REVIEW
M.ARCH THESIS 2015Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Architecture
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 7-337
Cambridge, MA USA 02139
617 253 7791 / arch@mitedu
architecture.mitedu
The MArch Thesis
‘The MArch program at MIT culminates
in a thesis project. Under the guidance of
their thesis advisors MArch students con-
duct independent research and architectur-
al design over the course of the Thesis Prep
and Thesis semesters. Launched through
an intense and often obsessive consid-
eration of disciplinary concerns and the
consideration of architecture's effects in the
contemporary world, each MArch thesis
ultimately delimits an area of architec-
tural thinking and practice. By their final
presentation most projects strike a specific
conversation between these two poles of
architectural discourse: disciplinary history
on one end and the contemporary world
on the other, producing a highly varied
collection of inquiries, proposals, and even
genres of project, ‘he primary objective of
all MIT MArch thesis projects is to refine
and expand the fields of architectural
discourse and practice, and to seed, or at
aminimum, to test, a possible trajectory
both for architecture and for a generation
of young architects who with their theses
projects cross over into their professional
careers as architects.Master of Architecture
Tyler Crain o1
Jasmine Kwak 02
Beomki Lee 03
Suk Lee 04
Chris Landrum Martin 05
David Miranowski 06
David Moses 07
Julian Ocampo Salazar 08
Sayjel Vijay Patel 09
Susanna W. Pho 10
Ulises Reyes
Laura R. Schmitz
‘Tyler Stevermer
Maya Taketani
Evelyn Ting
‘Trygve Wastvedt
Shiyu Wei
Robert White
Rena Yang
Jie Zhang
See rear flap for advisors, readers, and credits.Disturbance Grounds:
An Inquiry into Non-Equi
Tyler Crain
ium Architectural States
Advisor: SkylarTibbits, Readers: Matthew Bunza, Geoff Manaugh
‘This project asks how destructive forces can
be used for constructive purposes. It seeks
out latent potentials in aggregate materials
and fore
ituating itself within a dialogue
of new landscape methodologies, aggregate
material formations, and alternative develop-
ment strategies.
From a geological perspective, mass
material movements are a method of simulta-
neous deconstruction and reformation. They
are a continuous phase-changing process.
While we might view landslides as hazards,
this project sees them as opportunities for
actuation of a hillside, forming a field or scat-
tering of spatial instruments. Drawing from
many professional disciplines to synthesize a
muli
purpose geoprosthetic architecture, this
thesis investigates a geo-technical solution
in the form of an architectural strategy and
the potentials of aggregate materials in the
context of environmental turmoil.
jold studiosLiving Large: An Alternative Model for Urban Living
Jasmine Kwak
Advisor: Ana Miljacki, Readers: Rafi Segal, William O'Brien Jr.
There once was an American dream called
the house, Frequently clustered in tight rows
and cul-de-sacs, the single-family dwell-
ing represented not only financial success,
but also stability and hope for the future,
However, more recent generations have been
forced to question the desire to own a home.
Facing more and more economic difficulties,
a house has, for many, become more of a li-
ability than a dream.
In New York City, lack of home owner-
ship has reached an extreme: more than 75%
of residents rent rather than own. In light
of this trend, this thesis seeks to imagine,
through architecture, a new kind of American
dream: housing for nomads where no one
owns anything and people are free to roam
around the city. This proposal suggests that
rather than continuing to downsize the micro-
houses that constitute today’s solution to the
home ownership problem, Americans can
once again live large—together.[ME]morial
Boomki Lee
Advisor: Antén Garcia-Abril, Readers: Renée Green, Caitlin Mueller
“MEmorial” presents a new concept in
memorial architecture. Based on Freud and
Bergson’s ideas of memory, “MEmorial” em-
phasizes the relationship between individual
memory and the individual to offer a new way
of experiencing memorial space.
Contemporary architecture’s focus on
communal memory has led to the primacy of
a single image or rendering. Thus memorial
architecture tends to miss opportunities for
deeper exploration and individualized experi-
ences beyond simplistic representations of
memorialized events or figures.
‘This thesis project proposes a memorial
architecture for victims of the 3.11 earthquake
and tsunami in Sendai, Japan. Three spatially
different MEmorials are the starting point
for this open-ended project. The goal of the
project is to create a new relationship between
individual memory and the individuals, such
that cach individual will have personalized
experiences in each MEmorial.
MEmorial will serve as a space not only
for soothing victims’ wounded hearts, but also
for letting people memorialize their individual
memories. The project seeks to challenge and
extend traditional architectural definitions of
memorial architecture.MIT i?: idea incubator
Suk Lee
Advisor: Antén Garcia-Abril, Readers: Simon Frommenwiler, John A. Ochsendorf
‘The rapid growth of online learning raises modification of the Charles River waterfront.
many questions about the future of the physi- This project ultimately changes the Charles
cal university campus. Yet, despite various River from a barrier to a new urban destina-
opinions on the future campus, physically in- tion where various social and intellectual
teracting remains a primary method of incu- activities can occur. Two radical interventions
bating ideas. In light of these trends inhigher _ address completely different relationships
education, this thesis (MIT i’) proposes a with the water: spaces above and below the
flexible public space for both the MIT com- water. ‘The project creates different spatial
munity and the city of Boston. MIT? posits opportunities for different programs while
anew type of campus through architectural remaining flexible for the unknown future.In Pursuit of Sound
Chris Landrum Martin
Advisor: Antén Garcia-Abril, Readers: Marc Downie, Paul Steenhuisen
In this thesis, sound is used as a generative
device to investigate space and architecture
as collections of experiences. Inspired by the
temporality of sound, the architecture of this
project is understood as a physical trace of an
invisible energy. The propagation of sound in
three dimensions produces a feedback loop
in which architecture further distorts sound
‘waves to explore how the energy travelling
through space can lead to more control over
its production.
Composite Render: Sound as a vibration
of particles in air was reimagined as
particles in three dimensional space.2d Abd
un/common ground
David Miranowski
Advisor: Rafi Segal, Readers: Ana Miljacki, William O’Brien Jr.
Brooklyn’s urban fabric is a redundant array
of perimeter residential blocks built over the
Jast 200 years as a layered accretion. Within
cach block is a core that is spatially unified
yet distinct from the public front of the street.
‘These spaces are defined by their enclosure,
yet this barrier is not entirely impenetrable.
Each block possesses a few unique moments
of slippage in which the perimeter mass opens
up to reveal a slivered view into the depths,
and potentials, of this internalized world.
To the vast majority, including resi-
dents, these slivers and cores remain a visual
phenomenon, ‘The near-universal practice of
extruding backyard parcel lines has created
an architecture of division, namely the fence,
closing off the yard from the block and the
block from the neighborhood. This thesis
proposes an alternative scenario, in which
rear fences are removed and a thin line of
public space is inserted into the mosaic of
existing yards. The line, activated through a
set of calibrated relationships with the ground
and floating infrastructure, stitches together
people within the open core and works
against the detritus of old divisions. Through
this intervention, a new grain emerges which
connects Brooklyn's blocks and transforms the
residual slivers into a network of spaces that
open to an engaging, and unexpected, render-
ing of the pre-existing.The Williston Time Capsule
David Moses
Advisor: Miho Mazereeuw, Readers: Arindam Dutta, Cristina Parrefio Alonso
This thesis is a time capsule of the oil econ-
omy, created by preserving everyday totems
made from petroleum in a landscape that
spatially recreates the processes of drilling
and fracking a contemporary oil well. The site
is an existing two square mile drill spacing
unit on the edge of Williston, North Dakota,
currently the site of one of the largest shale
oil booms in the world. The project consists
of two interrelated landscape systems. The
first is an above ground landform made by
pushing around dirt. ‘The second is a labyrinth
of subterranean chambers carved out of rock
with precision excavation.
‘The project is a counter monument to
the otherwise hidden processes that create
massive change on a vast territorial scale. By
placing the products of oil back in their place
of origin, they become future sites of medita-
tion on the ways that everyday consumption
drives economies of extraction. ‘This preser-
vation would take place over a long period
of time: as objects and processes of the oil
economy become obsolete, they would be
entombed one by one, a century long slow
motion fracking of the site
Like John Soane’s Bank of England
project, this counter monument is designed
for a future public, hopefully one that won-
ders at the strangeness of our contemporary
ways of living, and our economies of seem-
ingly mindless extraction and consumption.
‘The thesis is a way of saying that we as a
I
culture a
ast contended with fracking ina
way that was more substantial t
an worry-
ing about the price of gas at the pump.
Underground chamber perspectivesScale: Architecture in Five Jumps
Julian Ocampo Salazar
Advisor: Antén Garcia-Abril, Readers: Jool Lamere, Jeremy Alain Slegel
FaR2323-DJ: Sampling as De:
Sayjel Vijay Patel
Adi
This thesis is a part of a revolution in archi-
tectural sensibilities. Within arm's reach,
hand-held 3D scanning technologies, such
as photogrammetry, enable anyone with a
smart-phone to digitally capture physical
objects from the real world as point cloud
data. For architects, 3D scanning is an excit
ing new medium which allows us to sample
and appropriate the geometry and properties
of any object. Presently, designers work from
the bottom-up: from a space of abstraction to
one that becomes gradually more concrete.
The rules of computer modeling software pre-
cede, and constrain, the form of the objects
they will create. However, 3D scans offer an
or: Skylar Tibbits, Readers: Marc Downie, Mark Goulthorpe, Terry Knight
opportunity to reverse this methodology, al-
lowing designers to begin with highly detailed
digital replicas of physical objects. Akin to
how sampling is applied in electronic music,
Tdevelop a design process which enables a
designer to evaluate, remix, and use the best
features from real world samples to generate
architectural features that would otherwise
not be possible given conventional computer
modeling methods.
8D printed model of an oyster shell from
Cloudy Bay, Tasmania, captured using
photogrammetry on July 5th, 2014,Kipple Kaboodl
Reincarnating Suburban Stock
Susanna W. Pho
Advisor: Arindam Dutta, Readers: William O'Brien Jr, Rafi Segal
“No one can win against kipple, except temporarily
and maybe in one spot
—Phillip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep?
California City is a gradually suffocating
master-planned community in the Mojave
Desert plagued by suburban blight, low oc-
cupancy, high foreclosure rates, and descend-
ing property values. To alle
their suburb’s certain and agonizing death, the
residents of California City have banned to-
gether to orchestrate its suicide and facilitate
its subsequent reincarnation.
This thesis documents California City’s
demise as a rite of passage for both the
e the pain of
individual and the collective. As the town
gtapples with death on a suburban scale, it
encounters deeply personal questions as an
entire community. What does it mean when
a city dies? How do those who must remain
grieve, come to terms with their loss, and
move on? What becomes of the corpse? What
is its afterlife?
‘The stuff of the suburb is e
in depth as the psyche of Californ
mined
a City is
destroyed, reconstituted and birthed anew.
As the suburb is abandoned, salvaged,
catalogued, and transformed, its remainders
slowly transform into a reincarnated city that
functions as an archival catalog of its previ-
ous existence.
10New NORC City
Ulises Reyes
Advisor: Anne Whiston Spirn, Readers: Andrew Scott, Ryan Chin
People in the industrialized world are
experiencing a new phenomenon: declining
birth rates due to increased economic
success, which in turn, can cause economic
decline. This trend can be seen in much of
Europe, among other places, where decreases
in fertility and mortality rates have resulted
in people of ages 65 and older to comprise
of at least 15 percent of the population of
over half of its countries, potentially rising
to 35 percent in 2050. Through New NORC
City, this thesis explores how co-housing can
serve as a typology that takes advantage of
mixed age groups in a way that benefits our
increasingly aging world.
1The Reconsidered River:
Strategies for Connection in Post-Industrial Buffalo
Laura R. Schmitz
Advisor: Rafi Segal, Readers: Anne Spirn, Brent Ryan
This thesis sets out to connect two isolated
neighborhoods in the post-industrial city of
Buffalo, NY. Specifically, the project unites
Silo City, a neighborhood of abandoned grain
elevators that attracts intermittent visitors
through seasonal events, and the Old First
Ward, a river-side residential neighborhood
once home to laborers for the grain facilities.
‘The two are separated by the Buffalo River, a
barrier that once linked the two economically.
‘The master plan for the area consists
of three plans at a smaller scale: River, Rail
Spine, and Ward Plan, each of could be
developed and work together simultaneously.
This thesis develops the River Plan in detail.
Each new element within the plan either
repurposes, preserves, or reconstructs exist-
ing features along the river. For example, the
Ice Boom Room constructs a new building
by using the seasonal and industrial process
of controlled melting of Lake Erie’s ice as an
opportunity to connect two neighborhoods
year-round. ‘This thesis asks how post-indus-
trial cities like Buffalo can harness existing
industrial and natural processes to promote
growth and change.
12Preposthuman:
An Architectural Propaedeutic for the Di:
‘Tyler Stevermer
itally-Enhanced
Advisors: Brandon Clifford, Caroline A, Jones, Readers: Ariane Lourie Harrison, Mark Jarzombek
Developing into a posthuman will require
training from your built environment. Archi-
tecture will start soft. Operating your environ-
ment will mean engaging with your senso-
rium—connecting you to others, yourself, and
your environment both digitally and corpore-
ally. While your posthuman body’ enhance-
ments might bring it closer to architecture,
your posthuman architecture's enhancements
might bring it closer to being a body.
Like any body, your architecture
must breath—responding and adjusting its
spatialities. As a posthuman, you recognize
~y
yyy
that you have a right to spatial inhabitation,
but you also recognize that you have no right
to space you don’t need. Your neighbors and
you push and pull. When you are part of
the network, you acknowledge that digital
automation is not an antonym to personal
autonomy. To be posthuman means to hold
contradictory viewpoints simultancously.
You can have your own, but share with
all. Your space is there, but it disappears.
Your body can be architecture and your
architecture can be body.Playtime in the Manipulated Landscape
Maya Taketani
Advisor: Joe! Lamere, Readers: Mark Jarzombek, Mino Mazereeuw
Many contend that in the twenty-first century,
we have entered a new geological era of the
Anthropocene in which human interven-
tion has taken over the entire globe. Yet for
children, we often portray only the pristine
and positive side of nature, shielding away
anything we believe to be dangerous or pol-
luted. Children are left disengaged from the
realities of their environment.
‘This thesis proposes to bring the realities
of our world —- its manufactured and manipu-
lated landscapes — into view, and to accept
this as the environment that we have to face in
the future. This landscape is not a marginal-
ized region in the outskirts of the city that we
cannot see, but is a new type of infrastructure
with which people are forced to engage.
‘This infrastructure, although it seems
dangerous and uncomfortable, brings people
together through its playful character and
spontaneity. Children are the ones who initial-
ly find the place asa space for play, then the
adults follow, This project faces the realities of
our environment today, but at the same time
is optimistic about our future.
Collage of various manipulated
landscapes that we have createdPlain Objects
Evelyn Ting
Advisor: William O'Brion Jr., Readers: Arindam Dutta, Gediminas Urbonas
‘The knowledge economy has replaced
industry in driving the socioeconomic and
urban development of 21st century cities.
Universities, an important actor, must grow
to stay competitive. In response to the desire
to strengthen institutional identity, this thesis
considers the possibilities—or consequences
—of a growing institution turning its back on
the city, quite literally, by creating a new front-
age that faces inward on a city block. Plain
Objects applies the concept of two-facedness
to create singular architectural objects in the
city that can combine to produce urban scale
18
effects. These objects dramatize binary condi-
tions that are already inherent in the urban
fabric in which they are inserted—blank vs.
exuberant, mute plane vs. pure signage, stasis,
vs. variability—but in this case are heightened
in the context of an added programmatic
dichotomy, that between the expanding uni-
versity campus and the city. The thesis argues
for the renewed status of the object within
the discipline of architecture and its potential
to participate both in semiotics and abstract
field conditions.Heliocentric Architecture: Materializing Solar Cadences
Christoph Reinhart, Andrzej Zarzycki
‘There is a long tradition of architecture
creating atmospheric, awe-inspiring experi-
ences by shaping and making visible natural
light. Another approach to daylighting
optimizes lighting conditions through the
use of computational tools which provide
precise numerical and geometric models of
solar rhythms to
cate even, optimal lighting.
This thesis applies the quantitative control
of computational methods to the creation of
atmospherically daylit architecture, making
possible spaces whose form, tuned to the
rhythms of changing daylight, reveals latent
celestial cycles
olar TimeLet’s Meet at the Civic Center
Shiyu Wel
Advisor: Brandon Clifford, Readers: Mark Jarzombek, John Ochsendorf
‘The architectural typology of the town hall
has become so prevalent that the term is
used to describe the activities that go on
inside - namely, social gatherings of the
public for purposes of discussion, question,
and feedback to the governing body. The
archetypes of the town hall, whether in 12th
century Italy or 17th century New England,
have functioned not only as the municipal
headquarters with offices and courts, but
also in some cases included markets, church,
warehouse, museum, pub, and so forth. Most
importantly, town halls function as meeting
7
places for the public. However, the town hall
typology does not scale as the municipality
expands. ‘The administrative parts of the town
hall can expand or multiply proportionally
with the population, but the public functions
that were originally embedded in the
architecture have been either displaced into
the large plaza outside of the city hall, or have
disappeared entirely. This thesis project secks
to re-establish the town hall in New York
City’s Civic Center through creating small
spaces for social discourse.Courtroom Characters, Architectural Drama:
A Play in Several Acts
ert White
Advisor: William O'Brien Jr, Readers:
Engaging with the notion that architecture
can serve as a mask, this thesis recasts the
courthouse type as a stage upon which a
particular performance is carried out. For the
characters typically found in a court ~ju
jury, attorney, and accused
the building becomes their mask, a formal
identity to fit a narrative personality. This
project attempts to develop complexity from
the canonical instruments of architecture:
hierarchies, sequence, and narrative. By using
these tools to work through the conception of
lark Jarzombek, Jesal Kapadia
a building, the project facilitates the social
construction of an architectural object at
several different levels. The labyrinthine
nature of the interior is a result of the
negotiations between the characters and the
hierarchies they represent while the trans-
parent facade blurs the reading of frame and
framed, hidden and revealed.
The incarcerated listens in
architectural form both constructs and
negates social hierarchies.Atmospheric Intervention
Rena Yang
Advisor: Brandon Clifford, Readers: John Fernandez, Kazys Varnelis
Its a 25-degree winter day, 12 degrees with wind-
chill in Boston and the sun is not bringing the usual
relief to the numbing of your exposed face and
hands. Another second on the steps of 77 Massachu-
setts Avenue makes you feel you're moments from
frostbite. The sensors on the building acknowledge
‘your presence and a thick warm air grazes your
cheeks. You are overcome with a joyful tingling
sensation. Relief. You slow your steps as your eyes
adjust from the outside while hoping no one plows
into you, The loud buzzing sounds from the wind in
your cars have faded into multiple footsteps around
you. Your eyes adjust to find people zipping by, but
you stand your ground in front of the warm vent to
regain full feeling in your body:
19
‘This thesis asks how architecture can
interact with hostile climate conditions to
create new atmospheric conditions. Archi-
tecture and the machinery of climate control
have created spaces that are perpetually 70
degrees, regardless of the weather outside,
desensitizing the body, and diminishing our
experiences of space. The thesis project aims
to stimulate, provoke, and challenge the
body by sequencing architectural effects to
accentuate, attenuate, appease, and amplify
existing hostile climate conditions, creating
a consciousness of body and space.
Sequence of two types of spacesDiplomatic: Letter from the Architectural Enclave
Jie Zhang
Advisor: Arindam Dutta, Readers: Anton Garcia-Abril, Miho Mazereeuw, Gediminas Urbonas
This thesis concerns itself with boundar-
ies: those of regimes, of culture, of law, and
of social strata. At a time when privatized
enclaves are proliferating, and simultaneously,
architecture claims to innocently create public
space without acknowledgement of these hid-
den, private compounds, the thesis questions
if boundaries between absolute public and
absolute private spaces can be re-configured,
if not erased?
How can architecture both make mani-
fest and orchestrate these boundaries? What
is architectural agency beyond the pursuit
of public-ness? ‘To examine these questions,
this thesis engages with the program of an
embassy, a pseudo-extraterritorial space and
‘the epitome of an enclave. The project col-
lapses the distance between the embassy and
its sponsored network of commercial and
cultural establishments that, explicitly or im-
plicitly, enclose their own boundaries of privi-
lege. It proposes a seemingly open, new US
embassy in Beijing as an eroded fragment of a
boundary to examine the innocence of public
space and to seek an architectural porosity as
a diplomatic response to the persistence of
spatial enclaves and the ideological enclave of
positivism,
Combinatory Border
20Notes
24Notes
22Advisors & Readers
Matthew Bunza Ana Miljacki
Ryan Chin Caitlin Mueller
Brandon Clifford William O'Brien Jr.
Mare Downie John Ochsendort
Arindam Dutta Cristina Parrefio Alonso
John Fernandez Christoph Reinhart
Simon Frommenwiler Brent D. Ryan
Anton Garcia-Abril Andrew Scott
Mark Goulthorpe Rafi Segal
Renée Greon Jeremy Alain Siegel
Ariane Lourie Harrison Anne Whiston Spirn
Mark Jarzombek Paul Steenhuisen
Caroline A. Jones Nader Tehrani
Jesal Kapadia Skylar Tibbits
Terry Knight Gediminas Urbonas
Joel Lamere Kazys Varnelis
Geoff Manaugh Andrzej Zarzycki
Miho Mazereeuw
Cre
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‘The 2015 MArch Graduates
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