2021 SMArchS Reviews by MIT Architecture

Master of Science in Architecture Studies Reviews, December 10, 2021

SMARCHS

Department of Architecture MIT School of Architecture and Planning SA+P

Master of Science in Architecture Studies Reviews, December 10, 2021

Maryam Aljomairi

4 Computation

Dimitrios Chatzinikolis

6 Computation

Feiyue Chen (Final Review)

8 Architecture & Urbanism

Joel Cunningham 10 Architecture & Urbanism

Gabriela Degetau 12 Architecture & Urbanism

Mariam Elnozahy 14 Aga Khan Program

Kiley Feickert 16 Building Technology Laura Maria Gonzalez 18 Architecture & Urbanism James Heard 20 History, Theory & Criticism

SMARCHS

Kimball Kaiser 22 Architecture & Urbanism Kat Labrou 24 Computation

Xuan Lan 26 Architecture & Urbanism

Yuxuan Lei 28 Computation

Randy Lo 30 Architecture & Urbanism

Muhammad Hasan Nissar 32 Aga Khan Program

Jari Prachasartta 30 Architecture & Urbanism

Lasse Rau 34 Architecture & Urbanism

Myles Sampson 36 Computation Meriam Soltan 38 Aga Khan Program Mona Vijaykumar 40 Architecture & Urbanism

Rui Wang 42 Computation

Charles Wu 44 Computation

Qianyue Xu 46 History, Theory & Criticism

Department of Architecture MIT School of Architecture and Planning SA+P 3

Self-Forming Systems: Rapid Prototyping of Shape Changing Textiles Maryam Aljomairi Computation Advisors: Caitlin Mueller & Skylar Tibbits Reader: Svetlana V. Boriskina Our field has collectively pushed the frontiers of digital fabrication, masscustomization, and building technology within the bounds of academia. Using highly specialized machines and bespoke systems of parts, connections, and tools, which often require a considerable period of time and manpower for both manufacture and assembly. While these efforts are ongoing and often celebrated for their complexities, the techniques developed remain irreproducible beyond the walls of the institutions that they were made in, inaccessible to scholars and students alike.

democratizes access to making methods irrespective of an individual's context? How can we move away from the IKEA model of discreteness and towards autonomous systems of construction: systems of making that minimize energy, time, and labor required for completion? Consequently,

Self-Forming

Systems

— specifically, Shape Changing Textiles — have been identified as a repeatable autonomous system. This is done through the use of off-the-shelf materials to additively manufacture stiffeners on prestressed textiles. Once the textile

The reproducibility crisis has been a pertinent topic of discussion within the social sciences for the past two decades; however, this issue has yet to be addressed within the field of architecture. How can we establish an accessible, repeatable ecosystem of research, one that

is relaxed, the stored energy is released, deforming the material from its initial flat state to its equilibrium state in a matter of seconds. The energy redistribution allows the material to self-form, actuating a volumetric transformation with minimal material, energy, labor, and expertise required for fabrication. The research aims to contribute to two core areas: scale and structure — developing computational workflows to generate structurally optimal forms — and strategies of scaling whilst using commercial desktop printers.

Image 1 (opposite): Preliminary Geometry Tests. Image 2 (above): Testing Collapsible Structures. Image 3 (below): Testing Structural Capabilities of Geometry. All images by author.

Of Shape and Touch Dimitrios Chatzinikolis Computation Advisor: Terry Knight Reader: Axel Kilian A major goal of the robotics community is to provide machines with enough dexterity, such that they can perform complicated tasks as easy as humans do. In their pursuit to mimic human grasping and manipulation, researchers focus especially on robotic hands. However, trivial tasks for the human hand, e.g. learning to tie a shoe, are still impossible for robots to perform in such an effortless manner as a human hand would do. My hypothesis is that this is mainly because it is particularly difficult to sense and display spatially distributed tactile information. Moreover, there is an intriguing synergy between the hand, the environment and the object; while manipulation tasks take place, an infinite feedback loop emerges, as the human hand is constantly outsourcing perception and control to its environment by exploiting environmental constraints. This research aims to build an understanding of the computational foundations of haptic shape inference and create general-purpose interfaces that can propagate haptic information effectively in human-robot and/ or robot-robot environments. As every designer can verify, the early design stages exhibit higher entropy; thus, extrapolating accurate information upon which we can form our decisions is usually impossible. The outcome of my explorations would aid designers to tackle one of the most critical problems in design, i.e., making early decisions on a sound basis, by implementing the above-mentioned general-purpose interfaces. This thesis reasons about programs that build and manipulate abstract haptic descriptions of objects. The first and most vital part will use sample objects to create haptic definitions of shapes. The second part will focus on using the above-mentioned definitions in making identifications and/or manipulating sample scenes. All through the end, special attention will be given to the sense of touch — especially in terms of force-feedback, when machines come to perceive, understand, and manipulate objects in their environment.

Image: (1) Ichthyomorph, André Leroi-Gourhan, from Gesture and Speech, MIT Press. (2) Amphibomorph, André Leroi-Gourhan, from Gesture and Speech, MIT Press. (3) Sauromorph, André Leroi-Gourhan, from Gesture and Speech, MIT Press. (4) Theromorph, André Leroi-Gourhan, from Gesture and Speech, MIT Press. (5) Pithecomorph, André Leroi-Gourhan, from Gesture and Speech, MIT Press. (6) Anthropomorph, André Leroi-Gourhan, from Gesture and Speech, MIT Press. (7) Line drawing of the Version III Utah/M.I.T. Dextrous Hand, S.C. Jacobsen et. al, Design of the Utah/M.I.T. Dextrous Hand. (8) Configuration of the Dextrous Hand, S.C. Jacobsen et. al, Design of the Utah/M.I.T. Dextrous Hand.

Symbols and Spatiality of Social Media: Re-constructing the Digital Public Realm Feiyue Chen (Final Review) Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Lauren Jacobi Readers: Zach Lieberman & Roi Salgueiro Barrio This project centers around the making of digital public realm. The term “public realm”, used by political theorist Hannah Arendt first in the 1950s and elaborated in her work, The Human Condition, is distinguished from its counterpart, the “private realm”. As social media becomes the main space for people to make speeches, my interest lies in how the public realm is extended into the digital, and how the digital had remolded the public realm — for good and for ill — and its potential of reshaping the public realm in the future. In the first half of my project, I aim to offer a diagnosis for today's problematic online environment from an architecture and urbanism point of view. In the second half, I will present some new symbols that have the potential to better the digital public realm. The research part includes the analysis of the origins and evolutions as well as the relational structures of four selected social media symbols: 1) hyperlink, 2) at sign, 3) following, and 4) hashtag. At large, from an urban standpoint, this project will examine the digital public realm within the context of global urbanization, and by re-visiting and re-interpreting terms like “echo chambers” and “privacy crisis”, understand why its current structure, which rests upon the logic of economics, has turned internet into an insatiable and formless network that is incapable of conditioning effective political communications. Overall, this project will take Architecture and Urbanism as the design and research methodology, Political Philosophy as the conceptual framework, and Media Studies as the state of field.

Image 1 (opposite top): Online social relations conditioned by the heperlink and at sign. Image 2 (opposite bottom): Online social relations conditioned by the following and hashtag.

As the Curtain Falls Joel Cunningham Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Marc Simmons Reader: Sheila Kennedy For the last century, notions of transparency have been commandeered by architects in the form of glass curtain walls. As a technological solution that visually connects the activities of the interior with those of the outside world, these curtains have been liberally applied to tall buildings across the globe. Regardless of longitude and latitude, these vitreous enclosures have grown to represent progress and modernisation; however, the outer inches of such buildings simultaneously symbolise an attempt to overcome nature, to neutralise the urban environments of otherwise disparate cultures and geographic contexts. Today, as concerns surrounding global warming are pulled to the forefront of contemporary culture and influence almost every facet of architectural design, the future of the all-glass façade looks less clear. Struggling to meet ever-more stringent performance standards and compensating for excessive transparency with additional layers of material and embodied energy, it seems the pursuit of crystalline perfection has passed its peak. But left jilted by this cultural shift stand the world’s first generation of glass towers: the pioneering adopters of many now universal building technologies, which currently face a cocktail of outdated planning, material deterioration and climate change accountability. Responding to such predicaments, this thesis takes the United Kingdom’s first skyscraper as a case study to investigate how the world’s significant skylines might both technologically and ideologically move beyond the empty promise of the all-glass facade. While the UK’s industrialists once pioneered the development and distribution of flat glass, its excessive use in the nation’s tall buildings now represents a global dilemma: as our buildings continue to grow ever-larger and we need them to last ever-longer, how might they evolve to meet the rapidly changing needs of modernity?

Image: Natwest Tower, 1981. Source: BBC News.

Transitioning to Pluriverse Design: Neo-Extractivism, Ecologies and Indigenous Territory, the Case of Ecuadorian Amazon Gabriela Degetau Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Rania Ghosn Readers: Lorena Bello Gomez & Santiago del Hierro In this moment of climate change and crisis, globalization and colonial capitalism are generating major socio- and environmental concerns. Pursuing development as a justification for poverty alleviation and progress has exacerbated capitalist accumulation, inequity, and ecological depletion. Although extractive capitalism has led to wealth accumulation and provided "sustenance to the global economy," this paradigm is putting extreme pressure on biodiverse rich and cultural territories — violently taking advantage of marginalized communities while enforcing a colonial worldview, shaping and reorganizing territories as a commodity through new forms of extractivism and visual regimes. The Ecuadorian Amazon has become part of the colonial capitalist paradigm marked by neo-extractivism, based on a political discourse focused solely on external economic interests while leaving behind the territory's socio-environmental aspects. The overlap between protected areas, indigenous territory, oil concession blocks, and palm oil subdivisions insistently marks the intent to control the territory and those living in it. Given the circumstances, it is necessary to acknowledge the country's struggle and critically understand the gap between nature and indigenous people's rights versus economic needs. There is a need for a transition that enables plurality and challenges the current dogma of neo-liberalist economies.Transitioning towards pluriversal alternatives calls to collaborating hand in hand with those affected by Neoliberalist practices and redefining well-being, territories, and local economies. Emphasizing the coexistence of multiple models or "a world where many worlds fit. " This transition empowers and builds upon the integration of humans and non-humans and also promotes co-design processes that enable life improvement by centering design strategies in the communal autonomy.

Through these parameters, it is possible to understand the complex territorial overlap as an opportunity to interrogate current practices and consider the role of pluriverse design as an approach to respond to current ecological pressures and develop a framework to reconstruct the economic, social, and environmental aspects of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This research draws on methods prevalent in policy and urban design to produce a pilot project in collaboration with the Siekopai community that creates a range of spatial scenarios and conceptualizes alternative futures focused on education, circular economy, and food security to reclaim indigenous communities' authority and sovereignty. Image 1 (top): Reclaiming Indigenous authority and sovereignity. Artist: Gabriela Degetau. Source: geoportaligm gobierno del Ecuador). Bottom: Image 2 (above):The Ecuadorian Amazon, neo-extractivism, ecologies and indigenous territory. Artist: Gabriela Degetau. Source: geoportaligm gobierno del Ecuador).

Future Cities and Legacies of Development in Saudi Arabia’s Northwestern Frontier Province Mariam Elnozahy Aga Khan Program Advisor: Nasser Rabbat Reader: Huma Gupta This thesis concerns the history of development in the Northwestern Province of Saudi Arabia and the advent of the NEOM project. In 1963, Saudi Arabia set new provincial regulations to split the Kingdom into five major regions: the central region, the western region, the eastern region, the southern region, and the northern frontier region. The epithet “frontier” indicated a novel, uncharted space

for the Saudis: a territory in need of surveying, understanding, and developing. As a descriptive term, “frontier” was not alien to Saudi Arabia. It was a common designation by American geologists and surveyors who, in the 1930s, set out to explore the Eastern Province in search of oil. More than half a century later, Saudi Arabia continues to reckon with the undeveloped territory of its northern frontier. The advent of the NEOM project, Saudi Arabia’s first zeroemissions smart city, is a product of this reckoning. NEOM is situated in a 26,000 square kilometer space with a collective population of approximately 700,000 people. Designed as a singular line, it aims to attract 17 million visitors annually by 2030. NEOM is being planned by a composite of designers, planners, architects, consultants, and contractors from around the world and is projected to cost $500 billion dollars. The primary aim of the thesis is to historicize the northwestern frontier province as a geopolitically conten-

tious site, which has seen many iterations of failed development plans. This historicization will challenge current plans and narratives that situate the site of NEOM as an ahistorical, natural landscape ripe for experimentations in sustainable development and technological innovation. In understanding the complex relationship between the NEOM plan, the northwestern frontier province, and the Saudi Arabian

state, I will identify what is at stake for NEOM and similar projects that which reject the past in order to formulate cities for the future.

Image 1 (opposite:): Development Plan for Saudi Arabia, Arabian Gulf Archives FCO 8/1742, 1971 Jan 01-1971 Dec 31, https://www.agda.ae/en/catalogue/tna/fco/8/1742; NEOM Sensitivity Evaluation Report, 2018. Image 2 (below): NEOM Project are and proposed development zones.

Thin Shell Foundations: Carbon Mitigation Through Materially Efficient Geometry Kiley Feickert Building Technology Advisor: Caitlin Mueller Reader: Sigrid Adriaenssens In order to meet the demands of global population growth, the existing building floor area is expected to double by 2060. At the same time, the building sector contributes 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions annually as a result of current construction processes. Therefore, if global warming is to be limited to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, buildings will play a key role in meeting this target and business-as-usual construction processes must be reconsidered.

In this research, existing analytical equa-

The structural frame and foundations represent the systems with the most potential to limit emissions, as they are the biggest contributors to embodied carbon in a building. In contexts where labor costs drive construction costs, particularly in the Global North, material is consumed excessively at the expense of time. This research proposes shell foundations in lieu of spread foundations, drawing from historical applications such as Félix Candela’s Customs Warehouse, built in 1953 [1]. Shells distribute loads more efficiently through their crosssection, reducing the quantity of material required structurally, which ultimately reduces their embodied carbon.

termine the potential downstream sav-

tions are applied in a parametric design workflow to evaluate the environmental impact of conventional prismatic foundations and shell foundations for the same design load [2]. By applying this approach systematically, insights are gained regarding their applicability to various building typologies and site conditions. Foundations are then considered within the context of a whole building to deings when multiple systems are shape optimized. Digital fabrication offers a pathway to economically build materially efficient foundations while addressing the additional time and labor often associated with more complex geometry. For example, advances in 3D printing earth suggest local soil can act as formwork if printed in the required shape to receive the shell geometry. This eliminates the requirement for additional materials and facilitates the production of materially efficient shell foundations.

Image 1(above): Hyperbolic paraboloid shell foundations for Mexico City Customs Warehouse by Félix Candela, 1953 (Faber, “Candela:The Shell Builder,” 1963). Image 2 (below): Comparison of environmental impact for spread footing versus shell footing (Feickert, 2021).

Beyond a Brick: A Living, Sensing Process for Local Earthen Fabrication Laura Maria Gonzalez Architecture & Urbanism Advisors: David S. Kong & Skylar Tibbits Reader: Sheila Kennedy The thesis proposes to extend the accessibility of Microbially Induced Calcium Carbonate Precipitation (MICP) for local earthen fabrication through the development of novel methodologies. MICP is a bio-geochemical process that is catalyzed by bacteria. Under the right environmental conditions, the bacteria trigger the formation of calcium carbonate crystals. The crystals bind to the surrounding loose aggregate and act as a promising cement alternative that does not require heat. Efforts to incorporate MICP in building fabrication have been limited to bricks manufactured under sterile conditions with highly controlled material characteristics. However, bacteria capable of MICP are ubiquitous in soil. This presents an opportunity to decentralize the process and enact biocementation locally through the use of in-situ earth. Nevertheless, this approach has not been implemented because of the variability and inconsistency of results. Through the use of synthetic biology techniques, the thesis seeks to engineer biocementing bacteria, which can produce pigment, and develop methods for fabricating with the bacteria to create living objects or small scale structures. The production of pigment aims to reduce variability by optically guiding individuals through the process. The pigment also aims to provide visual feedback on local soil and bacterial community health through sensing capabilities. By engaging with a living system, the thesis explores the new practices and rituals that will emerge through the engagement with microbes.

Image: Biocementing bacteria (S.pasteurii) creating calcium carbonate crystals on a black agar petri dish.

Organizing Space(s): Architects and Counter-Hegemonic House-Form in Southern California, 1932 – 1952 James Heard History, Theory & Criticism Advisor: Arindam Dutta Reader: Ana Miljački In the wake of the first Red Scare,

merce

Mrs. William Brown Meloney, editor

ing President of the United States,

Department. After

becom-

of the women's magazine The Delinea-

Hoover began to intervene in housing

tor, founded Better Homes in Amer-

through increasingly direct measures.

ica, an organization promoting the

These complementary arcs of housing propaganda and intervention coincid-

ideal American home through publica-

ed with the President's Conference

tions, model homes, and events. Her-

on Home Building and Home Owner-

bert Hoover, then-Secretary of Com-

ship in 1931, out of which the Federal

merce, served as the organization’s

Home Loan Bank Act was drafted,

first president, effectively operating it

creating the national framework for

as the propaganda wing of the Com-

mortgage lending. The discourse from the conference reverberated through later legislative proceedings to influence housing restrictions established through the Federal Housing Administration, particularly racial, formal, and stylistic controls. Following this intervention at the national level to normalize the single-family dwelling, professional and political organizations fought for alternative housing models at a local level. In Los Angeles, galvanized by the Great Depression, a left-network of professionals (including The Screenwriters

and

Screen

Cartoonists

Guilds; The Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians;

and the Communist Party USA) coordinated — through shared membership, vision, and public discourse — to push New Deal policy further left. These organizations provided both material support — through sympathetic clientele — and moral support, through

community

membership.

The product of this collaboration was a series of multi-family housing projects constructed between 1932 and 1952 that took advantage of momentary exceptions in federal Image 1 (opposite): Magnus, Edward. 1935. Pro-

policy directly resulting from this

fessionals in a Soviet America. In a Soviet America.

left-political agitation. Although po-

New York City: Workers Library Publishers. Image 2

litically engaged architects have both

(above): “Estrada Courts Housing Project,” n.d. Los

preceded and succeeded this period,

Angeles Public Library Photo Collection. Los Angeles

it was only through the proliferation

Public Library. Image 3 (below): Ain, Gregory, Joseph

of these left-political and -profes-

Leupp Johnson 1911-1987, and Alfred W. Day. “Avenel Street Cooperative Housing Project, Silver Lake,

sional networks that these architects’

Los Angeles, Calif., 1945,” 1945. Architectural Teach-

proposed alternatives challenged na-

ing Slide Collection. University of Southern California

tional house-form.

Digital Library.

Parts-In-Progress Kimball Kaiser Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Skylar Tibbits Reader: J Jih When fabrication is translated to the field, the common avenues of new and novel construction often come in a few categories. First are the digital fabrication techniques for the purposes of mass customization, strategies of specialized computational complexity, and specifically produced one-offs for single-use architectural installations. On the other end of the spectrum are the promises of automation, offsite prefabrication, and the proverbial kit of parts as the catchall solution for building in the impending future of climate crisis and resource scarcity. However, there are challenges to assuming that everyone’s architecture will be built by a new digitally controlled tool attached to a robot. What is needed in this world of increased demands and fewer resources is more scrappiness — the smaller scale builder, the handy-person, and the tactical improvisation of architecture to happen between the cracks of automated, off-site fabrication. “Parts-In-Progress” is a case for an open-source architecture of parts that will build upon the shortcomings of the digital manufacturing revolution by rejecting the production of highly customized one-offs fully developed from start to finish in a factory/lab and operate, rather, as a smart junction between standardized materials for architecture. As an open-source architecture, these parts will no longer be just for the counterculture, the temporary, or the crisis response. However, “Parts-In-Progress” does specifically address the difference between user and producer, insisting that parts will be embedded with the intelligence of assembly rather than push architectural strategies to only the computational complexity of the lone designer behind the computer.

Image: RodTable v.01.01.03.

MAKING SOUND: A Study on Pianists’ Hand Gestures Kat Labrou Computation Advisor: Randall Davis & Terry Knight Readers: Sotirios Kotsopoulos An important part of human communication and the transmission of knowledge is achieved through gestures. Understanding gestures can facilitate human-machine communication, and it can allow machines to learn how to do things in ways that people do. However, technique and skill that are manifested in human hand gestures are difficult to describe and to capture in computational terms. For this research, I first look into the question of how people see and understand skilled hand gestures. Then, I explore how different types of hand gestures can be represented in a way that is recognizable by a machine. To limit the scope of the problem I formulate a case study on a high skill activity: piano performance. In this context, my intention is to describe a pianist’s hand movements following classical piano technique. More specifically, I am looking to express a specific instance of a performance of a piece of music as a sequence of hand gestures. I consider piano hand gestures as hand gestures that are used to make sound. Playing the piano is an activity that encompasses all qualities of any other making activity. Piano gestures are learned, targeted and improvised. For this reason, I see them as fertile ground for the advancement of research on computational descriptions of gestures. The findings of this research, developed on the basis of piano gestures, can be extrapolated to other domains of making for the creation of physical artifacts, such as weaving or pottery making. So, how are technique and performing style reflected in the hand movements of a skilled pianist? What patterns can people recognize in piano hand gestures? Does the structure of a pianist’s hand movements relate to the struc-

ture of the music that is being played? I take these questions as essential framework for further inquiry. The approach to piano performance looks at how pianists understand music through reading and performing it. I will learn from pianists about the structure of hand movements through their visual observations on how gestures can be divided. I aim to gather their knowledge in a system of rules and program a knowledge base. I will use this knowledge in order to identify and

classify different gestures. As a next step, I envision the creation of a system that will take as input a piano performance that is caught on video alongside the corresponding written piano piece to yield a valid sequence of distinct gestures that are acted by the pianist in the video performance. In particular, the system will be able to recognize known classes of gestures and identify performative variations of a particular gesture. It should also be possible to capture stylistic variations between different performances of the same piece, which are essential to any creative task.

Image: Tracking piano gestures. Image found on Twitter @DeepLabCut. Piano video by @rousseaumusique.

Delivery under Algorithmic Control: China's Food Delivery Riders in Community-based Logistics Xuan Lan Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Rafi Segal Readers: Roi Salgueiro Barrio & Zheng Tan Around the world, previously invisible delivery workers have achieved new prominence by serving as essential mobility in urban geographies. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, food delivery drivers have become a fixture of China’s streets by forming the instant, all-weather, community-based logistic network. In early 2021, more than 7 million drivers delivered 65% of daily essentials and served 430 million customers, which accounts for 30% of China's population. As both capital and labor flowed into this booming e-commerce industry, tech giants fiercely competed for promising the most cost-effective food delivery platforms by implementing algorithmic control on the riders. The majority of riders were young migrant workers struggling for their living and taking delivery worker as their first job in cities. Even though China moves to protect drivers from digital exploitation, conflicts are arising in both social and spatial aspects. This thesis undertakes a critical investigation into China's food delivery riders by revealing their service mobility in community-based logistics. It reviews the plight of China’s food delivery drivers, under digital exploitation, by mirroring that of workers in the new gig economy worldwide. By examining the delivery network and the digital exploitation behind it, the thesis reveals the mechanism of the system's gamified control over labor conditions and seeks to develop potential interventions in urban geographies. It illustrates the actors and corresponding forces involved in reshaping the instant flows. This thesis also demonstrates that the infrastructure system in cities is not compatible with this booming new mobility, which has led to a series of unsolved problems, including public space occupation, disordered parking, traffic congestion, and street security. By uncovering the spatial changes and conflicts, this thesis explores possible catalysts and prototypes for achieving an equitable and safe community logistic network by optimizing system rules, logistic distribution, and delivery facilities.

Image 1 (above): Source: user.observersnews.com. Image 2 (below): Source: Own work.

Subtle User Interface Yuxuan Lei Computation Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura Reader: Stefanie Mueller Olfaction is a sensory modality that can enhance one’s sense of space, arouse emotion and memories, and change human behaviors. Smell as a source of chemical information is widely present in spatial design, education, marketing, arts, etc. than ever; therefore, olfactory experience design is very important and full of opportunities within HCI. Yet, this area is rather underexplored since scent is an invisible, lingering, and volatile chemical medium that is hard to prototype. An intuitive block is the high technical barrier of subtle sensing technologies. More specifically, there is a lack of convenient and powerful tools for olfactory interface research, especially on the hardware side. “Off-the-shelf” olfactory display devices are not widely accessible, and previous research has typically focused on developing form-specific or application-specific interfaces and interactions. Furthermore, I identified a lack of social education in the value propositions and applications of olfactory displays. To address the problems, the thesis (1) explores design and engineering solutions, allowing users to quickly design and prototype the non-traditional Subtle User Interface (UIs) in a high capability and quality, (2) conducts pedagogical workshops and experiment sessions to evaluate the result effectiveness in function and education, and (3) researches complementary multi-modal approaches to vision-based design paradigm.

Images: Olfactory interfaces,Yuxuan Lei.

Duality of Ground. New York City's Journey of Departure Randy Lo & Jari Prachasartta Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Miho Mazereeuw Readers: Travis Bunt & Brent D. Ryan New York City, a metropolis in perpetual motion, serves as a constant reminder of the mutability of urban ground and the city's profound notion of impermanence and perpetuity. The journey of the first World Trade Center, from the arrival of Battery Park City to its departure as a new horizon in Fresh Kills, represents the culmination of our responses to the fallen and, moreover, serves as a vivid reminder of the duality of ground formation and its pertinent cultural and political implications, which transcend physical geography and time. The ground upon which we stand is intricately tied to the spiritual and cultural concerns of memory and ritual; thus, it generates a substantial influence on the social — as well as physical — geography of cities. In New York City, the total population of the interred outnumbers that of the living.This phenomenon poses a challenge to the urban form not only as a medium for honoring the departed but also for living as a whole. As architect Edwin Heathcote posits, the burial ground mirrors the living environment and social attitudes. By juxtaposing death and life and interpreting the territory of death as a heterotopic space within the city, this thesis proposes to reconfigure the dynamic between ground of the dead and urban space, where the diversity of cultures and beliefs may open up new spatial and programmatic possibilities. Territories of death can be expressed in terms of political, social, and physical forces, where the relationship with topography — whether natural or manufactured — may result in the dissection and reorganization of ground conditions. Agencies associated with the departed are inextricably intertwined and symbiotically linked. As such, the thesis proposes to use the journey of departure as a focal point to explore and envision the constantly evolving condition and composition of urban ground.

Image1(above):Duality of Ground (Credit:Randy Lo) .Image2(below):Territory of Departure(Credit:Jari Prachasartta).

Piety, Patronage and Transculturation at the Suhrawardy Shrines of the Bibi Jawindi Tomb Complex Muhammad Hasan Nissar Aga Khan Program Advisor: Nasser Rabbat Readers: Hakim Sameer Hamdani & Kristel Smentek The intact historic urban fabric of Uch

The Indus Valley is dotted with Sufi

in present day Pakistan still recalls its

shrines and tombs that can serve as

spiritual and economic heyday of the

an archive for the medieval period,

medieval period: a stronghold of the

which is often shrouded in myth and

Suhrawardy Sufi order; a central site

legend. Constant invasions and natural calamities have destroyed the majority

on trade routes linking India to Central

of material remains and similarly there

Asia and Iran; and a popular refuge for

are large gaps in textual evidence. Con-

the Sufis, saints, princes, artisans, and

textualized within the local temple and

poets either escaping the onslaught

stupa building tradition in conjunction

of the Mongols in Central Asia during

with the transregional Islamic shrine

13th century or seeking new patronage.

and tomb architecture, these struc-

This thesis will look at the three 14th-

tures at Uch provide significant clues to

15th-century monumental shrines at

understand the formal and theoretical

the Bibi Jawindi tomb complex at Uch,

negotiations made by patrons and ar-

which commemorate Bibi Jawindi, Baha'

chitects.

al-Halim, and Ustad Nuriya — all rela-

The Samanid mausoleum at Bukhara,

tively unknown individuals in recorded

the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar at Merv,

historical sources. Yet, these individuals'

and the Dome of Soltaniyeh in Iran

remarkable tombs exemplify the wider

have all been proposed as prototypes

patterns and processes of transcultura-

for a myriad of tombs and mausoleums

tion at play in the medieval Indus Valley.

of the Indus Valley. Engaging with the

form, type, materiality, and decoration

thesis will argue for the political and

of these structures, this research will

economic strength of the Suhrawardy

attempt to demonstrate the complex

shaykhs and their autonomy over secu-

modes of transculturation and cultural

lar and spiritual matters in cities such

syncretism. And through an engage-

as Uch.

ment with issues of Sufi patronage, in absence of an imperial mandate, this

Image 1 (top): Shrines at Bibi Jawindi Tomb Complex, source: Getty Images. Image 2 (above): Shrines at Bibi Jawindi Tomb Complex, source: Prideofpakistan.com.

On Viscous Grounds: Environment, Housing, and Indigeneity through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, 1968 – 1982 Lasse Rau Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Arindam Dutta Reader: Timothy Hyde Proposed in 1968, shortly after stricking oil in the Alaskan North Slope, the 800mile long Trans-Alaska Pipeline, constructed between March 1975 and August 1977, cut through a range of issues popular throughout the 1970s. These were spatialized as perceived challenges by the breadth of actors taking part in its planning, construction, and oversight as well as those following in its footsteps. By studying the introduction of oil extraction to Alaska during the height of cultural shifts around gender, indigenous identity, and environmentalism in the

Image 1 (opposite): “Supermodules” of BP Alaska/Sohio's North Slope Operarions Center on their way from Seattle to Prudhoe Bay, AK. Source: Dudley, Hardin & Yang, Inc., Seattle. The Composite Building's four modules in barge transit. In “The Northern Engineer, Vol. 06, no. 3.” Fairbanks: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fall 1974, 28. Image 2 (above): Land use map of indigenous group in Tuktoyaktuk, Canada. Source: Head, C. Grant. Tuktoyaktuk. Trapping. Period III (1955-1974). In “Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project : A Report [Vol. 3].”Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1976, 20.

1970s, I argue that two types of mobility were brought to clash. These were, on the one hand, industrial movements that were induced by extraction and construction as well as the fluctuating uncertainties of boom-and-bust cycles and, on the other, the far more fluid relationship of indigenous Alaskans to land. Situated amidst these two regimes of temporality and tenure, this thesis analyzes three discourses that protruded from their clash: (1) The trading-off of the environment and its crisis through economic models, new legal systems, and corporate publicity, (2) The control of architectural culture within workers’ housing, the biopolitics of comfort and discourses of urbanization, and (3) The trading-off of indigenous knowledge through the mapping of an anthropological discourse around native land in its aftermath. Shifting between fluid and rigid, the viscous grounds of these discourses around temporal, cultural, and architectural terms were actively sought and politicized by actors supporting and opposing the development of an extractive economy in the Arctic.

Design Directed Robotic Assembly Myles Sampson Computation Advisor: Larry Sass Reader: George Stiny It is evident that the architecture, engineering, and construction industry must adopt new approaches to building construction to create safer working conditions, accelerate the assembly process, and reduce excess building materials. If real change is to occur, the construction industry needs to develop new automation procedures that leverage established manufacturing processes. Leveraging architecture’s, engineering’s, and construction’s reliance on digital design, discrete assembly provides an interesting stance on manufacturing through existing methods of digital fabrication and robotic construction. Current research in robotic fabrication demonstrates the smooth integration of discrete assembly into automated building processes. However, the stochastic nature of discrete assembly methods, discrete voxel based approaches, and restrictive assembly rules removes the autonomy of the designer from the building processes. In response, we need a method of robotic construction that combines discrete assembly and shape grammars for a design-directed method of autonomous robotic construction. In contrast to current systems of robotic construction, design-directed robotic construction leverages shape grammars in the assembly process to achieve a flexible, scalable, and grammatical approach to autonomous construction. I propose a method for the introduction of shape grammars into the robotic construction processes. Through physical prototypes, I effectively demonstrate the potential of design-directed robotic construction as a viable construction option.

Image: Robotic Pick and Place, Myles Sampson.

Against Origin: On Speculative Future Potential in The Thousand and One Nights Meriam Soltan Aga Khan Program Advisor: Nasser Rabbat Reader: Huma Gupta This thesis tells the story of the stories that are The Thousand and One Nights to emphasize the spatial and speculative implications of a well-crafted fiction. Told and retold in countless iterations, and with roots in Persian, South Asian, and even Chinese folklore, the Nights as we know them today are particularly characterized by their translation and illustration across 19th century Europe. Richly visualized and rigorously annotated with copious ethnographic detail, editions like Edward Lane’s were crafted to offer “authentic” visions of the East for readers across Europe. Created with reference to contemporaneous architectural surveys, reports, and travelogues, European editions of the Nights simulated a sense of accuracy and correctness that helped materialize orientalist imaginaries of the lands and peoples these stories were said to represent. The persistence of these orientalist visions have since inspired a return to the collection’s source material, with recent scholarship on the Nights looking to de-orientalize the stories by extricating a key lineage of tales that might be read independent of their handling across Europe. And yet, in so strictly delimiting the canon, such approaches effectively ostracize all past and future creative iterations of the Nights by denying the possibility of any new intervention that is so intrinsic to the very nature of these stories. This thesis foregrounds such speculative potential by offering a series of narrative interventions that draw on the Night’s inherent mutability. They work to first reframe our engagement with this vast body of creative work by historicizing and problematizing the aforementioned questions of authenticity and provenance, and then by engaging with research that expands, amends, and spatializes the world of the Nights through new storytelling. In so doing, this thesis offers the Nights as a living fiction, as a narrative tradition through which there are still many stories to be imagined into existence.

Image 1 (above): Journey to the City of Brass. From Vol. 3, p. 123 of: The Thousand and One Nights: Commonly called, in England The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. In three volumes. New translation from the Arabic, with copious notes by Edward William Lane; illustrated by many hundred engravings on wood from original designs by William Harvey. London: Charles Knight and Co, 1841. Image 2 (below): Ninth-Century Fragment of the Arabian Nights. Manuscript. From Oriental Institute at The University of Chicago, 879 AD. https://oi-idb.uchicago. edu/id/750c9ec5-4d25-42d8-91f8-dd3c5b24b9c5.

Beyond Transitional Landscapes: Integrated framework for an ‘Ecologic Oriented Development’ of Chennai’s Peri-Urban Areas Mona Vijaykumar Architecture & Urbanism Advisor: Rania Ghosn Readers: Arindam Dutta & Rafi Segal Economic liberalization of the 1990s initiated a swift increase in population and urban growth in many cities in India, including Chennai.With a projected population of more than 13 million by 2030, Chennai has been constantly expanding its statutory boundaries engulfing the peripheral areas. The peripheral areas, once characterized as an archipelago of self-sustaining villages, have transformed into haphazardly planned “urban sprawls”, demarcated as special economic zones (SEZs) housing global industries and IT companies. The investments from these zones in expanding highways connecting to the city and radiating outwards, all facilitated by land acquisition for ‘public purpose’, has exerted immense pressure on Peri-urban areas to transform, triggering rapid changes in Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) patterns. Unplanned LULC change has a negative effect on the Peri-urban ecosystem, as it leads to reckless, large-scale loss and fragmentation of agricultural lands and forests as well as shrinking of water resources. These become apparent only when serious floods, famine and droughts are encountered. These Peri-urban landscapes have high potential for food production, climate regulation, flood protection and water and nutrient regulation that could sustain the ecology and economy of both rural and urban areas but are currently compromised at multiple scales. Lack of basic urban services like water supply, sanitation and waste disposal, combined with increasing densities in Peri-Urban Areas (PUAs), have given rise to complex environmental

issues and impacted existing spatial, socio-economic structures. Also, extraction of Peri-urban landscapes for natural resources like water to fulfill urban needs, treating them as excretion sinks by routing dump yards here and excluding irrigational needs of agricultural lands have led to serious ecological problems. Apart from the numerous environmental challenges faced by PUAs in Chennai, governance challenges like the ambiguity in its administrative status, lack of appropriate development policy and the absence of an effective planning mechanism to steer and manage the dynamism of PUAs worsen the problem further. The fragmented governance and planning system make it difficult to tackle both environmental and growth challenges that coexist in the “transitional” PUAs. In the wake of rapid urbanization, the transformation of PUAs is unavoidable; hence, it is imperative to rethink the contested landscapes from political, sociological, spatial and financial lenses. The thesis aims to explore and leverage the synergies between water, food and people’s network to build an integrated framework for ‘Ecology Oriented Development’: A framework that supports regenerative ecology, productive economy and inclusive society. The development of this framework will be supported by a research methodology consisting of 3 scales of intervention (Neighborhood, Landscape and Bio-regional) and 3 phases: 1) First, identifying ways to evaluate the socio-environmental challenges and potentials of synergies at various scales. 2) Second, identify the stakeholders (actors) that are involved in the decision making and governance. 3) Third, develop scalable, participatory and implementable tools that build capacity and awareness of all the actors involved. Image 1 (opposite): Shrinking Ecology; Credits: Author; Source: CMDA Masterplan (Second). Image 2 (above): Regional Dynamics of Extraction, Exclusion and Excretion. Credits: Author.

Urban Lens: A Computational Model of the Public Image of the City Rui Wang Computation Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura Readers: Song Han & Carlos S. Olascoaga "Classical design is a mirror of the human mind. It's how we see the world." - Robert McKee "Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value … cognition provides understanding: emotion provides value judgments." - Donald A. Norman In the decades following the concept of human-centered design, there has been growing interest in understanding the human mind. As things are designed to be used by people, good design requires deep comprehension of the public mental image. A widely known theory in mental image is holism — that is — objects are viewed as wholes rather than their parts. A similar concept in computer science is the use of tree structure in address lookup. This thesis argues that this concept of human cognition following a tree structure can be translated into the field of urban study. Kevin Lynch in his book The Image of the City proposes that this image consists of five elements: Paths, Edges, Districts, Nodes, and Landmarks. If these elements are used as the root directory and each of them is extended into subdirectories, a systematic model can be built to understand and represent how people view the city and what forms an identifiable city. Contributing to the formation of mental image is not only cognition but also emotion, which provides value judgment. For example, when people think of Paris, their mind creates a mental image of the Eiffel Tower. Although she is not the tallest or oldest landmark in Paris, considering her cultural significance in memory, she is still one of the most representative urban symbols in the eyes of the public. This is the effect of emotion on the mental image. With the rise of the meta-universe, where the line between virtual and reality blurs, emotion plays a significant role in creating strong mental images. Establishing a thorough understanding of reality will shed light on assisting the enhancement of emotion in the meta-universe. This thesis proposes a computational model of the public image of the city, using social media crawling and machine learning to analyze how people see the

cities from the view of cognition and emotion. As emotion in a city changes in time, and between different elements in space, a comparison study among the five elements in morning and evening will be conducted. For residents and travelers, this analysis provides a better sense of urban identity and guidance for travel; for urban designers, it has important theoretical guiding significance and practical reference value in how to better plan urban development and enhance city identity.

Image: Identity of City and City of Identities. Cheshmehzangi, Ali. (2020). Identity of Cities and City of Identities. 10.1007/978-981-15-3963-3.

Moments in Space — Learning and Interpreting Models for User Experience in Architectural Space via Multi-Action Video Understanding Charles Wu Computation Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura Readers: Axel Kilian & Terry Knight Early stages of architectural projects are always driven by a singular project brief that attempts to render the client’s or target occupants’ holistic spatial demands and urban context. The amount of research and iterations needed for the design to fully understand the human experience within the project is rather demanding — how do we account for all the ways people will interact with the space we intend to build? Especially by its nature, spatial design is rigid due to its acyclic project stages and large-scale physical construction; the design workflow will always be based on a waterfall system, rather than the agile process we hope to use for evaluating human behavior in specifically defined architectural spaces. To assist with filling in the human-experience gaps in research early on in the process, I would like to propose a novel design tool to help the designers better understand all human interactions within a defined space through applying situated reasoning / video recognition to short clips of people’s behavior in spaces under similar context. The designer will learn about the relationship between people, objects, and the environment through the tool, which will help them to make better decisions given consideration of the human experience in their design.

Image: Data visualization of affective action computing (Wu, 2021).

"Scraping and Bloodletting": Xiamen Dada and the Rupture of Institutional Critique in China in the 1980s Qianyue Xu History, Theory & Criticism Advisor: Caroline A. Jones Reader: Arindam Dutta In 1986, Dada rhetoric surfaced in the coastal city of Xiamen in southeast China as a slogan for a burning event: a group of artists set their previously exhibited works on fire in front of the city's cultural palace (image 1). In the accompanying statement, instigator of the burning and key figure of the collective Xiamen Dada, Huang Yong Ping claims: “Dada is dead, beware of the fire!” This project focuses on the art collective Xiamen Dada, a pioneer of institutional critique in China active in the 1980s. The collective targeted agents and institutions in the consecrating network of art as the arena of their intervention. Their later activities include a guerilla exhibition staged in a provincial museum and a plan for towing away the National Art Gallery with 4000 meters of straw ropes (image 2). Most, if not all, passing mentions of the collective triumph their radical nature in the broad brushstrokes of “anti-establishment” critiques. Such an incautious categorization without detailed formal analysis or careful contextualization shows the working of, in academia where English is the lingua franca, the Western fabrication of “Oriental despotism” under the stagnant frame of reference known as postcolonial Orientalism — perhaps well-intended strategic essentialism on the part of nostalgic Chinese intellectuals. This project steers away from that tradition. Examining the precedent of Stars exhibition staged outside the National Art Gallery in 1979, the pedagogical reforms brewing inside Chinese art academies in the mid-1980s and the discourse on the map of periphery that extends beyond art, I argue that the collective’s practice merely scratched at the authority of the Chinese art establishment, that their efforts were “malnourished” and, thus, compromised due to the fragmentary nature of their sources of influence and their equally fragmentary mobilizations of aesthetics as event without the backing of a reciprocal financial network under the Chinese socio-political context at the time.

Image 1 (above): Xiamen Dada: Burning Incident, 1986, color photograph, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, https:// aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/archive/fei-dawei-archive-huang-yong-ping/object/burning-incident-of-xia-menda-da-40217. Image 2 (below): Xiamen Dada, Towing Away the National Art Gallery: Project Plan, 1988, ink on color photographs on paper, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, https://walkerart.org/collections/artworks/ drawing-away-the-national-art-gallery.

Master of Science in Architecture Studies Reviews, December 10, 2021 SPECIAL THANKS MIT Architecture Faculty and Staff Eleni Aktypi José Luis Argüello Darren Bennett Kateri Bertin Kathaleen Brearley Stacy Clemons Marion Cunningham Nicolas de Moncheaux

Chris Dewart Aidan Flynn Eduardo Gonzalez Gina Halabi Tessa Haynes Matthew Harrington Oliver Herman Chris Jenkins

Sheila Kennedy Doug Le Vie Inala Locke Tonya Miller Nina Palisano Paul Pettigrew Alan Reyes Ziyan (Daisy) Zhang

Advisors and Readers (MIT & External) Sigrid Adriaenssens Lorena Bello Gomez Svetlana V. Boriskina Travis Bunt Randall Davis Santiago del Hierro Arindam Dutta Rania Ghosn Huma Gupta Hakim Sameer Hamdani Song Han Timothy Hyde Lauren Jacobi

J Jih Caroline Jones Sheila Kennedy Axel Kilian Terry Knight Sotirios Kotsopoulos David S. Kong Zach Lieberman Miho Mazereeuw Ana Miljački Takehiko Nagakura Les Norford Caitlin Mueller Stefanie Mueller

Carlos S. Olascoaga John Osendorf Nasser Rabbat Christoph Reinhart Brent D. Ryan Larry Sass Roi Salgueiro Barrio Rafi Segal Marc Simmons Kristel Smentek George Stiny Zheng Tan Skylar Tibbits

SMARCHS

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

© 2021 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