
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As it stands, the house in Salem is a historic landmark,
act of representation in order to depict the house for what
revered both as a figment of literary mythology, and as
it is and continually reenact its intimations. Seven books,
one of the oldest and largest intact examples of colo-
which each refocus the lens that images the house, set out
nial architecture in the Massachusetts Bay. As such, the
to make visible the intersecting narratives latent in its ar-
house stands obliquely for over 350 years of American
chitecture. The aim, thus, is not to resolve complexities,
history and national identity.
redundancies, or the stubbornness of the present architectural articulation, but to elucidate their sources and implica-
This thesis designs a set of ways of apprehending the house
tions: the vestigial ghosts of an alternate set of hauntings.
as a living document, which like a text, can be read to hold a multiplicity of associated social and political meaning in its constructive details, its structural syntax, its contents and their stylings, and its siting. The method is in the repetitive
Both images are courtesy of the author. 15
Gardens of Resistance Nynika Jhaveri Advisor: Azra Akšamija Readers: Lawrence Vale, James Wescoat
Over the last few millennia, the city
as New Delhi, alongside entrenched
canvas in practices of critical art, or as
that today is the seat to the world’s
political regimes come the evolu-
the defiant lyrics and rhythms in musi-
largest “democracy” has served as
tion of a parallel legacy of fighting
cal compositions, resistance is instru-
the nerve centre for generations
against, opposing and obstructing,
mental in the vocabulary of any effec-
of empires and emperors, political
and resisting. Whether manifesting
paradigms and intersecting identi-
as the rallying cries at mass pro-
Considering the Central Vista Com-
ties. As for most capital cities such
tests, as the purposeful strokes on
plex in Lutyens’ New Delhi specifical-
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tive political vision.
ly, we look at a political urban fabric
of independence and modernisa-
landscapes historically seen as spaces
that has embodied these simultane-
tion in 60s and 70s, and finally as
of utopic experimentation and spec-
ous histories for the past century, as
part of a repressive, autocratic re-
ulation - as spaces of their own resis-
a site of power and of resistance to
branding resisting due process and
tance. Considering the architectural
that same power, as belonging to the
dialogue in 2020, the site’s spa-
tools of process, scale, materiality,
governing and to the governed. Built
tial politics have also witnessed a
and temporality, the actors strive to
as a monumental colonial project in
plethora of resistances.
reinscribe an entirely new set of con-
opposition to Delhi’s existing Mughal
This thesis questions the role of ar-
city centre in 1911, appropriated as a
chitecture in envisioning and engaging
symbol of a new nation’s power as a
the tools of resistance in the context
postcolonial inversion in 1947, serv-
of such political sites. It narrates the
ing as a site for rallies, protests, and
stories of three actors as they reclaim
parades engaging the growing pains
the Complex’s Mughal Gardens -
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temporary cultural and civic values into an otherwise charged landscape, a form of socio-spatial resistance in response to their own historical moments. Both images are courtesy of the author.
After Aura: Authorship, Automation, Authenticity Kailin J. Jones Advisor: Azra Akšamija Readers: Hans Tursack, Mark Jarzombek Walter Benjamin writes that “that
edge the migration of objects, people
of reproduction. Rather, it is con-
which withers in the age of mechani-
and tools that have circulated through-
stantly evolving along with the in-
cal reproduction is the aura of the
out the world transmitting aesthetics
novations of technologies, the reach
work of art.” In this thesis, I explore
and transferring skill and knowledge.
and speed of distribution networks,
that which flourishes in the act of re-
In After Art, David Joselit asks for an
and changes in politics, economics,
production. This thesis examines the
expansion of the definition of art to
and culture. Artists such as Vermeer
evolution of reproductive techniques
“embrace heterogeneous configura-
used reproductive techniques, such
in and transmissions of art and how it
tions of relationships or links,” freeing
as using the camera lucida to assist in
has affected artistic invention.
art from belonging to any particular
accurately rendering his images.
According to Benjamin, aura is rooted
time, space or medium.
The thesis uses China as a site of
in site specificity, ritual, uniqueness and
The ancient craft of beauty has never
reproduction, both historic and con-
non-reproducibility, failing to acknowl-
been stagnant or isolated from the act
temporary, to reinforce the cultural complexities of reproduction. The sixth principle of Chinese painting, “ 传 移 模 写 ” translates word-forword to “transmitting-transferring, imitating-writing.” The first two characters define the motivation for copying and the second pair address the method. The process of copying has the ability to transfer knowledge and skill from the original to the copier; the copy itself facilitates the preservation of the original from lootings
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and destruction; the proliferation of
tion has always been a blurry one.
and co-opting tools and techniques of
the copy alters the original's accessi-
What motivates copying? How do
reproduction.
bility and introduces new interactions
we copy? What is a copy vis a vis an
and contexts.
original? Through a series of experi-
The sacred line between original and
ments in copying, this thesis examines
copy is not eroding. The distinction
these questions by reproducing origi-
between production and reproduc-
nals of objects of contentious origins
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Image 1 (Opposite): What happens when you ask Frustrated Van Gogh to digitally Reproduce the World’s Most Expensive Walnut?, Digital screenshot collage, Kailin Jones, 2020. Image 2 (Below): A Design for Digitally Reproducing Mechanical Machines of Reproduction, Collage of Expired Patents, Kailin Jones, 2020.
The Factory of Coexistence Melika Konjicanin Advisor: Cristina Parreño Readers: Sheila Kennedy, Azra Akšamija Since the fall of Yugoslavia thirty years ago, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s once booming industrial system has left a landscape of its skeletons. Each town in the country that had been oriented around factory life now houses a ruin – a constant reminder of what once was. The negative effects of the fall of the country’s industrial system are experienced universally among its citizens, socially, economically, and environmentally. Once these industrial infrastructures brought prosperity to towns, though their environmental impact was neglected. Today they continue to exist on contaminated land, within the context of an ethnically segregated country, ruled by a nepotistic political elite. The complexity and corruption of the government’s inner workings implies the lack of any system in place to protect both its citizens and their cultural history, which includes the factories. Twenty-five years after the end of the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina is still rebuilding itself (or in most cases, failing to).
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This thesis proposes a modest first step towards an alternate approach of revitalization through the active healing of an industrial ruin. The defunct factory building will serve as both a locus for conversations of reflection on the nation’s past, and as a functional reminder that social, economic and environmental life cycles can be healed and renewed. The Factory of Coexistence is a new expanded architectural typology that reintroduces the industrial ruin back into cycles of life. Sited in the ruins of the first factory in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the first steel plant in southern Europe, the Factory of Coexistence exploits the transformative potential of the ruin in the rewriting of social, economic and environmental stories. In the Factory of Coexistence, architecture is a medium that reconnects us with the past, while acting in the present to transform the future. Image is courtesy of the author.
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Screen Time Jeffrey Landman Advisor: Rania Ghosn Readers: Enrique Walker, Hans Tursack In Times Square, architecture is inextricable from mediated representations. The place is dislocated by the screens that envelop its buildings and the other screens, around the world, upon which its image is ceaselessly presented. The neighborhood itself is named after the Times Tower, which was opened in 1905 as the office and printing press of The New York Times, and remains at the center of the square today, entirely empty, voided by the advertising value of its screens. But this condition is not a contemporary anomaly. If the screens, flowed through by consumer desire, currently vaporise the building’s edge, in 1904, before it was even occupied, the building summoned the city with the results of the general election, broadcast to the metropolis via searchlight. The building has always extended its edge, projecting public messages while concealing private concerns. This thesis understands the building as one actor in a media apparatus: a network of interconnections between broadcasting devices, infrastructure, public and political events, development policy and financial structure. The Tower indexes 20th century architecture’s participation in this media apparatus, telling a story in which communication and the distribution of power predate and outlast inhabitation, a story in which occupation is not part of the program. The thesis tracks the tower through six innovative broadcasting devices which the building sponsored, including the world’s first moving electric sign, the New Year’s Eve Ball, the world’s first changeable architectural screen, and the world’s largest open architectural competition. The form of the thesis is a short movie that uses found footage and computer generated animations to apprehend the Tower amid its myriad images. In designing for animated representation the thesis is positioned in a lineage of paper architectures, proposing a form of architectural production which embraces and redirects the forces of the media apparatus. The movie reconfigures, misaligns and misuses its historical sources to reproduce and subvert the Screen Time from which architecture can now never be distinct. Image 1 (Opposite top): 00:08:03:07, Screen Shot, from Screen Time Image 2 (Opposite bottom): 00:08:58:22, Screen Shot, from Screen Time. Both images are courtesy of the author.
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Architecture for Revision Emma Pfeiffer Advisor: Rosalyne Shieh Readers: Caitlin Mueller, Enrique Walker The roar of the Grand Central Parkway diminishes as you
and then another, crosses your route; you weave between
descend the bridge into Flushing Meadows-Corona Park,
them, in and out of the cover of the long roof. You lock
picking up speed. The flat park unfurls before you as you
your bike near the concession stand where three paths
pedal. Your eyes, and your bike, follow a shallow trough
converge. Someone is selling souvenirs. Between the rows
that veers North. Turning onto this path, the clatter of
of bathroom stalls you see several cranes lowering some-
gravel is audible, along with a nearby conversation, and
thing enormous and yellow, slowly, to the ground. You walk
a distant clanging. The soft and scattered shade of trees
up the ramp and join the others to get a better look over
is cut by the edge of a roof, into whose cover you pass.
the rooftop.
The Unisphere glints in the distance. One concrete arch,
This thesis designs a thirty-year period of change for Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, in Queens. As the site of two World’s Fairs, in 1939 and 1964-5, this park has been the locus of cyclical remaking in successive images of projective corporate optimism. Today, there exist twinned structural and cultural imperatives to disassemble the New York State Pavilion, the single untransformed structure remaining from the 1964 World’s Fair. Constituting this project are a set of strategies for designing in the aftermath of architectural hubris, which foreground congruous and ongoing processes of assembly and disassembly. With a score, a video, and a set of documents, this thesis attempts to set into motion a version of the next thirty years in which Flushing Meadows reprises its role as holder of public imagination as it denies a view of a finite future. Both images are courtesy of the author. 24
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Thorough David Allen White Advisor: Mark Jarzombek Readers: Brandon Clifford, Caitlin Mueller Henry David Thoreau writes in the
end of March, 1845, I borrowed
first chapter of his book, Walden,
an axe and went down to the
that before he could begin work
woods by Walden Pond, nearest
on his house by the pond, he first
to where I intended to build my
had to borrow an axe. “Near the
house, and began to cut down
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some tall, arrowy pines, still in their youth, for timber.� This passage, which marks the moment when Thoreau first turns to describing building his house,
illustrates something surprising.
erson. Tools, natural resources,
as a way to better uncover their
Thoreau’s famous experiment in
suppl y chains, help, etc . had to
inherent tensions. Together, the
self reliance began with another
be bought, loaned, or scavenged
designs serve as a manual, playing
man’s tools.
in order for Thoreau to build and
out the implications in design of
live, as he says, “by the labor of
the limits that define them.
As independent as Thoreau intended his enterprise to be,
his hands alone.”
for Thoreau, borrowing is more
This thesis is interested in that
rule than exception, appearing
shortfall, where Thoreau’s ideals
repeatedly and in varying ways
about how to build and live, which
throughout his account. He relies
is represented in the Walden text,
frequently on materials, knowl-
do not match the true constraints
edge, labor, etc. that are outside
of building and living, which are
himself or his capacity to create.
represented in the architecture.
The nails he bought from a black-
Proposed here is a series of alter-
smith. The boards were recycled
natives for Walden. Each carries
from an old shanty. The land itself
with it as constraint and ideal of
and the trees on it were loaned to
independence. Each exaggerates
him by his friend Ralph Waldo Em-
the effects of those constraints 27
Both images are courtesy of the author.
Master of Architecture Final Thesis Reviews, January 5, 2021 SPECIAL THANKS Architecture Faculty and Staff Eleni Aktypi José Luis Argüello NIcholas de Moncheaux Gina Halabi Mariana Ibañez
Chris Jenkins Tonya Miller Amanda Moore Cynthia Stewart
MARCH Advisors and Readers (MIT and External)
Azra Akšamija Brandon Clifford Deborah Garcia Rania Ghosn Mariana Ibañez Mark Jarzombek Sheila Kennedy Miho Mazereeuw
Kiel Moe Marisa Morán Jahn Caitlin Mueller Les Norford John Ochsendorf Cristina Parreño Nasser Rabbat Rosalyne Shieh
Susanne Schindler Hans Tursack Delia Wendel Lawrence Vale Enrique Walker Delia Wendel James Wescoat
Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture & Planning Department of Architecture 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 7-337 Cambridge, MA USA 02139 617 253 7791 / arch@mit.edu architecture.mit.edu
© 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Individual contributions are copyright their respective authors. Images are copyright their respective creators, unless otherwise noted. Booklet design by José Luis Argüello. DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE • MIT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING • SA+P
