Little thesis, Volume #1 Issue #2

Little thesis / Volume 1, Issue #2 / Spring 2010

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C o n t e n t s Introduction 1 8 8 1

A Thesis

Mark Jarzombek

Little thesis is a report on the current state of the Masters of Architecture thesis at MIT. This publication also marks the conclusion of the academic portion of the journey of the MArch class of 2010, as we move on to professional practice and other adventures. We began the Little thesis project at the advent of our ‘big’ thesis semester, certain that as a milestone in the architect’s career, the MArch thesis is worthy of reflection not only by the MArch graduate, but also by the school, the profession at large, and the society who hopefully reaps the benefits of the architects’ experience. However, thesis is not necessarily just the ‘crowing achievement’ of the architect’s academic career, but a threshold between her academic and professional life. Thesis is a transition. And the purpose of Little thesis, is to shed light on this transitional moment, a moment of germination when the student invents a version of architecture, of what architecture is, and what it could be.

Mark Jarzombek

Haruka Horiuchi

Introduction

In 1996, thresholds– MIT’s journal of architecture, art, and media culture– explored the subject of ‘thesis’ as its critical topic. In that issue, MIT Professor Mark Jarzombek wrote an article, “A Thesis,” (reprinted here) discussing the nature and challenges of the MArch thesis– and its importance as a learning tool both for the student and for the institution. Thesis is a personal journey, as each student invents her own version. It is also an exhausting, even painful process, but it introduces a unique tool for honing an independent learning, researching and working style. In order to benefit a strong institutional memory, and to alleviate the inevitable isolation experienced by the thesis student, we argue for the relevance of broadcasting the experience of thesis today. We hope the opinions expressed in this review will provide a valuable tool for the school to reveal, reflect, and redirect its concerns while also inviting consideration and response both from within its own walls and from the world outside.

ON THESIS PREP:

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Inside Out or Outside In?

Deborah Buelow

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Notes from the Future

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Testing Pedagogy

an Interview with Timothy Hyde

PROJECTIVE POTENTIALS:

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Mary Hale

an interview with Dan Smithwick

Zachary Lamb

Outlines of a Stance

Stacey Murphy

A l s o

I n s i d e

Advice for Thesis Students 2

Haruka Horiuchi with

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The Last Mile A Final Decisions

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Laura Rushfeldt.

Thesis Adventure!

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A Thesis

Outlines of a Stance

At some moment in the early twentieth century, architecture students stopped producing a projet rendu1 and began producing a thesis. And one can see why. A thesis makes a cultural claim. It is not just a building, where the rendering embodies the argument, but first of all an argument, and then a building. A thesis accepts architecture’s unsteady position in the dialectics of modern thought. A thesis also creates a distinction between practice and academe. But there was another aspect in the shift from projet rendu to thesis that needs to be considered. A thesis has language at its foundation whereas a projet rendu had image at its foundation. Is it a reduction for architecture to be language as opposed to image? The two poles, words and images, are often seen as antagonistic, but why would an image be necessarily closer to architecture than words? When taken together it is possible to claim that though we have a relatively stable notion of what words and images are, the same cannot be said for architecture, which is very much dependent on both words and images. Architecture borrows certain certainties from words and images to compensate for its disciplinary inadequacies.

“Somehow the thing that matters has eluded us” 1 - Max Wethimer, Gestalt Theory, 1924

Back in the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti argued that “painting and mathematics” were the foundation of the architectural discipline. If painting produced – or reproduced – what a building would look like in a particular context, mathematics made sure a building lasted the test of time. In other words the tension that architecture was meant to resolve was between image and construction. But somewhere along the line, perspective was no longer the dominant mode of representation. It was replaced in painting by Cubism and in architecture by the equally unstable axonometric; and that in turn gave way to the computerized fly-through. In the process, mathematics was abandoned (most math requirements were dropped in schools of architecture during the 1980s), and with it architecture’s traditional attachment to gravity. The culture of words grew ever more important in the framing of architecture’s promissory co-efficient.

A thesis is, in this sense, not a mere explanation and positive) of architecture’s disciplinary fluidity and uncertainty.

Christopher Tohru Guignon. 3

3 Questions for the Specialized Reader John Ochsendorf. 7

Here is our attempt at initiating a productive discussion between all the parties involved. We have done the legwork. We are providing a snapshot of the MArch thesis today. Now let’s have a conversation about thesis.

A note on the material format: We believe in the importance of marking the current state of the architectural thesis with a physical artifact, a newspaper you can hold in your hands, you can mull over, you can fold and put away. And it will age. Over time it will register this moment for future readers. This tangible format is critical in conjunction with all the ephemeral voices whispering and shouting from the blogosphere. The ambient awareness that comes with the infinite network most of us inevitably reside in creates a site with fewer and fewer tangible markers. As architects, we create space, but we also work with material. We organize little pieces into larger wholes. Little thesis is an edited collection of little thoughts that we now broadcast. You will probably encounter bits of it in the ether, but it will also exist as a piece of paper that will hopefully attract more than your ambient awareness!

A thesis makes a cultural claim.

Plan for Uncertainty

This publication includes articles from professors and practitioners, and current and former students in the field of architecture: Mark Jarzombek updates us with his observations of the current most pressing concerns of thesis. Haruka Horiuchi outlines a theory of ‘little’. Timothy Hyde illuminates the recent history of thesis preparation that has been going on down the street from MIT. Andrew Scott reviews the current state of thesis preparation at MIT. Deborah Buelow provides an intermediary perspective as the incumbent thesis prep teaching assistant. Sarah Hirschman and Ann Woods give us a peek into what the immediate future holds.

Neeraj Bhatia argues the case for thesis as the beginning of a professional trajectory. Dan Smithwick talks about the capacity for entrepreneurial exploration during thesis. Mary Hale traces her path from architecture student to interdisciplinary artist-designer. Zachary Lamb reminds us of the generative power of messiness.

‘Outside thesis committee reader’ Stacey Murphy surmises on the similarities between thesis and all new ventures into the uncertain. And to keep the mood playful, we solicited graphic submissions from the MArch class of 2010: a retrospective 2009 thesis + “news we missed” timeline by Laura Rushfeldt, comics drawn

by Christopher Guignon, and a ‘decision assistant’ from Marissa Cheng. Previous graduates who made it through the thesis gauntlet provide invaluable advice and John Ochsendorf offers a short perspective as an engineer (and non-architect) who frequents MArch thesis committees. Choose Your Own Thesis Adventure is a map-game to help visualize the journey that is the thesis process.

A handful of essays about the state of the architecture thesis have been popping up recently– for example, “Between Mission Statement and Parametric Model” by Tim Love, and “How to Do a Thesis: Practice Models as Instigators for Academic Theses” by Sergio López-Piñeiro– but there has not been a collection of ruminations on the MArch thesis or an assessment of its status since thresholds #12.

For such an important part of the MArch education, we find there is a lack of conversation between all parties involved in the making of a thesis. Students are too busy trying to make a thesis– and then, when the theses are finally done– all too happy to move on (and try to recuperate from the experience). The teaching team– advisors, committee members and reviewers– are also running their lives on scant enough time. Who has the time to ruminate on thesis? Critics’ writings about thesis are certainly valuable to read, but their words may not have a direct effect on how thesis is done. Practitioners sometimes make brief guest appearances during the thesis process, but don’t often enter actively into the debate. As

Mark Jarzombek

Big Thesis

for the world outside architecture schools– the MArch thesis, often our field’s most public expression of academic work, is many times deemed esoteric, or simply misunderstood– if registered at all.

A thesis is, in this sense, not a mere explanation of architecture but an expression (both negative and positive) of architecture’s disciplinary fluidity and uncertainty.

It is an expression of architecture’s liberation from fixed representation and the requirements of gravity and durability. An architectural thesis looks past or perhaps through the materiality of the building to something else. It is a risky move for all involved – students and teachers - for the image is no longer the sole basis of the argument, but now part of a shared system in which words, images and various floating signifiers are all entangled. The more this entanglement is probed, the better the thesis. In fact, I would say that a thesis should bring to light the operative dis-functionality of both language and image as it crosses the domain often known as “architecture.” _______________ Mark Jarzombek is a Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at MIT and is also the Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning. He has taught at MIT since 1995, and has worked on a range of historical topics from the Renaissance to the modern; his most recent book was entitled Global History of Architecture, co-authored with Vikramaditya Prakash and Francis D.K. Ching. ____________________ 1. ”Project record” (French), refers to the Beaux Arts tradition of producing a set of perfectly rendered drawings for a student project.

The ability to be projective with one’s work rests largely on being conscious of directing a trajectory. This may sound simple, but in fact it questions the basic outlines of one’s stance or position. While particular aspirations will inevitably differ amongst individuals, without this awareness, the multitude of divergent paths within Architecture and Architectural Praxis can impose a destination. Thesis can play a critical role in forming a trajectory of exploration– a task that is often difficult to uncover in the preceding or subsequent years.

In the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World2 by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, two parallel stories are woven together in alternating chapters that involve the same protagonist’s helpless journey through the ‘real world’ (End of the World) and a ‘fantasy world’ (Hard-Boiled Wonderland), revealing a tension between conscious and unconscious choice. As the story (or stories) unfolds, we learn that a neurological experiment in the ‘real world’ has resulted in the loss of this character’s memory and mind, which, in the fantasy world translates to the loss of his shadow. As his shadow is separated from his body, he lives an increasingly uncritical, unquestioning, and passive life and fades deeper into the Wonderland. Ironically in Murakami’s novel, the protagonist who insists on holding onto his memory and mind (not to mention his comfortable lifestyle as a ‘Calcultec’ or human data processor/computer programmer) is largely indifferent to the world transpiring in the Tokyo streets that surround him, and chooses to lead a life dictated by routine that centers primarily on his work. So, despite his efforts – in both stories – to retain his mind, the chosen lifestyle that was vanishing as a result of this experiment was not so dissimilar from the life he was unconsciously inheriting.

Underlying the structure of Murakami’s novel is the pretense that the loss of the mind and its ability to retain memories leads to an unquestioning life, which does not allow for change, progress, or criticality. Many would argue that while we look to several great Architects to direct the trajectory of our discipline, a much larger group of Architects exists who have lost their shadows – or ability to critically examine their work, trajectory, and meaning of their projects. The key to creating critical work that not only adds to the growth of the discipline but also creates a platform to structure a career path is having a clear stance or position. Thesis is an intriguing moment in the development of an Architect because it exists at a curious intersection between academic growth and praxis and is therefore well suited to cultivating the seeds for such a stance.

The development of a clear stance is difficult in the formative years of Architecture school where the acrobatics of juggling site, program, structure and concept, and translating these forces into an Architectural Form takes precedence. During these years, one is gathering the basic tools to create meaningful form, with the aid of critics and instructors. Thesis provides the first glimpses of autonomy – the instructor now takes the role of the advisor, and the individual defines the terms of their thesis – its site, programme, concept and agenda. Unbeknownst to developing students, throughout Architecture school a series of external reviewers has been cultivating an internal critic that exists within each student. This critic will need to weigh and observe opposing views, and be able to hold both simultaneously before selecting the most appropriate trajectory. Architecture is a result of hundreds if not thousands of decisions – each of which demands the criticality of the designer. This criticality also allows one to frame a larger interest or frustration that is worthy of deeper examination. In my own case, it was a frustration that the discipline of urban design had a growing inability to animate ‘public’ space without the use of commercial activity. When was there a disciplinary

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Little thesis / Volume 1, Issue #2 / Spring 2010

Little thesis / Volume 1, Issue #2 / Spring 2010

Advice

Inside Out or Outside In?

for thesis students

Deborah Buelow

Work hard and keep the faith that things will work out if you continue to work through design. Test ideas through designing. Things will get very very stressful at times because you will have put your heart and soul into the project and it may appear to be something that you didn’t expect or want. But keep in mind that this struggle is always part of the process and that in some weird, twisted way you should tell yourself that it is fun.

Don’t let the stress of thesis ever become so great that it ruins your spirits. Knowing when to take a night off and relax with friends, a spouse, or alone is equally as

Work as hard as you can without losing your mind and health. Life goes on no important as staying up extra late on other nights.

matter what so don’t take things too seriously. Hopefully we all will go on to do things that are so much more important and special than our M.Arch Thesis project.

Make sure to use your classmates for informal crits and advice. These types of encounters are just as important, if not more important than your weekly meetings with your advisors.

Overall, though, you don’t need any advice. You are MIT grad students and you are totally capable of handling an architecture thesis and all of the joy and pain that comes with it.

–Colin Kerr, MArch 2009

Never limit yourself to the advice of your committee. Remind your committee members of your review times lest they forget… Ask your committee for meetings and reviews more often than you think you should. Set up meetings/deadlines even if you don’t think you have enough material. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Maintain a healthy routine.

–Adele Phillips, MArch 2009 I would advise any thesis student to try and never lose sight that it is their project and they are doing it for their own development… don’t treat it like a chore or an assignment… don’t worry too much about pleasing critics or even your committee — all these people are there to help and support you in the pursuit of your own interests.

Most of all (and probably the hardest) thesis should be a little fun (at least some of the time).

–Coryn Kempster, MArch 2008

The direction and value of the architectural thesis is an ongoing discussion in many schools, and MIT is no exception. We continue to debate its focus and potential, and while there is probably an acceptance of its galvanizing role as a final statement of each students’ design capabilities and intellectual development, the mechanisms of the MArch thesis at MIT have shifted significantly over the years as the academic stakes have risen.

Like the recent political health care debate, where a common sense need for a universal coverage was counter-argued by a right to individual “freedom” of choice (which seems to stem from an age when the US was able to pillage the land and earth), there is an issue of what the thesis represents. Is it an intellectual exercise to ‘do and go as you desire’ as a design journey based upon individual exploration; could it be a means for a student to ‘position’ him/herself in a professional capacity through work that is of ‘added value’ to practice; should it be bounded within the rigors of sub-disciplinary structures in architectural discourse and research, thereby leveraging knowledge; or could it even be a culminating demonstration of capability and competence within a professional program. In this regard, I am reminded of an exhibition of thesis projects I reviewed at the ETH in Zurich some years back, where about 70 thesis projects were all variations on the theme of ‘the box in the courtyard’, and where the issue became about using intellectual design skills and technical expertise to develop subtle and nuanced differences in strategy and tactics of space, detail, material and assembly. It was an impressive show that reinforced the confidence and competence of the Swiss in ‘making’ form and buildings, but I concluded it could never happen here without a radical re-tuning of design education towards a clearly established set of principles and strategies.

Nevertheless, by contrast it highlighted our engagement with broader cross-cultural, social, and environmental issues in architecture in the US, as the connecting red thread that has passed through MIT’s thesis program for many years. It is difficult to generalize about the MArch thesis program, but the work is typically more about the processes and mechanisms that generate and engage architecture than a determinism for making a particular ‘thing’ or object. In many ways, the thesis is about a means of thinking through and of architecture, and a melting pot for the disciplinary discourses that have been developed and argued about in other classes for the previous three years of the program. Maybe it is not about every sub-discipline per se, but the theses will typically take form from multiple areas of influence and use those areas as constructs and issues in a critical project that pursues a proposition or ‘hypothesis’ about architecture.

My main advice for thesis students is to remember that it is only a project. Thesis doesn’t define anyone, nor need it necessarily define you future career.

a project.

It’s just

Thesis can also be political - don’t let it be political. It’s just a

project. Also, the best thing you can do for your future and career while doing your thesis is to take some time off, every once in a while, from Thesis to figure out what you want to do after it’s over, get yourself a job BEFORE it’s over, and remember that you are lucky that you get to work on something about which you are passionate, that you can push to the limit, and that’s just a project.

–Dennis Michaud, MArch 2008 (a) Take a really awesome but low key class during thesis… something that won’t require too much work, but will inspire your process. I took a film theory course at Harvard, and it was wonderful. (b) Try to remind yourself that the thesis is essentially a self-directed studio project… it’s great for personal development and can also be useful for professional development, but it’s not more important than, say, your family or your health or any of the things that typically get neglected during architecture school. How many famous architects’ careers were launched because of their theses? I can name one off the top of my head. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t take it super seriously! I just think it should be seen an opportunity, and it shouldn’t be paralyzing.

–Mary Hale, MArch 2009

through MIT’s thesis program for many years.

I took over the operation of the Thesis Preparation class from Professor Arindam Dutta last year and have been following the broad path he laid out, but with some adjustments. I see the thesis as primarily a year-long design investigation, starting in February, usually with the proverbial ‘blank sheet of paper’ by the student– and ending up a year later in mid-January with an exhibition quality presentation of design work accompanied by the requisite MIT Masters thesis book, duly archived for posterity to explain the depth of research and investigation as a response to the proposition. For me, the thesis is not a theoretical exercise any more than it is a technical or computational one– theory will find its place within the context of the project as it is developed, as reference or conjecture in support of the discourse of the design work. I continue to believe the greatest challenge to the student along this journey is the independence of a thesis, a critical project that does not have the faculty to set up a problem as in studio, but conversely requires the student to set up a problem/issue/context as a series of investigations and then figure out how to address them. But at the end of the day, this is the value of the thesis…as an investigation that challenges you to figure out your own position, and to make a proposition

that can be openly discussed and debated.

In its very simplest form the thesis has two parts– the hypothesis or proposition that is the meta-notion for the work, and the design project or design research that is the vehicle for exploring it. The process of thesis preparation emphasizes 4 sections, each being essential and interwoven with the development of the thesis work. First, the intellectual development of the proposition or idea of the thesis which attempts to clearly articulate its relevance and the major question(s) that will propel the work.

Second, the research of the thesis topic that is essential to a deeper understanding of the issues and references, and an ability to discuss the thesis in a wider architectural discourse. Third, an articulation of the ‘critical project’ of the thesis that will be the focus of the design work, including a definition of the issues, drivers, program and site/place for the work. And fourth, a design exercise that tests some aspect of the emerging project to determine issues of viability, scale and complexity. Put all these together, typically with a summer of ground research and study, and launch into the thesis semester itself.

At the end of the day, this is the value of the thesis… your own position and to make a proposition that As mentioned previously, thesis doesn’t stand still, and there are always discussions that question its operation, breadth, and opportunities for ‘re-visioning’.

Some of these opportunities currently include: Getting to architecture. It is typical that many thesis ideas, are derived from broad scale, socio-political, environmental, or macro-urban concerns, which pose the challenge of handling large scales of operation and often requires clarity of thinking to drill down and figure out how the topic can be explored through the medium of architecture, such that the design project become prototypical of the topic. Likewise, there are projects that come out of a hybrid-urbanism contexts where there are few fixed clear parameters to give a toe hold for the design work. In both these situations, the need to identify drivers for the design work is stressed such that a project can be tested at a relatively early stage.

Re-establishing research: The notion of a design-research thesis is re-emerging as an alternative to the traditional project-based/building approach. This enables students to tap into the wealth of experience within the department’s discipline groups as well as focusing upon design as it relates to, for example, technological or computational issues within the topic of the thesis. Another pathway is to use the year long body of work that is thesis prep and thesis combined to make a significant contribution to an established or emerging field- for example to urbanism, climate change, eco-cities, parametric modeling and simulation, materials and assemblies, structures and fabrication, and so forth.

Thesis groups: The traditional advisor to student relationship is fundamental, but are there alternatives that might enable a more collaborative form of working that typify forms of design practice– or might enable thesis to be used as a means for faculty to direct students towards their fields of interest or towards a larger project that requires several smaller but coordinated parts?

In conclusion, I return to where I began, with the question of whether an MArch thesis is ultimately an exercise in academic freedom where 28 students make 28 different works or if it makes sense to structure it around defined themes, zones of operation or intellectual territories. To be continued and debated!

____________________ Andrew Scott is an Architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT. Since 2007 he has been the Director of the MArch program and coordinator for its thesis program. Currently, he directs Sustainable Systems Architecture in Cambridge, MA – a research oriented design practice at the interface of architecture with environmentally responsive design, emergent green technologies, and material resources.

already gone before. (I for example want to become an architect/professor in the field of biomimetics – this job is not out there yet, but I know it is the right path for me).

–Simon Schleicher, MArch 2009

Notes from the Future

1. Identify an issue (which you have) and crosscheck with yourself again and again about its implications on your FINAL DELIVERABLES – seriously. If you are working on ornaments and the history of details you don’t get cool OMA-ish urban diagrams.

On the other hand, if you are working on a Michel Foucault and psychiatric clinics project, you don’t get nice 3-d printed models. Of course you don’t tell your advisors that – not because they’d think this is wrong but because this is presumed, however understated.

2. Don’t guess what your advisors want – you have three of those and there is no way you can satisfy all of them. The only way out is to counter-propose better things on the basis of their advice. You’ll find them saying things like, ‘ I think you should draw a diagram for such and such and such…’ you may want to a) read between the lines and see what s/he is suggesting you to capture and, more importantly, b) decide whether

During the Fall 2009 semester, Little thesis recruited two MArch’s not-yet enmeshed in thesis to be news correspondents or, “Rogue Reporters.” They did a great job investigating stories and roving the corridors for candid video ops. Here, we asked them to share a prethesis conversation with us.

this document is aiming to rectify. I think it will be very productive to have some non-thesis students involved in informal crits and discussions (and maybe even some actual fabrication help) early on, so that they can get a sense of how the semester’s work goes.

AW: Sarah, we’ve spent the fall semester interviewing students about their theses. Now that you are beginning your thesis, I wanted to ask you some questions about your own thesis experience. Having been at MIT for two and a half years now, do you feel prepared to start thesis?

AW: What do you hope to gain from doing a thesis?

3.

SH: I’m not sure I know what prepared would feel like at this point... I do feel like I’ve learned a lot of different ways to attack problems, design and otherwise, to look at issues in different lights and to test possibilities. So in that sense, yes, I guess I do feel prepared to take on an investigation of my own.

you turn the right things into a spectacle at the crit. I am inclined to think that a thesis

AW: How is thesis prep going?

you need that.

Believe what you want to believe in. Because it’s your project you are always always right. Just make sure

with no telling drawings, no intellectually stimulating diagrams, no good, atmospheric renderings and no orgasmic models is not an architectural thesis at all (of course these are necessary but insufficient conditions - beyond this you need a watertight argument that has enough intellectual complexity for the critics to dig in) – because without these there would be no other way to show your tectonic talents.

–CK Dixon Wong, MArch 2009 Don’t take it so seriously. It should be a fun, liberating experience. I think thesis should be allowed to be a theoretical or a design project. I suggest students be unafraid to approach it as a design project and not feel obliged to address theory. (This is a big change the faculty would have to accept.) Part of that includes the idea that one should be able to explore and come to a new, unfounded conclusion rather than try to reinforce a pre-ordained hypothesis. A thesis can be something that comes with experience and refinement, Viollet le Duc did his at the end of his career, rather than the Corb version which states a hypothesis and then creates projects supporting it. I would spend more time making it beautiful than making it theoretically rigorous.

–Pete DePasquale, MArch 2008

SH: Thesis prep is going pretty well - it’s only a couple of weeks into the semester, but we’ve started narrowing down our areas of focus and articulating the issues that we’re interested in. It’s very useful for me to have deadlines and specific writing assignments because I could just follow research tangents without ever really cohering a strong argument for a long time.

AW: Do you think your thesis topic will emerge from some research you have done while here, or will it stem from a topic you knew you wanted to study prior to coming to MIT? SH: The way it’s going now, my thesis will emerge from issues that I’ve come to during architecture school, which isn’t to say that I haven’t always found these topics interesting, just that I’ve become aware of a richer discourse surrounding them. My thesis will absolutely have some strands of the work I was doing before entering architecture, but more as background and set-up to the problem, not as architectural solutions necessarily.

AW: Have you noticed any trends in the directions of your cohorts’ theses?

My advice for thesis students: 1. Sleep the night before your presentation.

2. Don’t try to reinvent architecture or change the world with architecture — we are just building environments and not much more.

3. Pick a simple topic that you pretty much have an idea what the answer could be, and then find a way to re-think it and re-package it.

4. Spend all your energy and all your brain power thinking about your project 6 days a week, and take Sundays off to read a book, watch movie and go to church.

Love your topic. If you don’t love it, switch with someone else.

5.

6. If there is an idea that you really believe in but your advisors aren’t supportive, find a new advisor. If you still can’t find someone to support you, apologize to you original advisor and just do what they tell you to do.

7. If you can’t think of any topic that you are willing to work 80 hours/week on, you should really think about why you are paying so much money to be here.

8. Your thesis will not change the world, but it will change the way you see architecture, so do something you like.

9. Thank your friends and family for their support.

10. Spend as much time on your own thesis as you do helping and debating with other thesis classmates. You will learn more that way.

–Matt Chua, MArch 2008 PS– I Forgot the most important advice: Architecture is not life or death so don’t take it so seriously.

world. That being said, have fun doing it.

SH: So - to respond to your question about trends emerging within thesis topics, it’s difficult to tell at this point, obviously, except that I’ve heard a lot of people begin explanations with - “it’s a building that...”, whereas in looking at theses from the past, the notion that a thesis would be a building, period, seemed to be more in question. This might just be me and my own goals for thesis, but I think there’s an appetite for a scale that is at once manageable, in terms of having clear areas of inquiry and activities (like program guidelines), and grand or projective.

Something I am surprised by is the speed with which we’ve all become very preoccupied with our theses. When we began the semester (three weeks ago), we were told to come to Thesis Prep class with a couple of ideas. Weeks later now, we’re honing our research goals and clarifying our briefs. it’s a quick jump, and an exciting one, too.

AW: Having helped other people with theses, is there anything you hope to do differently than those you have seen in terms of process or otherwise?

SH: Well, that’s a difficult question, because it’s so hard to know what it will be like next semester when I’m actually trying to do this thing we’ve been talking about for three years. In terms of process and helping, I have been involved in a lot of last-minute model construction and errands for past thesis students, which was always a very interesting and useful thing to do. I plan to start assembling my team of helpers much earlier in the semester and getting them on board so that they know what I am doing throughout the process. One problem with thesis is that it is so opaque to the rest of the M.Arch students, which is, of course, what

architectural education to deal with nonarchitectural problems?

I’ve been the teaching assistant for the MArch pre-thesis students for two years now, working with groups of students as they seek to define their ultimate design project. In some ways, the thesis process, of all academic endeavors, most clearly indicates the direction of architectural agency in an academic setting. It’s a chance for students to display just how much or how little they have been indoctrinated in traditional architectural education. Should the thesis focus be a creative endeavor or an imperative solution?

Should the thesis focus be a creative endeavor or an imperative solution?

That is not to imply that these two are mutually exclusive, but according to Julian Beinart,6 there are really only two types of projects that a thesis student can choose from. Some start with a singular hypothesis that they aim to prove by introducing research or outside influences. The singular approach begins by thinking of a built form or program and building a narrative around it. This suggests that the end objective is clear, but the process in getting there is less defined. It also allows for creativity to be a driving factor. Others start with a broad notion that looks for a project to emerge from. This approach would fit as an imperative solution to a problem outside the traditional realm of architecture, but that at least

SH: Hm... well, an M.Arch, for starters. I think in terms of gain, it’s more about the personal motivational experience and the skills it takes to put together a project. After six studios, presumably we’re well versed in following our professors’ instructions - I hope to gain a facility and experience with making those instructions myself and being able to critically judge my own progress and process.

SH: Actually, Ann, I have some questions for you, because you’re in level 2 now and having a little bit of a different experience from me. For starters, I’m curious how your experience working on this project has been, as a ‘rogue reporter’ of sorts, asking questions about thesis, but not immediately involved in it yourself. Do you have an inkling of what types of topics you’d like to explore in your thesis already?

AW: I believe I am starting to narrow down topics which I find interesting. Even though “declaring a concentration” is a very informal process here, it did help me organize my coursework around at least a very broad course of inquiry. For example, I am very interested in how infrastructure functions at the urban scale and to what extent it needs to be a tangible construction, but who knows?

SH: Do you think that the thesis process is removed from, or viewed separately from the regular studio culture?

AW: To some extent it is removed, however I do believe that the atmosphere of the vertical studios is much different than that of core. In vertical studio, there is more emphasis on defining your own way of working and asking your own questions than in core. Also, now that all of you are in thesis prep, I get to listen to you talk about what topics you’re considering, so it feels much closer than it did even a semester ago.

SH: Is thesis something that factored into your decision to go to one architecture school over another? Do you think that thesis still makes sense, in an abstract way, in an architectural education?

AW: I think every school that I looked at had a thesis requirement, so I didn’t really take that into account when I was considering schools. I definitely believe that the thesis is an important step in an architect’s education. After interviewing students this fall I realized a huge part of thesis is first designing the problem—an interesting challenge that is neatly packaged for us in the core studios, but one that emerges as increasingly personal and complex as we progress in our academic careers. When I was working before coming to MIT, I used to respond to RFPs for an office; when I think back to the general “catch phrase” wording of most RFPs I read I realize just how much thought and energy we as architects must put into framing the issues of problem so that we can approach those problem in a coherent way. The thesis is one of the first times we formally do that.

SH: Will you help me out with a desk crit or model fabrication next semester?

AW: Of course. I’ve already got my monogrammed jumpsuit that you “suggested” I wear... ____________________

Ann Woods and Sarah Hirschman are current MArch. students– Ann in her fourth semester, Sarah in her sixth. They acted as rogue reporters for the Little Thesis project, collecting data and forcing people into uncomfortable conversations for the good of the community. They can’t wait to be in the hot seat themselves.

Christopher Tohru Guignon

partially has an architectural solution. This is a global approach to a problem that must be thoroughly skimmed to end with a form. In other words, start from the inside-out, or outside-in.

For the past two years most have fallen in the second category. I would break down the majority of projects as follows (but not limited to): Inside Out: Materiality//Typology//Technology...

Outside In: Urbanism//Globalization//Climate Change//Politics//Transportation...

Are we ultimately training to design buildings, or to problem-solve through design?

In the end, the approach doesn’t matter so long as the student demonstrates an ability to design a building. Or does it? Are we ultimately training to design buildings, or to problem-solve through design? The interest in the outside-in approach suggests that perhaps it’s the latter. These thesis topics imply an increase in architectural agency, and, therefore, a new role of the architect. I wonder how many would agree with this direction? Interestingly, there was an unrelated but follow-up debate the next day about the role of pedagogy in today’s architectural institutions.7 It seems there is a deep division about the direction of architecture, and some express dissatisfaction that architecture is no longer strictly for the purpose of designing buildings. This debate will surely continue, but in the meantime I’m looking forward to see the architectural forms this year’s thesis class creates. ____________________

Deborah Buelow is currently knee-deep in her own thesis in the SMArchS Architecture and Urbanism group, finishing in June of 2010. Her thesis is focused on funerary landscapes as they appear in dense urban environments. While not conventionally architectural in nature, it aims to bridge the singular built form with the larger urban context. ____________________ 1. It was a panel discussion at the GSD. 2. That panelist was Toshiko Mori.

3. The respondent was Preston Scott Cohen.

4. Another panelist: Hashim Sarkis.

5. Alejandro Aravena 6. Professor of Architecture at MIT, longtime teacher of “Theory of City Form”, and thesis committee member in demand.

7. Again, I am hesitant to reveal where this discussion took place, except to note that MIT’s own alumna, Sarah Whiting, was one of the key voices.

Testing Pedagogy Always curious about thesis at other architecture schools, we were pleased to catch a few minutes last October with Timothy Hyde, MArch Thesis Prep Coordinator at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before he rushed off to another appointment here at MIT, he caught us up on the recent history of thesis at the GSD, and gave us a forecast of upcoming changes, including the demise of thesis prep as we know it. As always, the MArch thesis is a malleable, evolving process! A video recording of Hyde’s responses, edited by the Little thesis Rogue Reporters, appears online at www.littlethesis.mit.edu.

Little thesis: Can you comment on the workshop structure and method of thesis prep at the GSD and what you see as its strengths and weaknesses?

Timothy Hyde: Well, the first thing is, the students at the GSD have an advisor in thesis prep. So they find their advisor before they begin their thesis prep semester.

Which means they’re already getting some kind of individual feedback, discussion, guidance and supervision at this point… So the workshop is, in a dumb way, a set of deadlines. Just to keep everybody moving ahead through the projects, so that people don’t get into sort of circular studies of results.

Work only on the things which really fascinate you. This passion will give you the support which is needed during harsh times and the strength to go ways, which are not

Recently I witnessed a discussion between several architects about the nature of the discipline and academia (I will be careful not to reveal who they were or where it was 1, but if that was revealed, I would say sometimes pedagogy is pedagogy, right?). One panelist suggested that architecture’s agency should be increased to include topics traditionally deemed outside the realm of design.2 The response was that this puts tremendous pressure on architectural education to diversify and become multi-disciplinary.3 What, then, happens to traditional education?

Traditional education, in this case, implies that the architectural process is one of creative freedom.4 Imaginative expression is held sacred above all else, and the product of this expression emerges as built form. This conversation led to an interesting question: can we use the specific tools acquired through architectural education to deal with non-specific problems?5 The follow up to that question is: Should we?

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In a more sophisticated way, it allows the students to take a collective step back every 3 or 4 weeks and frame their own individual topic– with which they have an intense familiarity– in a more general way. Which is to back up and say, “Why am I doing this?” and “How do I need to do this?” So the structure of the workshops is, in a way, content-free. The students bring their own content and it’s a format that they then have to apply to their individual work. It’s a format in terms of thinking about certain methods of research and what it means to have a method of research, so that they can begin to tailor that their own way… To think about how they are inserting themselves into discourse, who their friends and enemies would be in a discursive field… To allow them– there’s a stage on speculation– to actually realize that the research is not teleological, proceeding from an insight to a conclusion, but that there is a period of design within that, that they can use more to understand what further research they could do.

The structure has worked well, in a sense, at giving students an armature to hang on to, and it’s worked because it allows students to exclude things more readily, to say, “I don’t have to do that; I don’t have to pursue that line of inquiry.” And that’s helpful, because thesis is otherwise everything. As soon as you begin working your topic, everything is relevant, every book you pick up has some relevance. So just discriminating among stuff is a key step within that research. And I do think the workshops are successful in that regard.

The amount of feedback that the students get on their individual projects in relation to the workshop varies from advisor to advisor, and topic to topic. So I think there is probably still a middle area that is missing from the thesis prep structure– somewhere between the periodic “group therapy” sessions that I lead, and the very intense one-on-one individual analysis sessions that they get with their advisors.

There should be some middle scale; we don’t have that.

Lt: Do the students initiate any forms of the middle scale amongst themselves?

TH: A thesis class at the GSD, in the fall semester of thesis prep, will have about 50-60 students in it, and in the spring a thesis class has about 30. So that’s a huge group of students, and they don’t all know what they are doing. And, in thesis prep they don’t have a desk in the school, if they are not enrolled in a studio. So this group of fall thesis prep students don’t have desks, (they have some shared desks), which means that culturally they are not getting to know what each other is working on. So the workshops do provide that, you know, we do go around the room, talk about what we are working on, and it does function as a cocktail party for thesis, figure out what’s happening and understand what somebody else is working on, something very similar, you can share resources, The students do typically organize some structures… there are obviously thesis blogs, larger networks of thesis blogs, there are google book sites and things like that. Each year it’s different., because the technology is always changing format as well. Students just figure out how to use and exploit it. So there are sub-groups each year; students form themselves into groups of 6, 8, 10 students and end up being a working group throughout the year. And what that means varies from group to group. For one group it’s a dinner club, and they just meet every two weeks, and they have dinner and talk about stuff. For others it’s a pin-up group.

Lt: What do you, or the School, think about addressing that middle scale?

What do you imagine it could be, from a pedagogical point of view?

curriculum. And to focus on your question, I think this does deal with the middle scale, because the way we have been working, we do end up with a dichotomy, with projects being understood as individualistic visions that have come out of nowhere; they are supervised one-on-one by an advisor. And then there’s a thesis prep workshop structure which is just everybody talking about what it means to do a thesis.

I think if a thesis topic is seen as an extension of course work, that over your 3 years and in particular over your last year, in an option studio and in an elective seminar, you start to work on some set of material intensely, then it makes sense that this will become the basis for your thesis. And the student is already linked to other students in that seminar, is linked to a professor that teaches that seminar, as well as to an advisor. So there’s not the sense of just one-on-one as the basic structure of thesis. It’s more expanded, and it’s situated within the curriculum. I think as a general intention we want to encourage students to embed their own interests and their own research more deeply into the curricular work and not see these as two distinctive things: “I do my course work, and then I invent a thesis.”

Lt: Were there students that were engaging their course work in this way already, without this imposed structure?

TH: There are students that do that, but always with a guilty conscience. This is just the culture of architecture schools. There was a sense that “well I already did that in option studio, so I can’t do that for my thesis.” Or “ I can’t take my final project from my option studio and use that as a beginning for my thesis, cause that’s cheating.” Or something like that. So there was a cultural stigma that students felt or perceived, or invented.

TH: For me the theses aren’t about answers and conclusions. They are about taking some known problem and flipping it or changing it, reorienting it. Basically, the thesis that shows a problem that you didn’t know you had is a successful thesis.

I also think to be a successful thesis, there has to be a limit to my capacity to understand it. It has to be a little ahead of where we as a faculty are. There should be a certain level of dumbfounded-ness or incomprehension on our part. Those would be two of the characteristics. Maybe in a more rigorous sense, a thesis also has to prove itself in some way, it has to be clear that it is creating a standard of evidence, that it’s not simply adopting some normative set of judgments. We know what a building is, we know what the social project is, we know what geometry is. The thesis is framing an evidentiary standard and posing a question about whether or not architecture should be evaluated against that standard. But I think for me, of those 3, the dumbfounded-ness factor is the most important.

Lt: What are the hot thesis topics at the GSD right now? Are there any thematic or methodological trends?

TH: We have a group of faculty that is doing those sort of things, making films and so forth. So yes, they do have an influence on them. But I do see some of that questioning as student driven. What actually is the medium of my architectural thinking? ____________________

Timothy Hyde is an Architect and Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Goodjob! job, Good keep it up Keep it up

NO

YES

Is it 7am before your review?

More working, less eating

Full steam ahead!

NO

YES CopyTech will print your thesis for you on archival paper

Have you plotted?

NO

Time for a shower!

YES

NO

Really, there’s nothing good about it?

YES What are you waiting for?!

Regular CRON plotter paper

TH: This year there are a lot of topics about things that float. That’s the big interest: floating things. Floating cities, floating buildings, things floating in the air, there’s a lot of floating. And I don’t know exactly where that comes from, or I haven’t thought about it, I am sure I could speculate. The GSD is very big, and so we always have a wide range of topics, and the faculty is quite diverse and so it’s a bit harder to trend-spot in that context because there’s somebody doing everything– we’ve got all the bases covered.

There is a fairly clear division between a group of students who are turning a focus inward on architecture, students working on parametrics and so-forth, working on formal issues, visualization issues. Then there’s another division of students that are looking at architecture as the cultural and social project. Those are always the big divisions within the school. One thing that is maybe a trend, that cuts across those divisions, is that the students are questioning what the medium of the architectural project is. We’ve had an increasing number of students working on animation and film, narrative and stories and comics and things like that, actually as a medium of architectural thinking. And that’s obviously out there in the discourse at large, as well., but it is an interesting shift, I think because the thesis so often seems to require the concrete object at the end. So it’s very different if the concrete object is a film, or the concrete object is a performance, something that is more ephemeral. I think that is a shift. I don’t know to what extent it is a trend, but it is something that a group of students is really struggling with.

How do I get out of here?!

Did you eat dinner at home last night?

Lt: You describe how each thesis project inherently determines its own terms of evaluation (based upon the method of research the student formulates).

But if you had to be a generalist - what defines a successful thesis?

Lt: And this is something the faculty are struggling with as well.

TH: We are thinking about it, in the sense that we are changing thesis prep, and this was initiated the middle of this year. We are removing thesis prep as a separate, credited course, where you go off and do your own research. The students will no longer do that. Instead they’ll take an additional elective and they are now going to be asked to derive their thesis project directly from course work.

Not necessarily from a single course, but from an assemblage of 2 or 3 courses.

They’ll still have an advisor overseeing this process, but the development of the thesis will no longer be considered such a separate realm from the rest of the

The Last Mile

Are you a TA? Are you a good TA?

Mobilize your students for your final review

NO

NO

Jackpot!

Do you like your thesis?

YES

Is your spouse or significant other an architect?

YES

It was good, huh?

We’ll say a prayer for you...

One 100’ roll of HP photo plotter paper

Obtain a promise via email for your advisor to sign your book when they return stateside

YES Pegasus Digital Cover Brilliant White 65lb, 8.5”x11” $13.95/250 sheets at Bob Slate

NO

YES

NO

Do you like long, boring ceremonies?

Get your book signed in person!

NO

YES

Do you have any money left?

NO

YES

CopyTech tape or spiral binding, $2

Archival library binding, $40

Proceed to commencement!

Is your advisor in the country?

Pick up your diploma at your leisure!

Freedom!!!

e R v l i a e n w i F

Little thesis / Volume 1, Issue #2 / Spring 2010

Best of Breed

Need some help with sorting out your task list?

Refer to the “The Last Mile” by Marissa Cheng.

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Best in Show

The Final Review may feel like an elaborate dog show.

All of the projects are paraded around, and you only get one chance for a compelling presentation, after which you are then assessed for a wide range of qualities. You will get feedback, constructive comments, and useful criticism. But who are you kidding - you’re just ecstatic to be done! Go ahead and celebrate like there’s no tomorrow.

Now that you’ve handed in your thesis book, it’s really really all over.

Freedom is calling - the possibilities are endless. What does the future hold for you?

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Use your thesis to launch the “Outlines of a Stance,” as Neeraj Bhatia has.

Unplanned trajectories can be full of potential.

Read about Mary Hale’s journey in “Big Thesis”.

Discover how “Generating Messiness” during thesis can work for you, as Zach Lamb did.

Lessons learned during thesis can help you “Plan for Uncertainty,” like Stacey Murphy.

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You’ve gotten the big “go ahead” from your advisor and committee. Now it’s time to put those blinders on and produce, produce, produce for the Final Review. You want to be able to fully communicate all your great ideas and designs, don’t you? Embrace to-do lists, schedules, and enlist help when you need it. Keep churning it out and charge onwards!

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The Penultimate is an important checkpoint.

Survive this quality control process, and you are well on your way to the finish line. If you don’t “pass” the first time, it’s ok.

You might have to spend more time in the Roundabout, but your project will probably thank you for it later. Sit tight and see which exit you are directed towards.

ew

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CAUTION: BRIDGE TO NOWHERE

E T A M I LT U

Pull in here to take a break from thesis. Here, you can do anything except for thesis. Escape to a private meditation pool to regain perspective, or let off steam partying hard on Rock Out Island. Watch the news or veg out to your favorite tv show at Plug-in Pier, or catch up with your social scene on the Raft of Friends. If you want to indulge your non-arch side, head on over to the Isle of Anarchitecture for some post-critical fun.

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22 ENTERING INDUSTRIAL ZONE

If the doldrums are getting you down, and you feel like you’ve lost your sense of humor, turn to “Little Laughs” by Chris Guignon.

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Oops. You’ve made a wrong turn and gotten stuck in dullsville. Your ideas and designs are all starting to look the same, and are even putting you to sleep. It happens to the best of us, but don’t get lost here in frustration for too long amongst the lollipop loops and dead ends. Invent some new ideas, reboot that imagination, and get out quick!

What in the world happened in the past year?!?

Catch up with Laura Rushfeldt’s 2009 Timeline.

A Little thesis Road Map

by Haruka Horiuchi with Morgan Pinney

of Friend t f s Ra

g-in Pier u l P

For an introduction as you start your thesis, read “A Thesis” by Mark Jarzombek (both editions).

EXIT AT YOUR OWN RISK

Turn up the radio for an incoming broadcast about the future of thesis from Rogue Reporters Sarah Hirschman and Ann Woods.

#1: Inv ring ite a le

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idolize th n’t em do

r Friends (bu u t yo

Dive into research and build your own “Friendhenge”. What projects do you like? Which ones inspire you?

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ROUNDABOUT THIS WAY

What is thesis like at other schools? Check out “Testing Pedagogy”, an interview with the GSD’s Timothy Hyde.

Almost there, keep it up. If you need a quick break, check out John Ochsendorf’s “Three Questions for the Specialized Reader”.

t He

Congratulations, you’ve conquered the Climb. After successfully completing your first public review, continue on to the Thesis Roundabout.

ing #4: ear l Di C

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esearch rd r (b a u sc

Don’t be afraid to scrap fruitless research, but keep your junkyard organized and open.

Your trash could be someone else’s treasure.

What does your Thesis Prep professor think about thesis? Read Andrew Scott’s “Comments on the MArch Thesis”.

EXIT JUNGLE THIS WAY

If you are in need of some words of encouragement turn to “Advice for Thesis Students” from the MArch Classes of ‘08 and ’09.

Emerge from the thick of the Jungle with your thesis in tow! Here there is a more defined path, but the going is all uphill. Armed with your ideas - and while continuously refining them - recruit an advisor and readers for your thesis committee. It’s important to build a team of advocates, provocateurs and mentors who will help you along the rest of your journey.

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Is your thesis “Inside Out or Outside In”? Read what thesis TA Deborah Buelow thinks.

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our Enemies y ( ry

Bury projects you don’t want your thesis to be like here.

Identifying your Enemies is just as useful as finding Friends.

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Start here in the Jungle of Ideas, where you will forge your own path through the wilderness to discover and develop your initial thesis ideas.

The Jungle is full of excitement and mystery - right now, your thesis can be anything you want it to be. There is no right direction, but you must keep moving forward and complete important tasks along the way.

Go for it, start blazing your thesis trail!

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o f I e dea l g n s u J

Welcome to the Thesis Roundabout.

Design is a cyclical process, and at times it may feel like you are just going around in circles. But don’t fret. “Just keep swimming”, and don’t be defeated or diverted by the trials and detours along the way. With each iteration, your project will get better and better. (Beware of false exits and wrong turns!)

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Clear ing

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ectival Po p s o er

Choose Your Own Thesis Adventure!

Share your initial ideas with others to help clarify and articulate your proposed path of exploration.

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The Midreview can feel like a wild ride through a giant Rube Goldberg machine. You may not feel ready, but this is an important milestone.

Present your progress and get your committee’s feedback. If all goes well, keep doing what you’ve been doing. If not, it’s ok to feel discombobulated.

Roll with the punches and hop back into the saddle. Afterall, you’re only halfway there.

Follow in Dan Smithwick’s footsteps to become a “Crossover Architect.”

Every “little” step counts. If you need some convincing, read “In Praise of Little” by Haruka Horiuchi.

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Little thesis /Volume 1, Issue #2 / Spring 2010

Little thesis /Volume 1, Issue #2 / Spring 2010

Big Thesis Mary Hale

It is hard to believe that a year, two months, and nineteen days have passed since I handed in my Masters of Architecture thesis. Then, it seemed the future held nothing but promise for relaxation, family, television, fun, joy, ecstasy! Gone were the tortured nights spent pointlessly agonizing over color schemes to mask poorly conceived projects! Gone were the last-call trips to La Verde’s! Goodbye cracked lips! Goodbye studio mice! Goodbye unrelenting subjective criticism!

How lucky was I to graduate during the depths of the economic downturn, which would ensure a few extra months of luxuriating in bed while basking in the television’s glow?

Not so lucky. As it turns out, somewhere along the grueling three-and-a-halfyear-long path to completing my Masters, I had unwittingly been indoctrinated.

Production and chaos, two omnipresent themes, held a stronger grip than I ever could have imagined months before, at 4am, in a studio reeking of rotten trash and Ana’s Taqueria.

My lack of foresight betrayed itself a few months into my post-graduate life. I was working three free-lance jobs, plugging away at a romance novel, helping to plan a city-wide design festival, writing grants, organizing a neighborhood yard sale, designing and redesigning my portfolio, and excitedly pursuing every side project that presented itself to me.

into the world armed to create other, real projects.

To survive [thesis] is to emerge into the world armed to create other, real projects.

This takes shape in different forms for different individuals. For me, it means an active interdisciplinary artistic practice apart from my days working at a national community development non-profit, Enterprise Community Partners.

At Enterprise, from 9am to 5pm, I learn about the world of community-engaged affordable housing design and development. At home and in my studio, from approximately 5:30pm to midnight, I switch gears to dream up installation projects that often involve inflatable structures.

This particular interest in inflatable structures sprang from an advanced visual design course “Give Me Shelter: Body-wear” that I took at MIT in 2007. During the semester, we learned to think of body-wear as a useful extension of the human body. For example, scuba gear is body-wear that enables human existence in an otherwise uninhabitable environment. The same goes for space suits, which are gas pressurized wearable inflatable habitats.

thesis.

Thus inspired, my project, The Monumental Helium Inflatable Wearable Floating Body Mass, is a wearable getaway that defies gravity, influences a delightful new way of moving, and expands its occupant’s personal envelope to a jiggling 13 foot diameter. By donning this excessive body mass, the wearer rejects societal pressures in exchange for corporeal, mental and emotional escape.

While architecture school involved years of at times gratifying but oftentimes disconsolate strife, the latter served a purpose. Its purpose was to yield competent designers with excellent design, presentation, persuasion, problem solving, and collaboration skills. The thesis was an opportunity to take all of those skills and to apply them to a personally meaningful project. And to survive that process (which lasted a full year from thesis prep to the final review) is to emerge

Body Mass was the precursor to my recent Itinerant Home installation, which was commissioned by the American Institute of Architects for their DesCours Festival. Itinerant Home responds to the well-intentioned and oft-misguided rebuilding efforts in New Orleans, as well as to the increasingly ubiquitous postapocalyptic-climate-change/rising-tides design proposals that are popping up on drawing boards and in magazines everywhere you look.

Little thesis caught up with Daniel Smithwick, co-founder and CEO of Physical Design Co. (and recent graduate of the MIT Master of Science in Architecture Studies, SMArchS, program), to ask him about his experience “crossing over” from the realm of academic research to a real-world entrepreneurial project.

Lt: Yours is truly a thesis success story, as you’ve been able to successfully transition your thesis project into a real entrepreneurial endeavor by starting your own company, Physical Design Co. Can you describe how it all got started - how did you begin to define and develop your thesis project while still at MIT? Did you know early on that you wanted to take your academic project further after graduation?

DS: Thank you. Whether it actually takes off is to be determined though!

To answer your last question - no - I did not know early on what I wanted to do for a thesis. In fact, it was one of my most frightening experiences at MIT - that is, defining a unique and worthy problem while simultaneously trying to solve it. It wasn’t until I switched degree programs from the MArch program to the SMArchS program that I really had a grasp of what I wanted to do. What was key for me was to step outside of the Department of Architecture and attempt a thesis that engaged the real world, or at least engaged people outside of the department. This is what the SMArchS program afforded, and encouraged me to do. Through the SMArchS program I was able to take most of my courses at the Sloan School of Management and Engineering Systems Division which really broadened my perspective of what an architectural thesis could be.

What was key for me was to step outside of the sis that engaged the real world, or at least engaged people outside of the department.

-

During my last year I mainly focused on entrepreneurship and business develop-

ment classes through which I quickly learned the difference between design and innovation. I see design as critical, however, I now see design as a small piece within the larger process of innovation. And for me, innovation is the process of taking good design and transforming it into something of value for clients and customers. With this perspective applied to architectural design, I realized that architects actually provide little value to the consumers of their products and services - which is a good thing for young professionals in the field because it means there is a lot of opportunity for innovation! - and that is what I wanted to prove in my thesis.

To do this - to engage with the outside world and explore innovation in architectural design, I framed my thesis as a start-up company and sought out advisers who would support such an effort. I was fortunate to be able to get two of my instructors from the Sloan School to join my thesis committee. Looking back, I realize this was one of the critical steps to fully developing my thesis and taking it beyond academia. Having two non-architects on my committee not only forced me to write a thesis that addressed a larger audience, but it also allowed me to begin building my network of advisers for the start-up company. Nearly everyone that I continue to work with on Physical Design Co. I met through my thesis committee.

To engage with the outside world and explore thesis as a start-up company and sought out adLt: As you transitioned from the academic context to the outside world, what were the biggest challenges you faced? Were there any surprises?

DS: Absolutely - there were many challenges and many surprises! For one thing, I greatly underestimated the time, money and emotional stress it would (and does) take to build a company. However, I still spend most of my time now back

In light of these, Itinerant Home reveals itself as a focal point for discussion.

The discussion might take place within the wearable, inflatable house, or it might take place somewhere else. Regardless, this discussion can only be enhanced by the experience of putting on one of the jumpsuits built into Itinerant Home’s walls, and by choreographing one’s steps, with seven other wearers’ steps, to move the house to a different location on its site.

My MArch thesis project: Environmentally and socially-progressive housing in post-Katrina New Orleans.

My post-MArch work: Environmentally and socially-progressive housing in post-Katrina New Orleans.

The project draws from artist Lucy Orta’s early critical work, Refugee Wear, which re-imagines bivouac structures as wearable shelters. In so doing, the popular notion of body-wear extends to include shelter. Like Orta’s Refugee Wear, Itinerant Home expands this definition of body-wear. Only in this case, body-wear goes beyond the gallery to be seen – and to be worn – by the public of New Orleans in the context of their historic building stock. In this context, the project symbolizes and stimulates new ways of thinking about the architecture of home and the future of the city. It is a playful venue for conversation and exchange, literally tailored to fit people of all ages.

In many ways, my life after thesis appears to be quite a logical extension of the project I undertook in my final semesters at MIT. With the benefit of a couple of months of retrospect however, it has become clear that this topical correspondence between thesis “life” and post-thesis working life is much less relevant than the less tangible lessons in generative intellectual messiness that come with thesis making.

My architectural education was a sort of dizzying affair. The three and half years of my MArch were a series of wobbly, out-of-balance oscillations between modes of intellectual and ethical positioning and inquiry. When I entered MIT, I was fresh from stints doing environmental policy research in Washington DC and design-build work in rural Vermont. I had the tidy collection of ethical positions and corresponding professional motivations that you might expect from one with such a background. My work and life were largely organized around more-or-less mainstream liberal notions of goodness and virtue (community, craft, environmental preservation, etc). Over the course of the nearly five years between when I started my MArch degree and when I submitted my final thesis, those orthodoxies and the ability of architecture as a discipline and as a discourse to satisfactorily address them were the objects of near constant scrutiny.

Body Mass was my final project for an elective seminar that I took as a pre-thesis MArch student. Itinerant Home was my first commissioned project as a recent graduate. When I completed Body Mass, who knew it would wind up being such an important project to me? A project that has, so far (so far, because I am constantly scheming ways to continue developing my thesis as well) born a lot more fruit than my thesis explorations have.

Nonetheless, the thesis process was a critical part of my development into a design professional. It conditioned me to emerge into the real world, tough, confident, and ready to find creative ways to pursue design… even with student loans, no architecture jobs in sight, and the field in crisis…

At the outset of the MArch thesis process, I anticipated (or perhaps hoped) that my project would be a culminating, “capstone” experience… a final restatement of intellectual positioning after which professional next steps would be clear and straightforward.

In his essay, “A Thesis,” Mark Jarzombek describes the architecture thesis as “a process in which thinking and doing reflect each other.” 1 Though my MArch thesis process was probably as close to that ideal as any single undertaking in my architecture school experience, it was far from a wholly harmonious convergence of inquiry and expression. To the contrary, the strongest lingering impression from my thesis experience is the sense of the impossibility of a clean and complete coming-together of thought and production. In the process of creating a thesis, as in the larger undertaking of architectural education, the acts of “doing” and “making” continuously muddle the purity of intellectual argumentation. If judged by the standards of other types of academic inquiry, an architectural production with any degree of aspiration to cultural engagement or physical reality cannot help but be self-contradictory, messy, and incomplete.

____________________ Mary Hale graduated with an MArch from MIT in 2009.

3 Questions

This intellectual messiness often seems to drive architects and students to withdraw into the relative security of architecture’s “autonomous” discourse where we can be the masters of the terms of discussion and judgment. My own engagement with the muddled and incongruous processes of thesis-making gave me a deep appreciation for the potential in the mire. The largely self-generated messiness of the thesis process can make the external untidiness of a real city and real projects seem entirely manageable. Compared to the pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth that come with trying to wrangle a thesis into coherence, the conflicting professional and economic interests held by architects, developers, politicians, and contractors are very clear and understandable.

In fact, all of the strictures and orthodoxies of existing professional/social/economic structures can, with the right critical framing, become opportunities to create productive messiness where none initially appears.

Zachary Lamb

7

for the Specialized Reader: Q1) How do you approach advising an MArch thesis differently from a Building Technology thesis?

These are very different types of research projects, but the goal is the same: to push

. Answering questions is easy, but figuring out the right questions to ask is the central problem of any research project. As a thesis advisor, I only want back frontiers of knowledge

In the end, the post-thesis intellectual and professional landscape in which I now find myself, like the educational journey from which I have recently emerged, is less characterized by ethical solidity, intellectual certainty, or clear professional trajectories, and more marked by exhilarating ambiguities and complexities. Shortly after finishing my thesis, I moved to New Orleans and started working with Green Coast, a “triple-bottom line” real estate company co-founded by Will Bradshaw, a current MIT DUSP PhD candidate. Some days I do the work of an architect. Other days I may find myself in a role more like that of a health care planner, an urban gardener, a home energy rater, a construction manager, or an accountant. Some days the peculiarities of working in development are baffling and infuriating. Some days they overwhelm with the sense of possibility.

one thing: to learn something. The MArch theses that I have enjoyed the most were

those where I knew nothing about the topic or the problem, and the student taught me something every time we met. (I should clarify that I am not an architect or a member of the design faculty and therefore cannot advise MArch theses, so I usually serve as a reader on a few theses each year.)

Q2) How do you see your role as unique (or not) from other readers or advisors on a student’s thesis committee?

Because I view each thesis as a real project that should be built, I try to add a dose of realism. This is the natural role for an engineer in a design project. I am not a great architectural critic, but at least I can help to make sure that the project is remotely

I find that most students want their projects to be real, but that faculty advisors aren’t always feasible.

So in general, I am a predictable committee member. Boring, but predictable.

The inevitable time lags that come with development processes leave land and buildings vacant for indeterminate periods of time, often leading to blight, arson, and illegal dumping etc. What if this “slop” in development processes became a “site” in and of itself ? The processes of city-making creates countless such sites. Forgotten canal beds and railroad corridors become opportunities to see the city from entirely new perspectives. Temporarily boarded windows become a medium for expression of intention and aspiration. Abandoned shopping carts become ideal mobile urban chicken coops, and the narrow alleys between “shotgun” houses created by setback requirements become an ideal run for an urban flock. Emerging from the intellectual messiness of thesis-making, the incongruities of the city present endless sites for applying design thinking.

Q3) What (in your opinion) is the importance of the MArch thesis in the education of an architect?

I see the thesis as a launching point into the world outside of MIT, and therefore it is a huge opportunity. What type of architect would you like to be? What issues are important to you? Who are your clients?

should have the potential to become a real project, going out in the world as entrepreneurs trying to build their thesis project.

____________________

Zach Lamb finished his MArch thesis in February 2010. Since then he has been living in New Orleans, working with Green Coast Enterprises, and cultivating messiness with Crooked Architecture, the firm he co-founded with Carey Clouse (SMarchS ‘07). ____________________ 1. Jarzombek, Mark, “A Thesis,” Thresholds, V. 12. pp. 6-8

–John Ochsendorf, Associate Professor, MIT, Building Technology (BT)

Plan for Uncertainty

in academia as research staff with the House_n group and the Smart Customization Group. Start-up companies take a long time to become self-sustaining so it’s good to have a ‘day job’.

Stacey Murphy

Lt: Since you are no longer a student, you don’t have a formal thesis advisor or readers to ask critical questions and help you guide your project. How have you dealt with this change? How do you keep yourself motivated, and solicit critical feedback?

Stacey Murphy is a community activist and architectural designer. She is transforming the local foodscape and creating direct relationships between farmers and consumers. After being a Finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge 2009, she founded bk farmyards, a decentralized urban farming network based in Brooklyn. bk farmyards partners with homeowners, developers, schools, and organizations to transform idle land to farmland providing local jobs for farmers and fresh affordable produce for the community. In the first growing season, she farmed backyards in Ditmas Park growing 12 weeks of produce for a 6-member CSA. This year, bk farmyards is expanding into at least 6 new sites including the 1-acre farm in partnership with the High School for Public Service. Stacey was recently forwarded to the Semi-Finals in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge 2010 for her new program FarmShare, an online social network that will create crowd-sourced farms.

During the Fall 2009 semester, Stacey served as a reader on an MArch thesis committee.

We asked Stacey to consider how her project is like a thesis.

DS: You’re certainly right about this. After graduating I quickly learned how difficult it is to get people to give you their time and feedback on non-academic projects. What I’ve tried to do is maintain relationships with the members of my thesis committee and develop new relationships in the form of informal advisers.

Through these relationships I have been able to solicit valuable feedback and get new people interested in my project. I’m currently working with the i-Teams class (Innovation Teams) at the Sloan School in order to develop such relationships. The i-Teams class is an incredible opportunity for MIT-developed technology to be analyzed by business students in order to help develop go-to-market strategies and discover best applications for the technology.

Nothing could have prepared me for starting bk farmyards like my Masters architectural thesis project. During thesis, some days I felt confident in my project, but most days I felt lost and unsure of every decision. With seemingly so little time for development, each decision was accompanied with a fear that I was heading towards a dead end. Thesis is unlike previously completed design studios, because you choose your own path and subsequently must deal with the consequences of every decision. The thesis student can sometimes appear like a delusional mother who goes into labor and says she’s just not going to do it, not going to give birth.

Well, thesis is your baby, and whether you are ready or not, you will give birth after nine months! The same is true when starting your own venture. No one else will make the hard decisions for you. How will you most effectively spend your time? What is your project, your product?

Lt: Do you have advice for current thesis students who are thinking of following in your footsteps and trying to make his/her thesis project into a reality?

DS: I would advise current thesis students who wish to make his/her thesis project into a reality to take advantage of the knowledge of all the other disciplines that is available within MIT. You’ll never have such an incredible networking opportunity and be around so many people who are eager to freely offer their feedback. ____________________

Dan Smithwick completed his SMArchS thesis titled “Architectural Design 2.0: An Online Platform for the Mass Customization of Architectural Structures” in 2009. He is the founder of Physical Design Co., and is currently a researcher at the House_n Group and the Smart Customization Group at MIT.

Near the end of thesis, I looked back on two semesters of work and realized that I had done the best work when I allowed myself the patience to set an intention

Scientific method and the architectural thesis are not very far apart: they always start with a question. As researchers, architects endeavor to understand relationships. We set an intention; we design an intervention and predict results; we test our assumptions; and we analyze our outcome. With every step in the bk farmyards project, I do several iterations using research methodology. How should urban agriculture be structured? What does bk farmyards represent? How do I define success? That is the number one question to be addressed when seeking funding: ‘how do I define success for this project?’ This question is also the crux of the thesis process. As a student, you get to define how people evaluate your project. How you invite critics into your conversation determines where they will focus their comments. Your critics are there to help you make sense of the project; they want to see you succeed. My critics for bk farmyards are even more vested in my project: they fund the project, they buy my produce, and they trust me with their land. When trying to define success, I find myself in the same conundrum I was in during thesis. Some things are easily quantifiable: pounds of produce grown and its cost per pound, area transformed to farmyard, etc. But as in architecture, there are many qualitative measures that are difficult to assess and represent. How has the neighborhood’s relationship to food changed? How does the community feel differently after eating locally grown food? What do the neighbors see when they look at the farm? Representing these measures is as difficult as trying to represent the feeling of inhabiting space– a problem architects have spent hundreds of years creatively visualizing.

and quickly produce a diagram or construct that addressed that intention. Only afterward would I allow any self-criticism. There was a certain paradox there where I turned my brain off in order to complete something while also maintaining a singular focus. When I was successful, the work told the story for me: it was clear from one stage to the next how the intention had shifted slightly or how the product had become more aligned with the intention. The stress of whether I was headed in the ‘right’ direction or not disappeared, and slowly I enjoyed the uncertainty of trusting my instincts.

enjoyed the uncertainty of trusting my instincts.

The stakes are higher now that I am trying to make a living with my project, but the ability to weather uncertainty and focus on intention rather than outcome has been the biggest factor in the success of bk farmyards. I see bk farmyards as a design problem in how to feed my soul doing good work for the social-food movement while making enough money to survive. I embraced bk farmyards as a research project and accepted that it will adapt and change in order to continue rewarding me and an extended community. I cannot have preconceived notions of how bk farmyards will look or behave: it develops day-by-day according to empirical research. I never would have predicted that in my quest to grow the tastiest soil-based vegetables I would have ended up– willingly!– with a 1200 square foot hyrdroponic experiment. And I definitely did not expect to be teaching a shop class, but that is what I find myself doing every Saturday– building cold frames, planters, and benches with a group of ninth graders who have never used a drill or saw in their life. In an effort to feed my soul through design work, I end up in unanticipated experiments.

My advice for any new venture, as in thesis: plan for uncertainty; speak your intentions clearly; and diagram qualitative measures. ____________________

Stacey has a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters of Architecture both from the University of Michigan. She spent three years racing cars and working in Vehicle Dynamics for Ford Motor Company, and six years working with PLY Architecture in Ann Arbor, Hamilton Anderson Associates in Detroit, and Marble Fairbanks in New York City.

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* “The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) is a diffusion index derived from the monthly Work-on-the-Boards survey. AIA Participants are asked whether their billings increased, decreased, or stayed the same in the month that just ended. According to the proporation of respondents choosing each option, a score is generated, which represents an index value for each month.” –AIA

1

Thesis year can put you in a bit of a bubble. Deadlines, iterations, supply runs... it is difficult to remember to look up and see what is happening around you. What happened during 2009 thesis year? This timeline presents world events, design events, and MIT Thesis events superimposed on the main economic barometer of American architecture practice, the Architecture Billing Index*. Study up on what you may have missed!

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Laura Rushfeldt

8

Volume1, Issue #2 / Spring 2010

Haruka Horiuchi

In architecture, we often feel an enigmatic desire to “go big” – compose grand narratives, inscribe territorial master plans, and erect giant buildings. Maybe because we want our work to be significant, effective and worthwhile, we feel the need to magnify our designs, actions and thoughts to ever-greater scales. However, size and effect do not always go hand in hand; in fact, the bigger you go, the greater the likelihood of a half-baked design, a missed opportunity or a fatal mistake. We often forget that “little” can be a much more productive and effective modus operandi to embrace. Here is a little reminder.

pave the way for revolution.

Samizdat (or “self-published” materials) played a key role in cultivating the resistance in Soviet-bloc countries during the Cold War. As more and more literature was censored, individuals began to copy restricted texts in order to distribute them through underground networks. Done either by hand with carbon paper, typewriters, or with stolen minutes on mainframe printers or printing presses, these guerilla duplicates covertly kept people informed and aware during a time when open opposition was deadly. Importantly, the success of samizdat relied on each little action through which an individual – through great personal risk - contributed to this illegal cycle of reproduction and dissemination. Each little voice strengthened the mass chorus that later led to radical political reform.

1

“Little magazines”2 of architecture in the ‘60s and ‘70s were important forums for provoking open conversations about the discipline. These small publications “instigated a radical transformation in architectural culture with the architecture of the magazines acting as the site of innovation and debate”.3 Often designed and printed on shoestring budgets – and sometimes even with manually potatostamped covers – these little volumes each contributed to a colorful and productive period of formative experimentation in architecture. Again, acting as more than the sum of its parts, these “little magazines” cumulatively brought about a sea change in the field.

Both samizdat and “little magazines” illustrate that even seemingly small actions can produce mighty results. Moreover, these examples articulate clearly that taking any action – no matter how little – is infinitely better than inaction.

adding extra features and essentially inventing completely new devices. Extremely efficient in their design and production processes, some shanzai literally operate out of a three story building with an apartment at the top, a manufacturing line on the second floor, and a retail store at the bottom to sell the goods designed and produced upstairs. By operating like ninjas, the shanzai keep things efficient, fast moving and cutting edge.

For the shanzai, staying informal and small is key, and “little” is a deliberate longterm strategy, not simply a survival tactic. “[Shanzai] are rebellious, individualistic, underground, and self-empowered innovators…They are self-empowered in the sense that they are universally tiny operations, bootstrapped on minimal capital, and they run with the attitude of ‘if you can do it, then I can as well’.”6 Small architecture firms share similar advantageous qualities with the shanzai.

Because they also are operating on minimal resources, they practice hacking and tinkering to efficiently produce good design. Further, little firms can more quickly shift gears, adapt to changing goals and conditions, and thus are better equipped to ride out economic ups and downs.

Whether you are a tech ninja or an architect, consciously maintaining a little enterprise is a wise move in support of innovation. By continuously rethinking modes of invention and production, little operations can stay on top of the game.

more directly change the world.

Rather than attempting to develop universal formulas, designing at a small scale hones the field of focus to a precise pinpoint, and allows for accordingly specific solutions. A tightly defined scope enables deeper research and a more intricate level of detail. Small-scale designs are also easier to prototype, tweak, and create multiple iterations of. By working through a fine-tuned design process of repetitive experimentation, it is possible to develop higher quality designs.

When it comes time to execute the project, little designs are faster and easier to build, and thus create immediate physical change in the built environment.

Further, little designs are more conducive to the open-source sharing of research, design and construction. Through communicating their learnings readily, little designs contribute towards elevating the entire field.

As more and more individuals deploy their little designs throughout various contexts, these multiple efforts towards improving the built environment are collectively transforming our world. “Utopia has been replaced with micro-utopias” which are plural, temporary and localized.7 Let’s face it. Our best ideas and greatest projects are born of little time, little sleep, and little resources. If we consciously embrace this tendency towards “little” and make it our chosen modus operandi, our little actions, operations and designs can and will change the world. Prepare yourself to be amazed at what “little” can do.

imaginative invention and faster production.

Choosing to be little and stay little, as in the case of the shanzai of China, can be a smart strategy. Shanzai (translating as “mountain fortress” in Chinese4, ) primarily refers to underground copycat producers of technological devices. These tech ninjas not only reproduce and sell top-of-the-line knockoff products like the “HiPhone”5, but also take these products far beyond their mainstream counterparts,

____________________

Haruka Horiuchi finished her MArch at MIT in January 2010. ____________________ 1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat to read more.

2. See “Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X” curated by Beatriz Colomina.

3. http://www.clipstampfold.com/ 4. See the following source to read more about the culture of the shanzai: Huang, Andrew “bunnie”. “Tech Trend: Shanzai.” http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284 5. See http://www.lightinthebox.com/wholesale-HiPhone_c1498 to buy a HiPhone.

6. See the following article for a broader discussion on shanzai and rebellion in China: Canaves, Sky and Juliet Ye. “Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Rebellion in China.” The Wall Street Journal. 22 January 2009.

7. Meredith, Michael. “Whatever Happened to ‘Whatever Happened to Total Design?’: The Momentary Utopian Jouissance of the Bouroullec Brothers.” Harvard Design Magazine. Fall 2008/Winter 2009, No. 29: p. 102-109.

Outlines, continued from page 1 vote to embrace capitalism as the sole driver of density and ‘publicness’? This useful enemy caused me to investigate the definition of ‘public’ and ‘plurality’, both of which structured my theoretical and design position. The seeds of such an examination can be planted during thesis, only because it is difficult to see the course of one’s trajectory as clearly and critically as the moment that thesis allows. Further, thesis forces one to contextualize the issues that arise from a particular project into a larger discourse that sheds the introverted nature of the project and potentially advances the discipline. Consequently, thesis can provide the first chapter in unraveling a discourse that is part of a longer project.

The demands on Architects in praxis are continually growing. Three key characteristics that I would argue have the largest impact on most (if not all) Architectural projects today are schedule, budget, and clients. While Architects have little control over any of these, the demands emerging from these characteristics often create, replace, or alter a tenuous ‘almost’ stance of an Architect. The challenges of Praxis will continue to persist, and as we continue to lose some of our most capable graduates to academia, we need to learn how to empower ourselves to be more than aesthetic coordinators of various consultants. Having a clear and strong stance is therefore more crucial now than ever. Admittedly, while praxis teaches one a great deal about other trades and consultants, and their particular needs to coordinate the development and construction of a building, it rarely teaches one how to form a stance. If one is not careful, the demands of clients, budget and schedule will replace one’s stance while removing one’s shadow. And herein lies the dilemma – in the first three years of a Masters programme, one is learning skills and tools to acquaint themselves with a discipline, and quickly thereafter in praxis they are servants to the aforementioned demands bestowed on a project. The only way to navigate precisely through this dilemma is by using thesis as a bridge between academia and praxis wherein one has a moment to test the seeds of a life long project and use this stance to focus the demands of praxis into a larger goal or trajectory. Thesis allows each individual to set their own agenda, a privilege that one may not have for several years again and perhaps when this privilege resurfaces, it is utterly terrifying for those with an ‘almost’ stance. As a growing number of Architects take the role of Calcutecs that have lost their shadows, a new generation of Architects must rise up and realize that without a stance, it is hardly worth standing. ____________________ Neeraj Bhatia is an MIT graduate (SM.Arch, 2007) and currently a co-director of the research group InfraNet Lab, partner of design office The Open Workshop and a professor at the University of Toronto. His thesis, The Infrastructural Space of Appearance, examined the theoretical and design project of pluralism through the coupling of public libraries and infrastructure. This set a trajectory of research and design that is being explored in The Open Workshop and InfraNet Lab. ____________________ 1. Über Gestalttheorie [an adress before the Kant Society, Berlin, ‘7th December, 1924], Erlangen, 1925.

In the translation by Willis D. Ellis, published in Source Book of Gestalt Psychology, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1938 2. Murakami, Haruki. Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World. New York: Vintage, 2001.

Mark Jarzombek Defining a thesis is not an easy task, not even for the faculty under whose auspices it comes about. However, it would probably be safe to say that in principle a thesis constitutes the threshold between the student and the professional and between architecture as a subjectivist fantasy and architecture as an intellectual discourse.

A thesis should try to transmit knowledge and intention in a way that can be both rigorous in locating boundaries in an existent discourse and yet poetic in its capacity to reach beyond the immediate problem to some larger issue: in our case to the open question of architecture’s position in society. This ideal has to be framed, however, within the context of a constantly mobile whole. Institutions, determined and weighed down by the long history of their pedagogical, ideological, and academic commitments, set up expectations about what is and is not a ‘thesis’ without those expectations ever being put into writing or expressed in words. The thesis thus becomes part of a mysterium that the student is meant to unravel. The result is an almost Darwinian-styled logic that gives preference to those who are best equipped emotionally and intellectually for the task. But this does not mean that the institution is absolved from the responsibility of guiding the student or of reflecting on the successes and failures of its approach.

The thesis becomes part of a mysterium that the student is meant to unravel.

As part of this reflection, one has to remind oneself that a ‘thesis’ is part of an intellectual tradition which is larger than the local context of a particular institution. In essence, it defines the scholarly exchange between an individual and a disciplinary collective. In architecture, if one thinks of the various parties that have an interest in defining and controlling the identity of this ‘collective’, one would list the thesis advisor with his or her unique approach, the discipline of architecture as defined by the institution’s curriculum, and finally the profession itself. Given the various scales at which these interests operate (sometimes one against the other), it is difficult to find a level of criticality that would be accepted in all places. Ultimately, an architecture thesis, unlike a thesis in the sciences and even the humanistic disciplines, works on a scale that favors the local rather than the meta-local intellectual community. This works in two directions. It gives the

Colophon Editors

Haruka Horiuchi Morgan Pinney

Rogue Reporters Sarah Hirschman Ann Woods

Contributors

Neeraj Bhatia Deborah Buelow Marissa Cheng Christopher Tohru Guignon Mary Hale Timothy Hyde Zachary Lamb MArch Classes of 2008 & 2009 Mark Jarzombek Stacey Murpy John Ochsendorf Laura Rushfeldt Andrew Scott Dan Smithwick

institution a degree of autonomy that in turn breeds diversity, but it also means that students, often possessing limited awareness of how pedagogy operated, lack the information and expertise to make a sounds judgment about what direction to take their thesis.

This means that in architecture, ‘a thesis’ may be more open-ended in what is tolerated than in other disciplines, but it is also more dependent on the context in which it is created and evaluated. The situation is not to be lamented simply because it sounds so chaotic. But it does mean that faculty are called upon to exhibit habits of self-examination which are more encompassing than what one might find in a traditional studio environment. For example, as professors should ask, is a thesis simply a re-summation of the process of schooling, or does it begin to go beyond what was taught in the studio? Is it an act of ‘coming into consciousness’, or is it the demonstration of institutional indoctrination? Is it the site where the institution reveals its culminating power to produce the next generation of architect-thinkers or is it the site where the limitations of the institution are masked by the rhetoric of its potentiality? These questions play themselves out in each and every thesis whether or not a student is aware of it. The thesis process, therefore, becomes important to the institution, perhaps more so than to the individual students. Each and every thesis touches on a whole range of problems having to do with the nature of architectural education, from its status as paraprofessional enterprise, to its status as an independent intellectual discourse, and from the compulsion to control the student’s mind to the freedom that only the institution can permit.

the institution, perhaps more so than to the individual students.

A good thesis, I would argue, will recognize and debate the position itself within the ongoing polemic that is at the heart of everything architectural. A good thesis will also see the design project as a means of coming to terms with that polemic in its ambiguous state. The thesis thus has the possibility to work within the obscure

Sponsors

The MIT Department of Architecture The MIT Council for the Arts Saltus Press

Special Thanks to

Team Little t 2009 and its advisors: Yung Ho Chang, Ana Miljački and Mark Jarzombek. Minerva Tirado at the Publishing Services Bereau of MIT and Richard Saltzberg at Saltus Press. Susan Cohen and the MIT Council for the Arts, Jack Valleli and Rebecca Chamberlain at MIT’s Architecture Headquarters, Frank Hebbert and the MArch Class of 2010, especially Marissa Grace Desmond, Mio Uchida and Charlie Hagen-Cazes. Julian Beinart and Ana Miljački for their ongoing support. And all the rest who made Little thesis possible!

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domain of identity and difference which structures other aspects of our personal, cultural, and institutional life, not simply the ones having to do with architecture.

In that sense, the work becomes less a statement about professional preparedness and more about a student’s growing intellectual competency in dealing with the complexity that is intrinsic to architecture. If done well, the thesis gives something back to the institution which both legitimates it and helps guarantee its survival. It gives not only fresh perspective on old problems, but a sense of energy and commitment that will be necessary if architecture is to maintain its relevance to our world.

Achieving this is no easy task and not all thesis students (and thesis advisors) are equally capable. This does not mean that a thesis which fails to excel in this respect does not warrant faculty praise and honor. Some students are not served well by the thesis process, especially in a 3-year M.Arch program where a potential architect, though talented, might still lack the experience of handling the obligations that thesis work constitutes. This is all the more reason for the student and instructor to discuss and understand not only what a thesis is but what it can be. If this is done in the spirit of critical openness, most theses will inevitably accommodate themselves to the dynamic situation of our modernity and can thus transcend the immediate problem that has been set out for them. They can investigate the process in which thinking and doing reflect each other and do this in a way that can make the thesis experience essential to the intellectual world of the institution.

Most students see their thesis as the end of their education, and most will find little or no opportunity ever again to think with such freedom. But this is only half of the story. A good thesis has two lives. For the faculty , who after all remain in academia, it can be an inspirational experience, a true mysterium, that reminds them of the original purpose and mission of education. I have directed many thesis projects, too many to remember them all. But there have been some that have affected me in a profound way, and I am sure that all faculty members have had similar experiences. These theses live on in ways that their authors could hardly have imagined. ____________________ Reprinted with permission of the author. This essay originally appeared in the Spring 1996 issue of thresholds: #12, What is a Thesis? Mark Jarzombek is Professor in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of another article by the same title also printed in this publication.

is a collaborative of MArch students, investigating the architectural thesis as both a transition and an interlude between academia and the profession.

thesis

As the most potentially productive interface between theory and practice, the architectural thesis project is a vital part of an architect’s journey. During thesis, for the first time the student frames her own architectural inquiry and attempts to tie her lofty visions to grounded realities. At this moment when her most fervent beliefs about architecture are exposed, what are the critical questions that the thesis student asks of herself and of those around her? How does she communicate her ideas littlethesis.mit.edu to her peers, others in related disciplines, and ultimately to the outside world?

Little thesis aims to serve as a forum for inviting open conversations about these and other questions about the past, present and future of the architectural thesis.

Little thesis is an archival reference, hoping to provide insight into the elusive field of architecture.

Visit littlethesis.mit.edu for more broadcasts! seeks to fill a void in the architectural publication world by providing an outlet for raising questions, testing positions, and opening dialogues on an as needed basis without the necessary delays of established print journals. Little thesis is a project of Little t.

Funded (in part) by the Council for the Arts at MIT