Reem Abuzeid Jordan Lloyd Norman Allison Stanford Anderson Alex Atwood George Baird Arch. Ma’an M Bajnaid Yuliya Bentcheva Yung Ho Chang Yoonhee Cho Miho Chu Diane Davis Alexander D’Hooghe Peggy Deamer Michael Dennis Jennifer Dunnam John Fernandez Michelle Fornabai Dennis Frenchman David Friedman Kamau Gachigi Yu Gao Nick Gelpi Reinhard Goethert Cesar Hidalgo Sarah Hirschman
Juliet Hsu Zhe Huang Mark Jarzombek Sung Woo Jang Caroline Jones Sheila Kennedy Jae Kyung Kim Michael Kubo Joel Lamere Kent Larson Amanda Reeser Lawrence Emily Lo Tim Love Ryan Maliszewski Miho Mazereeuw Ana Miljacki Takehiko Nagakura Otto Ng John Ochsendorf William O’Brien Jr. Yushiro Okamoto Marc Pasnik Ella Peinovich Nasser Rabbat Carlo Ratti
Curtis Roth Adèle Naudé Santos Hashim Sarkis Mack Scoggin Andrew Scott Philip Seaton Travis Sheehan Anne Spirn Aoran Sun Nader Tehrani Filip Tejchman Skylar Tibbits Ada Tolla Olga Touloumi Marc Tsurumaki Gediminas Urbonas Nadya Volicer Jan Wampler William Wheaton Ann Woods Kian Yam Mavis Yip J. Meejin Yoon
MIT Department of Architecture 77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 7-337 Cambridge, MA 02139 USA http://architecture.mit.edu arch@mit.edu
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MIT MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE THESIS FINAL REVIEW 2011 territorial
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environmental urban industrial design design
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intervention
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Thursday, December 15 9 AM - 5 PM MIT Media Lab E14-674 + Winter Garden
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Undergraduate
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REVIEW SCHEDULE TIME
STUDENT
LOCATION
9:00 - 9:55
Zhe Huang Ryan Maliszewski Mavis Yip
B1 C1 A1
10:00 - 10:55
Nadya Volicer Sung Woo Jang Yu Gao
B2 C2 A2
11:00 - 11:55
Yoonhee Cho Yuliya Bentcheva Jordan Allison Curtis Roth
B3 C3 A3 D3
12:00 - 12:55
Reem Abuzeid Ella Peinovich Miho Chu Ann Woods
B4 C4 A4 D4
2:00 - 2:55
Travis Sheehan Philip Seaton Alex Atwood
B5 C5 A5
3:00 - 3:55
Otto Ng Jae Kyung Kim Juliet Hsu
B6 C6 A6
4:00 - 4:55
Yushiro Okamoto Jennifer Dunnam Kian Yam Aoran Sun
B7 C7 A7 D7
LUNCH BREAK
RECEPTION AT E14-648
1
B1 B3 B5 B7
A2 A4 A6
A1 A3 A5 A7
C1 C3 C5 C7
C2 C4 C6
B2 B4 B6
D4 D3 D7
GUEST CRITICS
George Baird Partner, Baird Sampson Neuert Architects Dean Emeritus, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto Peggy Deamer Principal, Deamer Architects Professor, Yale School of Architecture Michelle Fornabai Principal, Ambo.infra Design Adjunct Assistant Professor Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Columbia University Michael Kubo PhD Candidate in History and Theory of Architecture Department of Architecture, MIT Amanda Reeser Lawrence Founding Editor, Praxis Journal Assistant Professor, School of Architecture Northeastern University
Tim Love Principal, Utile, Inc. Associate Professor, School of Architecture Northeastern University Marc Pasnik Co-Director, pink comma gallery Principal, over,under Associate Professor of Architecture Wentworth Institute of Technology Mack Scoggin Principal, Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, Inc. Kajima Professor in Practice of Architecture GSD Harvard University Ada Tolla Partner, LOT-EK Adjunct Assistant Professor Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Columbia University Olga Touloumi Ph.D. Candidate, History of Architecture GSD Harvard University
2
REEM ABUZEID
3
The Meeting Point: Rethinking Public Space in the City of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Can urban intervention affect social behaviors within a city? If so, what happens when that city is partial to cultural restrictions? The target in question here is the city of Jeddah located in Saudi Arabia. The dilemma is that the city has no true from of public space; it mainly has areas that are masquerading as these spaces. This notion can be related to two main aspects linked to the nature of the city: 1. Gender Segregation: Questioning what actually IS public if both males and females can’t access these spaces freely. 2. City Development: ‘Souqs’ -Public Markets- previously performed as the heart of the city socially, culturally and economically. But with the building boom the idea of the ‘souq’ has morphed into the concept of privately owned mainstream malls. My thesis serves as a contribution to the social needs of a contemporary Saudi society. By questioning the issue of ‘public-ness’ I intend to reveal how these two issues have virtually eliminated the concept of true public space, and how I’ve approached solving this dilemma by learning from the past in order to adapt to the demands of modern-day life.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it” - Alan Key
Advisor: Nasser Rabbat Readers: Michael Dennis + Arch. Ma’an. M Bajnaid
4
JORDAN LLOYD NORMAN ALLISON
5
After Exodus: Re-Occupation of the Metropolitan Wall
The title “Exodus” alludes to a restricted exclave encircled by a forbidding wall—in effect, a prison on the scale of a metropolis, and one in which people sought refuge voluntarily. Over the past forty years, similar walls have grown in the city of Belfast in an increasing effort to divid its Catholic and Protestant populations. Although the troubles have subsided, the walls continue to grow creating interface zones along their edges, where civic infrastructure becomes abandoned and left to ruin. Such zones become the stage for a new urban culture invigorated by invention and subversion, each with an objective of territorial gain through a type of architectural warfare that stakes its claim on the conterminous ruins along its edge. The result is manifested in adaptive architectural typologies that reenforce the edge condition of the wall through the re-appropriation of critical infrastructure, forced to confront its intersection with barrier lines.
Jordan Allison graduated from the University of Toronto in 2007 with a major in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism.
Advisor: Filip Tejchman Readers: Mark Jarzombek + Nick Gelpi
6
ALEX ATWOOD
7
Water Infrastructure: Hybridized Architecture along the Arizona Canal Due to budget issues, the Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal has been left exposed to the arid desert environment since its construction in the 1970s. As a result, 5% of the amount of water diverted from the Colorado River is lost to evaporation and seepage from the exposed aqueduct and Lake Pleasant reservoir. This amount of loss is equivalent to the amount of water required to supply 75,000 households annually. The objective of this thesis aims to recuperate the amount of water loss from the Central Arizona Canal by creating a hybrid architectural infrastructure that blends water collection with recreational program. Through the act of hybridization, a regional amenity is created, serving as support for the water infrastructure as well as creating spatial experience of water collection. A series of architectural interventions along the canal serve as nodes for rainwater collection. These nodes function as public spas that combine the act of swimming with the act of collecting and cleansing water in order to create spatial experience and awareness of the issues of water.
Alex Atwood graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor of Design degree in Architecture. Accepted into the MIT department of Architecture with advanced placement, his focus is on design and fabrication.
Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: Michael Dennis + Anne Spirn
8
YULIYA BENTCHEVA
9
Modernizing the Passing Joint: A Standardized Building System to Facilitate Contemporary Bamboo Housing Construction in Regions of Economic Constraint The thesis explores the building use of bamboo – a well-known, traditional material. It focuses on understanding the material properties and performance at a very small scale in order to add another layer of complexity. The design decisions are highly influenced by the construction of models at different scales. The thesis proposes a standardized light-frame construction system that allows for the nonstandard nature of bamboo members and is inspired by the unique properties of the material. The research investigates how we can use the individual members to behave as a system - incorporating imperfections and variations of individual elements. The thesis challenges the cultural misconception of bamboo as the “poor man’s lumber” by proposing a bamboo housing unit that uses creative ways to incorporate available materials into contemporary design elements.
Live. Travel. Smile. Love
Advisors: John Fernandez + Jan Wampler Reader: John Ochsendorf
10
YOONHEE CHO
11
Urban Stairs
In recent decades, Seoul in Korea has experienced a rapid economic and urban development. As a result, the city exposes extreme disharmony between different zones. For example, the heavy mega structures are inconsiderately located right next to the small old fabric district. The thesis especially focuses on the urban conflict between high-rise and low-rise residential areas. The later high-rising development impaired single family housing environment and drastically changed existing urban landscape and structure. Instead of pursuing coexistence and sharing, it chose to delete all the historical accumulation over time and to be inserted like an urban island in the city. The goal of this thesis is to reconcile these two – physically adjacent but, – in reality, totally separated residential areas in such a way that redesign the boundary while respecting the existing systems of two zones. This mediating zone will provide two areas with what those lack. Whereas infrastructure such as parking and circulation system will tie the old fabric up as a whole, bringing urbanity into mega block will enrich tower residents’ urban life. The project will provide communal, commercial, and public – indoor and outdoor – programs serving for both zones. As an architectural device, the stair contributes to 3 dimensional organization of a current 2 dimensionally treated division. This thesis focuses three main attributes of stairs; First, the verticality of stairs connects two levels creating a sequence of experiences from the lower level to the higher level. Second, inhabitability of stairs implies that stairs can be used not only for circulation purpose but also occupiable space. Third, its strong figurativeness strengthens the degree of singularity as an urban artifact.
Yoonhee Cho is currently a fourth-year student in the Master of Architecture program at MIT (2012 candidate). She earned a Bachelor of Science of Architectural Studies from Seoul National University in Korea where she was born and raised. After graduation, she worked at IROJE Architects and Planners, one of the leading architectural firms in Korea, as a full-time staff for 3 years. While studying at MIT, she has become interested in the area of History and Theory of Architecture and Art, and especially in architects and their philosophies in the modern period. Pedagogy in architecture and art disciplines is also an active interest for her.
Advisor: Nader Tehrani Readers: Andrew Scott + J. Meejin Yoon
12
MIHO CHU
13
Expandable House: For Sustainable Post-Disaster Housing and Flexible Dwelling In March 2011, a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northern Japan. In addition to the lives lost, thousands of people were dislocated, resulting in an urgent need for housing. My approach to this issue is to design the Expandable House, which is lightweight, easy to transport, quickly assembled, and sustainable. In a typical disaster relief timeline, three types of housing are provided. The first response to post-disaster housing is the assembly of lightweight emergency tents in relief camps, but these tents lack privacy, stability, and living conditions like insulation, heating, and ventilation. Therefore these tents are often replaced by temporary shelters such as tailors, shacks, and prefabricated house, while the permanent housing is being constructed. However, these temporary structures double the cost of the overall solution because of the building materials and labor involved in building/deconstructing the temporary structures and rebuilding a new house. This thesis proposes to merge these different steps of housing type into one prototype through designing an expandable architecture. The house could be easily transported and deployed for disaster relief, and could be folded and transported again to be reused for a permanent house afterwards. Compared with other existing prefab housing system, scissor mechanism allows people inhabit the house during the expansion and contraction. The ability to fold a house allows for flexible use of the site and space on a variety of urban scenarios. The flexibility provides opportunities to operate the house in different climate conditions while providing multiple options for day lighting, insulation, and ventilation. By using aluminum scissor structure and fabric laminated foam insulation, the project explores new material and fabrication technology for flexible architecture.
Miho Chu graduated from Ewha University in Korea with a Bachelor of Art degree in Environmental design. She is interested in aesthetics that could be developed through the use of technology and new materials.
Advisors: Yung Ho Chang + Nick Gelpi
14
JENNIFER DUNNAM
15
FlexMarket: A Transient Mode of Local Exchange This thesis presents the idea of a networked, transient mode of local food exchange and proposes a responsive infrastructure for integrating dynamic markets within the urban fabric. Focusing on market typologies as an area for critical intervention, I propose a design strategy whereby vendors are liberated from regulated market schedules and retail locations, and mobilized to operate as independent distributors informed by real-time supply and demand fluctuations. A research study is presented on early European traders, modern locations theories, and contemporary supply chain logistics in order to contextualize the proposition within a historically evolving spatial relationship between producers and consumers. Using social, environmental, and economic lenses, I assess the benefits of a transient food market for South Tyrol, Italy, a region with a long tradition of agricultural production but where modern advances in technology provide significant advantages for exporting products rather than selling locally. The design research and proposal is presented as four distinct ideas that articulate the emerging role of the 1) producer, 2) products, 3) people, and 4) places within a digitally connected and socially networked environment. The convergence of these ideas establishes the critical design project, which is formalized and tested through a series of future projections that speculate on the spatial evolution of cities as people become increasingly connected and guided within an urban operating system.
Advisors: Dennis Frenchman + Carlo Ratti Readers: Andrew Scott + Cesar Hidalgo
Jennifer studies the interface between cities, people, and technologies and investigates how the ubiquity of digital devices and sensor networks are impacting urban space. As a researcher at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab, Jennifer works with an interdisciplinary team to articulate problems, identify opportunities and design solutions that promote a sustainable and engaging city. At Senseable City Lab, Jennifer is currently working towards the launch of “Matching Markets�, a project for South Tyrol, Italy that connects regional farmers with local customers and tourists through the use of real-time communication, networked infrastructures and interactive, mobile vending units.
16
YU GAO
17
Micro-Institution: Design and Craft in Education for Socio-Economic Change Urban China Migrant Workers’ Children “Things are not revolutionized by making revolutions. The real revolution lies in the solution of existing problems.” Le Corbusier. This thesis embraces the inquiry “Can architecture be a catalyst to envision alternative possibilities and alleviate the real world social problem?” Specifically, “Is there a new building prototype that can help to improve the migrant workers’ children future in urban China?” In an era of great social and political change in China, architecture should be perceived as a crucial instrument in addressing the ills of Chinese contemporary society. An appropriate architecture would combat social unrest. As the major contributors for China’s urbanization and economic booming, the estimated 120,000,000 migrant workers in urban China are the largest underprivileged group. With the extreme low-quality standard education, many migrant youths face no choice but to enter the job market pre-maturely, perpetuating a cycle of intergenerational poverty. This project proposes the hybridization of craft (artistic training centre and workshops) with education (art gallery/cultural centre) space and artists housings, ultimately creating a network of these hybrid building prototypes throughout urban China to catalyze social and political change for these migrant children.
Advisor: Yung Ho Chang Readers: Joel Lamere + Reinhard Goethert + Stanford Anderson
Yu Gao currently is pursuing both degrees in SMArchs Computation and MArch. Her research and design interest lies in the translation of the quality of “beauty” in architecture into real architectural form to be utilized in real (second and third) world settings. Her life pursuit is to bridge the gap between architectural beauty (currently expensive and limited to rich people) and the real world problem (to serve tremendous social needs and be accessible to a much larger cross-section of the world). Yu Gao holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture Design from Hong Kong University, and worked as an architecture assistant for one year before she came to MIT. She’s from mainland China and possesses a real passion to serve the underprivileged.
18
JULIET HSU
19
Urban Solarium: Thermal Performance in Boston This thesis addresses the issue of energy efficiency through the lens of thermal performance in the context of housing in Boston. Located in the historic brick row house neighborhood of the South End, the project utilizes the brick’s high heat capacity – a material’s ability to store radiant energy and release it later due to the temperature difference between day and night - as a thermal battery for heating and cooling the domestic space. In Boston where the temperature frequently goes below freezing in winter time, is it possible to adapt a passive solar strategy to the scale of an entire building structure?
Originally from Taipei, Taiwan, Juliet has a B.A. from UC Berkeley in Architecture. Prior to MIT, she was a project architect and construction administrator for the office Turnbull Griffin Haesloop Architects of San Francisco. For the past three summers, she worked on the design, construction, and furnishing of a rammed earth residence in the Silicon Valley region of California.
Advisor: Joel Lamere Readers: John Fernandez + Yung Ho Chang
20
ZHE HUANG
21
Clearly Impossible: Constructing the Phantom in the Pseudoscience Lab A scientific laboratory is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research performed. A pseudoscience Lab is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which pseudoscience research performed. The goal of this pseudoscience research is to produce a phantom, which will appear and disappear responding to people’s movement in the space. Ultimately, this lab turns to be a meditation space in which we question our inward perception and the outward materiality. If we eliminate the edges of the objects, how could we still differentiate objects and background? The fundamental strategy is to control the light and the space in order to maintain the exactly same visual condition between objects and background. Once people’s bodies intervene the space, they have a impact on the light condition, which will influence the visibility of the phantom. By understanding and carefully designing this relationship between light, space and body, we are able to design this phantom experience. We only pay attention to our perception in such an uncanny experience, just like we only pay attention to the crossroad itself when we are in the labyrinth. This pseudoscience lab project is not tending to produce a new discovery in the field of neuroscience; instead, it is to produce a new experience, which challenges our perceptions.
Zhe Huang is from Shanghai, China. Prior to attending MIT, he was trained as an industrial designer at Zhejiang University. He has a strong passion in exploring people’s perception in both a phenomenology perspective and neuroscience perspective. This thesis well represents his initial interest. After MIT, he is going to continue practice as a professional architect and multidisciplinary artist.
Advisor: Yung Ho Chang Readers: Caroline Jones + Gediminas Urbonas
22
SUNG WOO JANG
23
Exquisite Corpse: A Tower for the Public in the Era of Exhausted Modernity Towers in Manhattan have historically used a single overarching system in order to visualize images of their corporate identity and immerse the public in the image of development. The grid system, whose representational value was important as much as its economic value, not only deformed the physical form of different function, but also prevented certain functions which did not match with their corporate identity to be incorporated into the tower. However, entering into an era of uncertainty resulted in overarching system to become obsolete not because of its lack of efficiency, but because those systems have lost its representational value as an emblem of progress. Thus, in the era of exhausted modernity, it is unnecessary to deform the physical form of each function, in other words, each program can be incorporated into the tower without losing its irreducible form. Also, a program which takes a huge part of our culture, but has been excluded in the city of vision, for example, crematory, collabrium and etc., can be introduced – or, the re-union of Apollo and Dionysus in city culture.
2000 - 2006 - Yonsei University - B.S in Housing and Interior Design, B.S in Environmental Design
In this mode, the grid system needs to operate not as an overarching system which suppresses the irreducible form of each program, but rather a tool that orchestrates multiple different forms that produces the collection of programs to become an image of a deceptive whole. By doing so, different functions will not only be legitimized to be incorporated within the typology of tower, but also it would produce an image based on the heterogeneity, thus becoming a new ethic.
Advisor: Nader Tehrani Readers: David Friedman + Gediminas Urbonas
24
JAE KYUNG KIM
25
The Vertical Form of Public Ground
Manhattan architecture as the result of congestive culture should be redefined due to the change of street-level condition. In the 20th century, a skyscraper had the hostile relationship with the ground level which was identified with pollution, congestion, and crime. In this respect, a building became an individual object aloof from the city. However, different from the last century, emerging pedestrian culture and public space such as bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, and the High Line has made to re-think architecture as the part of urban context. In today’s new context, at first, the thesis defines a skyscraper is not an individual object aloof from a city. Also, through the historical research of Manhattan architecture, the thesis demonstrates that the building typology of Manhattan has evolved to accommodate more programmatic relationship with a street level. Finally, the thesis proposes new type of a skyscraper which supports multiple strata of public space and cultural space not only at street level but into the sky above to accommodate the demand of cultural programs in Mid-Manhattan. Through this strategy, the project seeks to interconnect a dense grid of vertical structure with the most dominant public realm in Manhattan, the Central Park, by means of a street-like building form – extending ground level’s programs horizontally as well as vertically.
Jae Kyung Kim trained as an architect as well as construction engineer. www.counter-design.com
Advisor: Andrew Scott Readers: Alexander D’Hooghe + Nader Tehrani
26
EMILY LO
27
Recrafting the Remnants: The Reuse of Rubble in Post-Earthquake Haiti Haitians have continued to live their daily lives with an unbelievable resilience of spirit, despite dwelling amidst the 10 million cubic meters of rubble remaining since the January 2010 earthquake. Whether locally called romble or dekonbr, this heterogeneous mix of building debris carries connotations of destruction but has the potential to become a productive and locallysourced material for reconstructing communities. This thesis examines the opportunities for rubble in its less-processed and irregular condition as the basis for a low-carbon and affordable building method. There are four primary areas of research for a contextually-appropriate yet ecologically-informed approach: the material and mixes, the process, the building components, and the test implementation within an urban block. The project develops a series of infrastructural “living cores� made from cast rubble concrete, which provide the structure for safer housing while allowing the rest of the building to utilize lightweight and tailorable wall systems. The cores can also be configured to allow for incremental expansion and flexibility in use, to provide housing for the many still displaced and a new community structure for rebuilding.
Emily has an undergraduate degree in architecture and French from Columbia University. Prior to MIT, she worked as an architectural designer in her native Philadelphia on projects ranging from skyscrapers in the Middle East to cancer centers in Portugal. Her studies and hands-on building in Cambodia, El Salvador, and now Haiti have solidified her interest in international development, local building processes, and disaster relief. She plans to continue her thesis work and design research related to material reuse and building community resilience.
Advisor: Andrew Scott Readers: John Ochsendorf + Miho Mazereeuw
28
RYAN MALISZEWSKI
29
Transport Sanctuary: A Secure Public Realm Within a City of Violence With an increasing number of cities experiencing chronic violence and conflict within their boundaries, the question of how architecture can effectively intervene to create a secure public realm in pluralistic and fractious urban environments grows more vital. This thesis explores the spatial and social notion of sanctuary as an architectural strategy in such contexts, using the design of a central transit station in a northern neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan as a case study. Drawing upon sociological theory as well as precedent projects ranging from Johannesburg to Bogota, we come to see the creation of sanctuary as a deliberate construction of shared identity and experience. This strategy draws on four tactics that shift both the built and psychological environment and work in tandem to reinforce and amplify each other’s effects: • Partition (the separation of ‘sacred’ content from ‘profane’ context) • Ritual (strengthening psychological security through the repeated and familiar) • Appropriation (empowering people to take ownership of portions of the space) • Monumentality (creating a physical object upon which common values can be projected) Using these tactics as a foundation, the design’s architectural patterns engender a variety of systems to accommodate the diverse program and user demands incumbent within a project of this scale and complexity. Through this investigation, the design proposes a new type of defensible infrastructure, relying not only on fortifying a space but also on strengthening the psychological resilience of people through architectural intervention.
Ryan was born in Wisconsin and attended Washington University in St. Louis where he studied Architecture and Structural Engineering. Prior to matriculating at MIT, Ryan worked for three years as an architectural designer in China. After MIT, Ryan looks forward to making Boston home but hopes to be professionally tethered to developing countries.
Advisor: Alexander D’Hooghe Readers: Diane Davis + Hashim Sarkis + Sarah Hirschman
30
OTTO NG
31
Powerscapes
In 2050, global oil supply will decline to 1/8 of today’s. Migrating to the Post-Oil Era, 10000’s km2 of Powerscapes - the solar-collecting infrastructure - will be gradually constructed across the desert, for the indispensable production of solar energy to sustain the Middle East’s economy and global energy supply. The inserted Powerscapes will interiorize the desert landscape and shelter the ground from the harsh direct sunlight that will be captured for power supply. Transformation in biological development, meteorological activity and geological phenomena will be inevitable, but the change that reduces the heat and evaporation rate will make the land more habitable for human, animals and plants. Further amplification of the geographical change that has been taking place should be, however, kept minimum, as the butterfly effect of it can never be confidently predicted. This thesis investigates the strategic programming and architectural configuration of this constructed landscape, capitalized by its new temporal characteristics, and sensitively adapting to it. To forge a symbiotic relationship among urban, agriculture and wild nature, the strata of the Powerscapes will delineate, flip, intersect, wrap and merge, responding to programmatic needs and climatic dynamics that the natural geology and the Powerscapes together create. Such adaptive organization also permits certain geometrical logic to reiterate themselves in multiple scales, formulating a fractalic field with recursive part to whole relationships.
Otto explores the process of design and production with computational science, responsive intelligence, emerging materials and ecological temporality. At MIT, he has been a researcher for the Senseable City Lab, the coordinator for the Lecture Series, and the teaching assistant for two architectural design studios, with Joshua Prince-Ramus and Joel Lamere respectively. He has lived and worked in Hong Kong, London, Torino and Boston, where he specialized in complex geometries and parametric design. Otto graduated from University of Hong Kong in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies.
Advisors: Carlo Ratti + William O’Brien Jr. Reader: Skylar Tibbits
www.ottocad.net
32
YUSHIRO OKAMOTO
33
Weathermart
This thesis reinvents the supermarket by questioning the generic big-box typology where produce are placed in the same way in a hermetically sealed environment. A supermarket should be designed thermodynamically, reorganizing the atmospheric relationships between different atmospheres it houses. Such gradational spectrum of heat and moisture begin to become part of a greater external spectrum of nature as it starts to expose its boundaries. Weathermart proposes a new environment to access food mediating between inside and outside, controlled and uncontrolled, permanent and temporal. Can architecture act like a sponge breathing in and out the cycles of weathers?
Yushiro is a windsurfer. He is a salsa dancer. Sometimes, an architecture student.
Advisor: J. Meejin Yoon Readers: William O’Brien Jr. + Sheila Kennedy
34
ELLA PEINOVICH
35
Localized Design-Manufacture for Developing Countries: A Methodology for Creating Culturally Sustainable Architecture African urban populations are expected to triple over the next 30 years. Around 2030, Africa’s collective population will become 50 percent urban, leading to an exponential increase in the demand for shelter and services. Globally, urbanization is associated with more job opportunities and improved human development; however, this is the reverse of the socio-economic conditions currently prevailing in African cities. Demographic expansion is continuing regardless of ever-growing shortfalls in housing, services and livelihood opportunities (UN-Habitat, 2010). It is clear that the challenges of African urbanization will not be met through the current architectural design and construction industry. What is needed are new ways to promote multiple benefits through novel methodological solutions. The thesis is aimed at building capacity locally for self-sustained manufacturing processes using Computer-Aided Design/ Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) tools suited to create solutions for local infrastructures. Unlike imposed exogenous solutions, this approach promotes localization of the design-manufacture process to encourage cultural sustainability. The research is threefold: 1. Catalogue cultural artifacts that can benefit from digital reproduction for widespread methodological adoption 2. Build capacity locally through sustained educational channels, and 3. Implement technological manufacturing processes that are culturally sustainable and replicable. This thesis outlines a methodology which considers appropriate technology, transferable labor skills, incremental growth, and local resources within an adjusted, contextualized spectrum; evaluating each for their ability to promote economic progress that addresses the present infrastructure crisis and improves living standards for future generations.
Prior to MIT, Ella spent three years leading architectural projects at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) in San Francisco. She has specific expertise in combining computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) tools with a detailed understanding of the local environment to develop practical solutions for social challenges in the developing world. In the summer of 2010, Ella partnered with the FabLab at the University of Nairobi to create a lowcost sanitation center for the slums of Nairobi. Her design won the MIT100K Emerging Markets track and Grand Prize in 2011, and was nominated for the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
Advisor: John Fernandez Readers: William O’Brien Jr. + Kamau Gachigi
36
CURTIS ROTH
37
Acid Ecologies
This thesis seeks to unpack the nature of ecology within architecture, not as a neutral science, but a legitimizing construct, building a future and transforming the ethics of the present towards very deliberate ideological ends, and contingent on certain practices of alienation which themselves have historically laid the groundwork for later environmental and social crisis. The project takes place in Almeria Spain, which in the last forty-five years has gone from the poorest region in Spain to one of the richest, through the wide scale application of greenhouse urbanism. Almeria is currently the largest intensive agriculture site in the world (80,000acres) and supplies the majority of winter produce to Europe. However, Almeria is also, in many ways, an accelerated microcosm of larger contemporary ecological paradigms, what Keller Easterling called an autonomous world, Almeria is a place in which the apparent neutrality of ecological ideologies are consistently leveraged towards technological transformations of the landscape precipitating widespread environmental and social fallout conditions. In Almeria, Ecological ideologies consistently serve as the legitimizing platforms by which transformation after transformation (each promising an ideal future) compound the effects of peripheral disaster all under the guise of a seemingly neutral science. The thesis argues that within a condition in which neutral ecology is leveraged to legitimize specific ideological and economic positions, it may actually be the task of an ecological architecture to irrigate radical alternatives, not as ideal futures, but as provisional presents, alternate ecological life rafts within contested environmental conditions.
Curtis Roth grew up in Oregon and studied architecture at Portland State University. His interests lie on the appropriation of natural resources, landscapes and architecture as discreet and often surreptitious forms of political power. His research focuses on landscapes of agricultural production, the geographic fallout of the American military-industrial economy, preservation as a form of cultural amnesia and the politics of global emissions trading. In his free time he enjoys looking at photographs of cats on the internet.
Advisor: Ana Miljacki Readers: Alexander D’Hooghe + Miho Mazereeuw
38
PHILIP SEATON
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Sixty-eight & Sunny: The Un-modern Architecture of Climate Historical control of the thermal environment was a deeply cultural activity: fireplaces distributed throughout buildings needed to be fed to keep burning, drafts needed to be stopped by hanging heavy tapestries. The industrial revolution filled the air with toxic exhaust, but modernist architects promised to seal the building envelope hermetically, keeping dirty air at bay. Thermal control came to depend on the very same centralized technologies responsible for the toxic storm outside. Pumping climates throughout a building from centralized machine rooms turned the modernist building into a human vivarium: a glass box containing a strange, displaced performance of life in some consistently tempered time and place. Industrialized city-dwellers no longer seek refuge from the outside air, and the vivarium’s apetite for energy has proven more than we can sustainably produce. The design project imagines shifts in attitude for architecture after the vivarium. How can architecture harvest valuable “waste” heat from exhaust, occupants’ bodies, and appliances? How can it encourage changes in clothing, activity levels, and location of activity, to match the climate-producing resources that are available? What comes of the building skin? What does it mean for the value of space to be measured thermally, instead of in square feet?
Originally from the Washington DC area, Phil studied Philosophy and Engineering as an undergraduate at NYU. He started and ran a photography business in Brooklyn, NY before returning to graduate school, where he used many of his architecture projects to continue working on practical projects that fit conceptually in both culture and technology. He plans to work on energy-related design projects in the public sphere.
Advisor: Sheila Kennedy Readers: Joel Lamere + Mark Jarzombek
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TRAVIS SHEEHAN
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The Urban Design of Distributed Energy Resources
Distributed energy resources (DERs) have been a considerable focus of research as a measure for cities to reach emissions targets and meet growing demand. DERs range in scale, but are recently popularized at the neighborhood block scale due to policies like the Murton Rule in London which incentivizes distributed generation of power at smaller scales. Though the literature covers the financial, regulatory and engineering aspects of these systems, little research has explored the impacts on urban form at the neighborhood scale. This thesis asks, “how do distributed energy resources inform the development of cities at the scale of the neighborhood?” To answer this question, I propose guidelines and demonstrate the principles through urban design in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Travis Sheehan is a candidate for dual Masters Degree in Architecture and City Planning, originally from West Palm Beach, Florida. Traveling with MIT, he has participated in design charettes in numerous countries, including historic preservation in China and Japan, landbanking in southeast India, and Living Communities in the Republic of Cyprus. His coursework includes architectural design, community planning, mixed-use urban development, landscape design, operational principles of building typologies, ‘smart cities’ urban environmental sensing, social media design, digital fabrication, statistics and economics.
Advisors: Kent Larson + Dennis Frenchman
Besides working in an office, he plans a return to academia for a doctorate or as a lecturer.
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AORAN SUN
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Ghost in the Shell: Towards a Participatory Culture of Urban Economy This thesis proposal is centered on the notion of “living as urban participation”. Dwelling as an activity in this current milieu where role play in the system of power are essential to success was problematized; In the era when social “cloud participation” has given rise to Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, what does work, live and play mean in this current environment where indulgence and consumption for its very own sake is very much part of the cultural lifestyle. In as much as it is about providing plausible answers, this thesis challenges the existing power system in the Real Estate industry, instead of taking dweller’s spatial appropriation as guerrilla activities, the thesis proposes ways that channels such “cloud participation” into system of value production. Architectural proposition therefore works in way which turns these inherent power struggle scenarios into formal expression. The proposal intends to critically engage the potential new power structure within the existing Real Estate top-down food chain system, where capital and government are on top and dwellers are at the very bottom. By documenting the existing ways of spatial appropriation, the typological study serves as a dictionary of vocabulary. With that, the design research intents to engage three scenarios: Real Estate (government oriented scenario), Un-Real Estate (dweller oriented scenario) and Sur-Real Estate (capital oriented scenario), to propose ways in which process of optimization could generate new mutations of monstrosity.
Advisors : Michael Dennis + William Wheaton Readers: Adèle Naudé Santos + Alexander D’Hooghe
Aoran A. Sun is from Republic of Singapore where he obtained his first professional degree in Architecture and Urbanism in National University of Singapore (NUS) under the British RIBA system. As a national scholarship recipient, he had worked concurrently as an assistant associate with Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) for several years before being accepted in to MIT Master of Architecture program with one year advanced placement and later on as a dual degree candidate into the MSRED program. His current research is centered on Singapore’s Real Estate Market, Urban Economic and Econometric Time Series Forecast. His industry exposure includes RE Principle Investment in Goldman Sachs, real estate consulting in CB Richard Ellis and Private Equity in China Development Bank (CDB).
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NADYA VOLICER
City park
Greenway
Mosaic
oulevard
Courtyard
Cabin in the forest
City in the forest
ty estate
Roof garden
Forest ring
Watershed
Buffer
Island
Industry in the forest
eet trees
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Intersecting Ecologies: production and consumption of the urban forest
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dge
Life in the Woods: Production and Consumption of the Urban Forest At a handful of undisclosed locations in the Southeastern U.S., a new crop is inconspicuously growing; species originated as cells in a petri dish, designed by scientists for enhanced purpose: super trees. These engineered organisms have the ability to remediate contaminated sites, regenerate at accelerated rates, and yield wood products with selectively desirable traits. In sequencing these functions over time and space, opportunities arise for imagining an architecture that accounts for its own soil, energy, and timber. Solid wood construction thus reimmerges as an efficient use of natural resources and offers new potentials for design.
Nadya Volicer grew up in New England and earned a BFA in Sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Prior to MIT, she built large installations and small sculptures using scrap wood and other reclaimed materials. She has created site-specific works for many spaces, including the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Massachusetts and Real Art Ways, Connecticut, and permanent installations at Sheridan College, Wyoming and the Revolving Museum, Massachusetts. Upon completing her MArch degree, she will resume the practice of building things big and small.
Advisor: Sheila Kennedy Readers: Andrew Scott + Mark Jarzombek
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ANN WOODS
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Re-Framed: Animating Boston’s City Hall The way in which we visualize and understand space today has changed. Not only are there an abundance of tools, there is an abundance of media. Similarly, the way that we access architectural information has changed. Rather than consulting trusted publications, we immediately Google a project to retrieve images of it on Flickr, videos on youtube, or better yet go to its 3D view in Google Earth or Bing. With this abundance of tools and media available to create what were once considered advanced visualization, animation has quickly become a primary means of representation in architecture; however, in general many animations today are produced as explications of a project or form-making process rather than as a conceptual tool. We have not yet turned a critical eye on the production of animation to understand how it reinforces or detracts from the architectural agenda. This thesis probes contemporary techniques of animation in order to understand how they contribute to our overall understanding of the architectural aspirations of a project. Adopting Daniel Castor’s study of Berlage’s Exchange building as a model for an inquiry, the first half of the thesis presents a series of tests wherein conventional modes of drawing are animated. The second half of the thesis takes a comparative approach, adapting the animation styles of three contemporary authors to the site of Boston’s City Hall in order to tease out the elements of each technique. Representing this iconic building using the biases inherent in a Zaha Hadid styled flythrough, a Bjarke Ingels formal transformation and a Michael Meredith narrative reveals new realities about the building as well as the technique of animation.
Born near Brussels, Belgium, Ann Woods has lived in Atlanta, Virginia, Delaware, Paris, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. At MIT, Ann is a member of little T and co-edited Little thesis vol. 2. Ann has a B.A. from Williams College in Political Science and French and has worked at William Rawn Associates and Studio Luz Architects in Boston. Immediate plans include an internship at Snohetta in New York and the pursuit of full time gainful employment in architecture or animation.
Advisor: Joel Lamere Readers: Filip Tejchman + Takehiko Nagakura
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KIAN YAM
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800mm Luxury - Pencil Tower Phenomenon
“Pencil Tower� is a term that used to describe the slender tower-like apartment buildings that are found only commonly in Hong Kong and a few other high-dense Asian cities. The smallest tower consist of one apartment on each floor with usable floor area as little as 20 square meters. The 10m x 15m plot-size, set up by the British-colonial government during the 1900s, is usually extruded up into the air with some thirty stories using reinforced concrete as loadbearing structure. In almost every case the floor plan takes up the maximum allowed by the building codes for the specific plot. Therefore, pencil tower is a hyper-specific typology of building which is only economically believable under these external pressure exist in Hong Kong. While the real-estate developer exploited this 10m x 15m (W x D) plot size in Hong Kong and created the 80m-tall-pencil tower typology, it also set up a tough spatial challenge for domestic inhabitants. On one hand, the pencil tower is the smallest stand alone apartment unit in Hong Kong, on the other hand it has also been marketed as luxury apartments for middleincome group. For domestic users, how could we maximize our living environment at such 40sqm within the tower? For architects, how could we create spatial possibility within these 4m x 10m x 3m (W x D x H) volume? Simply, it is possible to further maximize square meters at a 4m x 10m x 3m (W x D x H) apartment unit?
Hiu Lan (Kian) YAM hails from Hong Kong. She received her Bachelor from the University of Hong Kong (BAAS) in 2008.
Advisor: Yung Ho Chang Readers: Filip Tejchman + Marc Tsurumaki
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MAVIS HO KWAN YIP
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Towards a New Volumetric City
The Ground is dead. The Ground is a datum that we seldom challenge until the density of the city becomes so high that exceeds the capacity of the ground. The ratio of floor to ground area is so low that the ground merely performs as circulation space. The thesis seeks opportunities to challenge the reliance on a singular primary ground in highdense urban context. The primary ground defines the level of publicness of the buildings and further determining their internal organization, formal quality and envelop design. This bias has become more generic and restrictive in the urban environment. The building mass have grown volumetrically and becomes thicker while the ground remains relatively thin and planar. This disjunction of thickness results in limiting the organization of the buildings and furthermore the city itself. This thesis has selected Hong Kong - the city with the highest urban density - as the context for experimentation. While its grounds have undergone a prolong struggle for appropriate reinvention, Hong Kong is city that prioritizes its economical development, resulting in the emergence of a hyper-rational logic that permits the realization of some utopian proposals including the Corbusien plan. This logic has also formed a bowl shape transverse-section from the mountain to the harbor, brutally revealing the differences in real-estate value across the section. The thesis takes the opportunity to reinvent a new ground - a datum - which reorganizes the commercial value distribution, reinvents generic typologies and at the same time liberates the natural ground. New cityscapes can be designed above and below the new datum which permit the architecture and architect to reclaim the “dead� ground.
Mavis Yip is a designer whose research interests focus on the typological and processes interventions shifting from architectural and urbanistic scales. Mavis is a recipient of the MIT Department Tuition Award the coordinator for the Lecture Series, and the teaching assistant for the architectural core design studio with Filip Tejchman. Prior to MIT, she worked for Norman Foster in London and Synergy Design in Hong Kong. Mavis graduated from University of Hong Kong in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies.
The Ground is reclaimed.
Advisor: Nader Tehrani Readers: Filip Tejchman + William O’Brien Jr.
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