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MARCO NIETO 630-885-7173 | marnieto@umich.edu | https://marnieto.com/
EDUCATION Ann Arbor, Michigan Aug 2020 - April 2021
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Master of Urban Design
Ann Arbor, Michigan Aug 2018 - April 2020
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Master of Architecture
Champaign, Illinois Aug 2014 - May 2018
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies
WORK EXPERIENCE Morphosis New York City, New York March 2020 Taubman College Ann Arbor, Michigan Jan 2020 - April 2020 Gensler Chicago, Illinois June 2019 - August 2019
ARCHITECTURE EXTERN Spent a week assisting in the production and development of 3D models, drawings, presentations, and renderings during Taubman’s Spring Externship program. GRADUATE STUDENT INSTRUCTOR Assisted in leading comprehensive discussion sections for Master’s students in John McMorrough’s “Architectural Theory and Criticism” course. ARCHITECTURE INTERN Contributed to the conceptualization, development, and refinement of several massings and analysis for a large-scale confidential project.
ORGANIZATIONS Alpha Rho Chi Champaign, Illinois Sept 2015 - May 2018
ACTIVE MEMBER Professional fraternity for architecture and the allied arts Assisted with organizing several events, such as lectures, reviews, workshops, and firm tours
NOMAS Champaign, Illinois Oct 2016 - May 2018
PRESIDENT AND PROJECT PIPELINE COORDINATOR Organization for minority architecture students Promoted excellence, community engagement, and professional development of its members Organized a volunteer program called Project Pipeline that brings design to children
SKILLS Digital
3DS MAX AFTER EFFECTS ARCGIS GRASSHOPPER ILLUSTRATOR INDESIGN LIGHTROOM MAYA PHOTOSHOP PROCESSING REVIT RHINO SKETCHUP V-RAY
Analog
3D PRINTING LASER CUTTING MOLDING PLASTER RESIN ROBOTICS WELDING
AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS WARMING COMPETITION ArchOutLoud’s competition centered on global warming and climate change
Director’s Choice Sept 2020
BURTON L. KAMPNER MEMORIAL AWARD A memorial award that is presented annually to one student in the thesis program whose final design project has been selected by a Super Jury as the most outstanding
First Place May 2020
ASSOCIATION OF LICENSED ARCHITECTS (ALA) STUDENT MERIT AWARD Acknowledges architectural students who have exhibited exemplary achievement throughout the year
First Place Feb 2018
CRITICAL MASS Student choice award for best studio project in each year
First Place Feb 2018
EDWARD C. EARL PRIZE Awarded to students in the School of Architecture who display excellence in their final studio project for the semester ARCHINECT’S “GET LECTURED” FALL 2017 LECTURE SERIES POSTER Fans of Archinect get to vote for their favorite architecture lecture series poster SESQUICENTENNIAL DESIGN COMPETITION UIUC Competition celebrating the school’s 150th anniversary
Nominated 3x Honorable Mention 1x Dec 2016, May 2017, Dec 2017 Fourth Place Dec 2017 First Place May 2017
EXHIBITIONS INCOMPLETE CITY Incomplete City Workshop
Taubman College Nov 2019
ASHES TO ASHES (TAUBMAN COLLEGE STUDENT SHOW) Institutions Studio
Taubman College April 2019
A3 BUTTON HISTORY AND TIMELINE Personal
Illinois School of Architecture April 2018
WAV_ES (Edward C. Earl Prize and Critical Mass) Arch Design and Development Studio
Illinois School of Architecture Dec 2017
PRAIRIE TOWER (Edward C. Earl Prize) Arch Design and the City Studio
Illinois School of Architecture May 2017
NODE (Edward C. Earl Prize and Critical Mass) Arch Design and the Landscape Studio
Illinois School of Architecture Dec 2016
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AUTOPSIA IN ABSTENTIA
“This thesis explores the complicated history and identity crisis of Chernobyl and examines its post-mortem reality through ameliorative apparatus that allow it to heal from its trauma. It investigates the death or fallout of an event while not being present at it by using the remnants and traces of its existence. This has helped create a profound framework focused on process and factors of time....”
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SURFACE EX_TENSION
“Surface Ex_Tension aims to mitigate issues of coastal cultivation, over-population, expanding off-shore aquaculture, climatic refugees, and other marina deficiencies. While situated in one location, the following system is a proposal that is not tied to or constrained by a specific geography, but rather attaches itself to the edge condition of a landmass that is the coast....”
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FLUIDIC ECHO
“Fluidic Echo explores the sewerage infrastructure of Queen, its current negative cultural connotation, and its potential to exist beyond the framework of its function. By negotiating a new relationship between waste, human habitation, and remediation, the project turns the invisible wastewater treatment process into a sensible landscape. Its design strategy takes the form of a plastic ecology...”
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ASHES TO ASHES
“Inspired by Cedric Price’s Fun Palace and ideologically in between a ‘factory of labor’ and a ‘factory of leisure’, Ashes to Ashes re-imagines City Hall as a cybernetic incubator for human experience and interaction. Using Burning Man and an evocative amalgamation of industrials forms to propagate a social environment that is both ethereal and...”
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PARASITIC POROSITY
“Parasitic Porosity connects people through a scalable, mass-customizable pre-fabricated incubator that aims at visually and formally bridging the gap of social engagement and inactive relationships between users. The proposal utilizes both an environmentally conscious material selection that allows for non-destructive disassembly at the end of its...”
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RE-INVENTING ROJI
“Our scheme brings in the traditional Japanese concept of the “roji”, which are narrow alleyways filled with life and identity, to increase social interaction and accessibility for the older, current residents as well as to make the site more appealing for modern resident groups including college students and young families. The close proximity of all unit types, as well as...”
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PARA//SITE PARA//DISE
“In effort to explore ways we work, ideas of authorship, methodologies, and second glances at representation, this project follows a digital “Exquisite Corpse” model in which the work is passed back and forth, creating an indexical recording of the hands that have touched it and the fingerprints left over. Fascinated by ideas of parasites and Paris sites, we have independently...”
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FLUTTER
“This proposal sought to create a new vernacular for a modern brick. Tasked with creating a fabricated module that is replicated into a wall assembly, this new module has a series of grooves that descend/ascend into the opposite direction, creating a mechanism that locks the next brick into place without the need for fasteners or a secondary structural...”
Marco Nieto
A post-mortem examination of a post-nuclear landscape Special thanks to thesis advisor El Hadi Jazairy
Chernobyl, Ukraine Adaptive Apparatus Winter 2020 Burton L. Kampner Memorial Award for most outstanding thesis project
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Autopsia in Abstentia Introduction 02
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On April 26th, 1986, a safety test on the backup cooling system of reactor #4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine was deemed so routine that the plant’s director didn’t even bother showing up. However, it quickly spiraled out of control as an unexpected power surge and steam buildup led to a series of explosions that blew apart one of four reactors. Considered history’s worst nuclear accident, the Chernobyl disaster released an unfathomable amount of radiation in the atmosphere, and killed 31 people directly, including 28 workers and firefighters who died of acute radiation poisoning during the cleanup. Experts believe it likewise caused tens of thousands of premature deaths related to cancer throughout all of Europe, though the exact number is disputed and actively hidden by the government. To this day, the area around the plant remains so contaminated that it is officially closed off to human habitation and the plant itself is covered by a steel sarcophagus. The site now functions as a critical area of horror that is riddled with complicated memories of pain and guilt.
Timeline of the Chernobyl incident and its repercussions. 03
Autopsia in Abstentia History of Chernobyl 04
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Site map of Autopsia in Abstentia in the year 2052. 05
Autopsia in Abstentia Site Map 06
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By assembling an open landscape system made of diverse interventions in close proximity to the Power Plant, Autopsia in Abstentia is able to focus on re-working and appropriating a set of conditions that affect the local, environmental, and biopolitical. Each of the five interventions target existing issues where the experience of beauty and peace is complicated by the memory and knowledge of human’s impact on nature and work together as a larger system that examine the possibility of co-habitation and co-existence.
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Autopsia in Abstentia
Conceptual Plan of System
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The specific conditions or issues that are targeted include nuclear destruction, nuclear waste, memory and storage, information and monitoring, and carbon capture. These apparatuses vary in scale and scope in order to better comprehend the magnitude and severity of nuclear collapse by fragmenting the site into understandable bits. By fusing high-technology with high-typology, the interventions work in tandem and achieve synchronization between artificial and natural as opposed to obstructing each other’s goals, resulting in an industrial idyll that uncovers and stimulates the autopsy of collapse.
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Autopsia in Abstentia System Evidence Field 10
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Radiosynthetic Needle Nuclear disasters annihilate all traces of identity-driven spaces, forcing the environment to be caught between states of heterotopia and reality at the same time. Now existing on the edge of nostalgia, these evidence fields that once yielded multispecies and multicultural life have lost their mosaic of temporal arcs and spatial rhythms. Nothing can be done except to wait thousands of years for the planet to slowly heal from its wounds. This intervention, embedded deep in the radiated landscape, proposes an adaptive apparatus that expedites the long healing process at the hyperobject scale through various mechanical processes that target contaminated environments through geo-engineering.
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Research and Intervention Isometric/Nuclear Destruction
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Imagining the landscape as a body in pain, the system resembles a thin needle that pierces the earth and stimulates a healing response through the Pripyat river, relieving Chernobyl of its dysphoria. The benefit of a vertical organization allows for multiple responses to occur simultaneously, each affecting a separate stratum of the earth. A magnetic field in the form of an umbrella shields communities from radioactive rays, deflecting them in directions that avoid organic life. A preventative measure in the form of polar arrayed dosimeters scans worldwide channels in search of abnormal radiation levels. A rotating axel generates biological reductive agents that are dispersed towards tagged events and mitigate contamination. These technologies function as an underwater watchtower, scanning the surrounding sites for any potential problematic traces that can be dealt with.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Section Perspective 14
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Radiosynthetic Needle imagines how radiation can be actively and aggressively monitored, providing a sense of security for the immediate surroundings of Chernobyl, other current contaminated sites such as Fukushima, and any other dormant or future events.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Evidence Field of Parts 16
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Autopsia in Abstentia Underwater Perspective 18
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Bioremedial Bubbles Transuranic nuclear waste, a byproduct of nuclear production, is not only harmful but also inutile in that it does not boast a current means of recycling. Often abandoned in remote and distant sites, over 250,000 tons of this waste is left to sit idle, unable to produce a beneficial function for society. This intervention looks at the bioremediation of radioactive waste and proposes the use of radiotrophic fungi to catalyze chemical reactions and allow for decontamination, turning the half-life of harmful radiation into the second life of harmless chemical energy that could be utilized in local communities as a replacement for unsustainable fossil fuels.
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Research and Intervention Isometric/Nuclear Waste
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The intervention, whose forms are derived from mushrooms and their caps, offers an educational experience for users through bridges and transparent facades. These bubbles grow fungi capable of radiosynthesis through a complicated chain of events. A concrete activation chamber located directly underneath the base of the half-dome hosts nuclear waste, allowing its radiation to contaminate egg-shaped bulbs above. Cryptococcus neoformans, a melanin containing fungi that is stored in the decanter on the left, is macerated by a liquid solution that is then extracted through pneumatic pipes and dropped into nozzles leading into the prepared bulbs, igniting the radiosynthesis process. After several weeks of being housed in a climate-controlled growth sphere, the chemical reaction has taken place and produced a transmuted form of nuclear waste that is useful to future generations.
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Section Perspective of Parts
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Bioremedial Bubbles displays the possibilities of a symbiotic coexistence between artificial and natural processes, showing the possibility of life and resilience in the post-nuclear age of the Anthropocene.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Evidence Field of Parts 24
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Bioremedial Bulbs Perspective
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Reverse Repository Current containment protocols call for the storage of millions of barrels of highly radioactive waste in secure underground chambers 2,150 feet beneath the surface where they remain isolated until their risk has diminished, which could take up to 100,000 years. This waste is often transferred into large concrete storage casks where they are then disposed and stored of in deep geological spaces called repositories. It is imperative that these sites remain undisturbed for the duration of the decaying process, in effort to ensure public and environmental safety. This intervention proposes the memorialization of the traditional underground organization and ritual of a repository through an above-ground marker that acknowledges the burial process while additionally warning present, near future, and distant future visitors of the consequences and dangers it possesses.
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Research and Intervention Isometric/Memory and Storage
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The spaces surrounding and leading into the scheme offer an educational means for the public to understand the intellectual journey relating to the nuclear industry and its funeral procession. As they begin to approach the culmination of the site marker, and further stimulated by anechoic qualities and a reorienting experience, they begin to acknowledge the danger of human intrusion. Symbolized by a massive resonance chamber, the final monument itself actively animates the ideological capacity of the intangible waste hidden far below the earth. Sounds echo throughout the chamber, allowing users to reflect on the afterlife of nuclear waste and the birth of our permanence. The qualities of this monolithic architecture designed for the future also functions as an experimental exhibit for the present through a vertical memory wall that contains soil samples and artifacts of nuclear events.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Section Perspective 30
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Reverse Repository proposes a perpetual and sentient architecture that outlives chemicals and materials, but not humanity, allowing for the establishment of a relationship between humans and buried nuclear waste that anticipates differing nomenclature.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Evidence Field of Parts 32
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Resonance Chamber Perspective
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Half-Life Lab Half-life is the time taken for the radioactivity of a specific isotope to decay to half of its original value, becoming safe to handle. Scientists use this method of dating to determine the approximate age of organic objects and thus the story of its origins and their history of human use. The exploration into this characteristic property creates an awareness of mortality, death rates, and lasting signatures. In other words, understanding halflives can allow us to frame our pre-determined existence within the greater rhythmic cycle of time. This intervention provides monitoring, data storage, laboratory equipment, and information accessibility in order to provide a new transparency to the nuclear industry and their efforts, while also incorporating research utilities for speculating a post-nuclear society after geo-engineering; the second half of our lives.
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Research and Intervention Isometric/Information and Monitoring
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This intervention takes the form of an open-ended infrastructural framework, allowing necessary facilities to plug in when necessary over the lifespan of the project through pre-fabricated vertical cores and deconstructable steel components, creating architectural attachments or quasi-parasites that pursue curiosities. The research center can simultaneously perform studies of the landscape, containment of nuclear energy, climate engineering experiments, geological manipulation, and other interventions of the micro and macro scale that communicate a willingness to explore the rhizomatic and infinite relationships the site and its complex qualities has to offer.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Section Perspective 38
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Half-Life Lab creates a cybernetic ecology that forms the scaffolding for post-human territory, merging contemplative and cerebral speculation with the cyberpunk tradition of post-apocalyptic ruin as a playground for dreams to play and escape.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Evidence Field of Parts 40
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Autopsia in Abstentia Exterior Perspective 42
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Carbo Conclusus Carbon has a fascinating function as both the universal building block for life due to its ability to form complex, stable molecules with itself and other elements, as well as the toxic consequence of anthropogenic activity that is burning our planet, particularly through the abuse of fossil fuels. Modern building-scale carbon management technologies, such as direct air capture farms and geologic carbon sequestration, offer promising solutions for allowing our planet to take a deep, clean breath and provide carbon-neutral resources for our species. This intervention proposes hortus conclusus, enclosed gardens that are maintained and supplemented entirely by an array of deployed carbon dioxide capturing strategies, allowing the bipolar chemical element to become a tangible, ameliorative, and recyclable process that benefits the survival of displaced and deprived ecologies.
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Research and Intervention Isometric/Carbon Capture
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The capturing of carbon dioxide from the compromised condition of the atmosphere allows for it to be integrated in controlled greenhouses as solar fuel, either densified into consumable pellets or directly pumped into greenhouses. These methods proceed to boost the plant’s photosynthesis and yields by up to 20%. Hydroponic systems, garden racks, and a vertical basket allow for visitors to escape reality and enter an oasis of sustainable byproducts. The aim of these spaces is to promote and assist an increasing biodiversity, creating an enhanced environment that grows and thrives in light of apocalyptic conditions.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Section Perspective 46
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Carbo Conclusus speculates a synchronous mergence of industrial archetypes, commercial plants and greenhouses, in effort to create a synthetic landscape that stimulates our current resources and practices.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Evidence Field of Parts 48
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Autopsia in Abstentia Atrium Perspective 50
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As a spatial and temporal terrain, the landscape of Chernobyl is continuously changing in unpredictable ways. Chernobyl is steered by the relationship of the site with its specific and complicated context and history – creating an evolving system instead of a static image. The five interventions take advantage of the slow, natural procedures of growth, maturity, and decay by assuming the role of systems that are guided by time and process. Their behaviors are determined by both external conditions and mechanisms of control. This systems approach goes beyond the concern of staged environments and happenings, it deals in an adaptive fashion with the larger problem of boundary concepts and planetary acupuncture.
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Autopsia in Abstentia System Evidence Field 52
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These stories represent a fraction of infinite explorations that utilize guilt and uncertainty as a tool to raise awareness, sensitivity, concern, and action that documents the relationship between flora, fauna, infrastructure, and energy. By synthesizing the cosmology of parallels between Chernobyl and today, I learned that we must be able to look at the past conditions of transformation, present conditions of neglect, and the future possibilities of resilience in order to overcome collapse and prevent voids as they happens around us, allowing us to shape and benefit the wellbeing of our world.
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Autopsia in Abstentia Site Implementation 54
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An instrument for aquatic urbanity Submission for ArchChoice” Out Loud’s Awarded “Director’s for “Warming” Competition ArchOutLoud’s Warming Competition
Antofagasta, Chile Coastal Attachment Summer 2020 Team: Luis Arjona, Jonathan Craig, Philip Elmore, and Marco Nieto
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Surface Ex_Tension Introduction 56
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The notion of urban territory has remained land-based in its applications and in the language of architectural discourse. Conversely, water has been interpreted mainly as a resource or complementary object, rarely as the key subject of urbanity. The subsequent creation of a coastal extension brings into light the political potential water has as both a speculative claim on territory and a system for bargaining. Representing only a segment of an ideal system, this spine covers a wide array of facilities dedicated to creating an aquatic instrument that reconfigures the domain of territoriality and its influence on architecture and planning by focusing on “hydro” driven concepts and not just “terra” derived practices.
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Surface Ex_Tension Site Isometric 58
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The typology for these structures is inspired by traditional fishing villages found in Asiatic communities. By borrowing certain cues that offer flexibility, the form provides housing, social interaction, farming systems, coral reefs, desalination stations, and layered opportunities for sustainable innovation.
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Surface Ex_Tension Section Perspective 60
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The creation of a greenhouse environment that is surrounded by and filled with both land-based and hydro-grown flora allows for a synchronized setting that provides ample space for aquatic and terrestrial ecologies to thrive with humans as a part of the experience.
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Surface Ex_Tension
Greenhouse Perspective
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Underneath the extension lies the aquaculture program. 63
Surface Ex_Tension Worm’s Eye 64
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Surface Ex_Tension Floor Plan 66
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Fluidic Echo A cultural wastewater landscape
Willets Point, Queens, New York City Urban Design Plan Fall 2020
Fluidic Echo explores the sewerage infrastructure of Queen, its current negative cultural connotation, and its potential to exist beyond the framework of its function. By negotiating a new relationship between waste, human habitation, and remediation, the project turns the invisible wastewater treatment process into a sensible landscape. Its design strategy takes the form of a “plastic ecology” – a malleable and simultaneous combination of ecological infrastructures and cultural programs that stimulate the prospects of the bleak and contaminated conditions of the site. Each step is varied and operates through graduating scales of exchange, incorporating elements designed to operate individually and in unison.
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Fluidic Echo Introduction 68
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 The project began with mapping, which sought to access and understand the inadequate sewer infrastructure in Queens, its relationship to the pattern of urbanization aboveground, and where sewerage may become accidentally sensible due to infrastructural failure. This is done by examining sewersheds, networks of pipes and discharge points, intersections and pockets formed by sewerage infrastructure, and heat maps that distill the areas that tend to be the most vulnerable or compromised through the collection of complaint calls and the neighborhood’s relationship to topography.
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Fluidic Echo
Sewerage Map of Queens
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Previously highlighted in the map were the four wastewater treatment plants in Queens, and utilizing Kevin Lynch’s five qualities for an image of the city, a similar logic is applied to these plants in effort to uncover patterns that showcase how waste both becomes legible and demands legibility. These urban chunks are a very small portion of what keeps urban spaces well-managed, but their operations and organization could be interpolated in Fluidic Echo. The material inputs, outputs, and processes of these treatment plants are then documented to uncover phenomenological opportunities for intervention. The 14 treatment plants in New York City receive 1.3 billion gallons of influent every day and undergo a five-stage 10 hour long process that mimics how natural landscapes purify water before it is then discharged as clean water back into rivers. But there are certain leftover materials and sensations, such as waste, biosolids, odor, and steam, that could potentially be leveraged as building blocks for the project.
(Above) Exploring wastewater treatment plants as objects of aesthetic sensibility. (Below) Byproducts and highlights of the wastewater treatment process. 71
Fluidic Echo
Examination of Wastewater Treatment Plants
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With wastewater treatment plants in mind, now there were a series of formal precedents that could be further studied in order to enact an urban design proposal. But rather than taking the form of a discrete object or single venue in the center of the Iron Triangle in the form of a traditional plant, Fluidic Echo utilizes the idea of a loop to create a fully accessible circuit that activates the entire site and its surrounding context through a cultural wastewater landscape.
(Above) The traditional lot of a treatment plant is a closed campus. (Below) The proposed loop promises an open and productive circuit. 73
Fluidic Echo Formal Logic 74
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A preliminary study was conducted of the site’s geometry and contextual relationships to productive and cultural points of interest in Queens, such as other wastewater plants and scenographic sites, to create the geometry for the loop. The loop functions as both an organizational tool for programming and a platform for negotiating the way life and waste can be intertwined, while pointing to other notable sites in the borough.
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Fluidic Echo Site Study 76
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Adjacent Programs
Phytoremediative Point Grid 77
Fluidic Echo Additional Site Studies Circulation
Identifying Existing Industrial Vacancies 78
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The loop presents itself as a re-distribution of the typical wastewater plant. Each structure and phase that was previously documented is spread out and linked by a winding pathway that sutures public life into public works, allowing the fluidic devices to be enjoyed culturally and recreationally. In its final realized form, the project explores the importance of bringing the invisible processes of wastewater treatment into the visible public space
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Fluidic Echo
Overall Site Plan
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The mechanical advantage of this strategy allows the self-contained system made up of intersecting parts and processes to be accessed by the public, overcoming the schism between waste and habitation. As a synthetic wastewater cultural landscape, these infrastructures suggest new forms of social life and aesthetic experience.
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Fluidic Echo Site Isometric 82
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The six main stages that comprise the majority of the wastewater loop are upgraded versions of their respective phases in the typical wastewater treatment plant process. By becoming architectural interventions rather than remaining infrastructural objects, they’re able to curate a human experience around waste rather than above or through it.
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Fluidic Echo Infrastructure
Screening
Desalination
Clarifiers
Aeration + Disinfection
Sludge Treatment
Discharge
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The top half of the project features a water-based experience. By extending Willet’s Point to the North and into Flushing Bay, the community is directly connected to the water, reconciling the bay as a new public and productive space. This comes in the form of a new recreational promenade, docks, observation deck, gardens, pools, and more.
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Fluidic Echo Site Plan 86
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Fluidic Echo
Biosolid Perspective
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The bottom half of the project takes inspiration from the Flushing Meadow Corona Park to the South and the residential areas to the West and collapses them to create a new natural and cultural district. This includes an aquarium, public lawns, a museum, an apartment building, and various educational wastewater programs that link them together.
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Fluidic Echo Site Plan 90
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Fluidic Echo
Desalination Perspective
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Interior Perspectives
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An industrial city hall in the desert
Black Rock City, Nevada City Hall Fall 2018
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Ashes to Ashes Introduction 96
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Burning Man is an annual festival held in Black Rock City, a temporary city erected in the desert of northwest Nevada. For roughly 10 days, tens of thousands of ‘burners’ attend to create a fleeting, experimental, and participatory metropolis that is entirely dedicated to self-expression, whether it be through art, music, dancing, partying, or other recreational activities. This energy generates new connections between individuals and their creative powers, allowing them to surpass social limits and standards set by society and the outside, greater world. Since 1986, Burning Man has created a mirage-like sanctuary for those looking for an escape or re-invention of their identities. Catharsis and creation through annihilation is embedded within the spirit of Burning Man, as signified by the climax of the event; a symbolic ritual in which a large wooden effigy of “The Man” is immolated, meant to touch as many people’s lives as possible before it flickers away in the wind. Stories have been shared of burners who have lost loved ones and have experienced the burn as a release of negative thoughts and emotions that have been eating them away, allowing them to return to their lives in a restful and peaceful state. As a result, the ashes left over post-burn are incredibly rich with emotion and memories of those who attend, manifesting a sense of permanence in light of the temporary experiences.
(Above) Photo of the burning of The Man. Reuters/Jim Urquhart. (Right) Radar image of Black Rock City taken from the TerraSAR-Xsatellite in 2011. 97
Ashes to Ashes
Context and Culture of Burning Man
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Burning Man adopts several principles that ensure environmentally and socially conscious attitudes that make up the selfsustaining and self-reliant culture of the multifaceted movement. One of these includes MOOP, or “Matter Out of Place�, which refers to the origin of objects and people. Specifically meaning that anything that is originally not of the desert playa should be removed by the end of the event, ensuring that no trace is left and that the site’s original and platonic state is preserved for future generations to enjoy. I made the realization that as much as the playa is preserved of any waste and signs of inhabitation, there is one material that is impossible to clean up and dispose of; the ash left over from the burns. This material has been accumulating over the desert playa for over 30 years, creating a mnemonic landscape. This particular idea fascinated me due to the potentials of overlapping realities and quantum entanglement, providing a backbone for my project. How can you create a familiar sensation in the middle of the desert where all matter is considered out of place? What can arise from demise? Can anything truly belong where nothing else does?
(Right) The process and assembly of Burning Man in the style of IKEA assembly 99
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Assembly Diagram of Master Plan and Camps
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As traces from the past, silos, grain elevators, smokestacks, and other similar structures are left standing idle, yet monumental, in our post-industrial landscapes. They’re seen as physical manifestations of highly functional thinking. Standing shiny and still in semi-rural and rural landscapes, these structures are the formal columns of contemporary temples that represent industrialization and progress. Thus, they possess high recognition value and are extremely visible from afar, no matter the context. By utilizing these ethereal remnants of a past civilization, alongside the sustainable potential of the ash within the landscape, the zeitgeist and adaptive ideology of Burning Man can be enhanced by giving new purpose to decommissioned, forgotten monuments that are pollinated across our country. By mixing high-technology with high-typology, artificial with natural, memory with experience, permanence with the temporary, a city hall for a non-city can now properly exist between realities.
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Ashes to Ashes Concept Isometric 102
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An insignificant and unmarked lot in the desert playa is chosen, as the exact location isn’t important but its status and proximity is. The site is then split into seven components, each of which focuses on materiality, post-Fordism, the human experience, or the Burning Man Experience. They are made from either pre-existing industrial structures or are made on-site from fly ash bricks that requires cooperation to fully assemble. This occurs during a post-festival festival.
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Ashes to Ashes
Re-purposed Interventions
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Ashes to Ashes Section Perspective
This section demonstrates the access and circulation of various spaces. 1. A decommissioned smoke stack is aligned parallel to the grain elevators, offering the opportunity to pass through it and experience a tall space that focuses on the sky. 2. A catwalk introduces elevated horizontal circulation. 3. Vertical circulation offers a skylight to allow for a natural light to fill the space. 4. Grain elevators are gutted and floor slabs are introduced, creating a multi-layered museum experience. These designs are meant to introduce an unfamiliar sense of verticality in the desert.
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Ashes to Ashes Section Perspective
This section demonstrates the program and earthly use of various spaces. 1. Silos that store filtered ash that can be released onto visitors below. 2. A core sample of the desert condition over the past 100 years. 3. Gathering space available for smaller burns and other activities. 4. Auditorium for various civic needs. 5. Chambers which are available to the public and meant to be used to reflect and take time to yourself. These designs are meant to allow space for spiritual exploration and reflection.
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The above obliques show the assembly, growth, and erosion of the site, city hall, and Burning Man as a whole as it seemingly heads towards a more corporate and mainstream festival. Year 0: Decommissioned and acquired industrial infrastructure from external locations are transported to site and assembled into their proper locations. Using existing structure and techniques and placing them in the desert creates a familiar yet dreamy sight which feeds into the ‘Matter Out Of Place’ studio mantra and the Burning Man ‘Leave No Trace’ philosophy. Year 5: Civic programs are made out of fly ash bricks during the construction phase, using the industrial structures which were previously installed and provide resources and support. Work is done during a post-festival festival, where volunteers are invited to collect ash immediately after the burning and start work on the city hall. Year 7: Ashes to Ashes is fully assembled, providing a spiritual connection to Burning Man while also forming the backbone for organized chaos like never before seen. Year 20: Burning Man as a whole heads towards a more corporate and mainstream event, attracting sponsors and attractions that distort the original premise. Year X: In a distant future, Burning Man and its subsequent facilities are reduced to ruins due to environmental conditions and disuse, becoming one with the desert and creating a new attraction. with the temporary, a city hall for a non-city can now properly exist between realities.
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Ashes to Ashes Temporal Obliques 110
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Ashes to Ashes Playa Perspective 112
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A pre-fab experience focused on light and views
Creteil, Paris, France
Special thanks to professors Jono Sturt and Clement Blanchet, as well as Vinci Construction
Apartment Building Spring 2019
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Parasitic Porosity Introduction 114
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Map showing the contextual and cultural relationships across Paris. 115
Parasitic Porosity Paris Map 116
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The proposal’s massing  reacts appropriately to the idiosyncratic qualities, urban context, and language of the city around the site. For example, we noticed that the immediate buildings around the site have a wide range of heights, but they all share gable roofs. So, portions of the building are pushed and pulled to match the heights of the adjacent residences, and the gable roofs are mimicked to create a flowing sight line, avoiding obstruction. Specific features to Parasitic Porosity include a passage to a courtyard that allows the public to flow through, split balconies that allow for multi-level interaction between units on separate floors, roof gardens with interior views and a playful use of shading, and spiral stairs that connect the units on each level together through flying walkways.
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Parasitic Porosity Massing
Extruded site
Courtyard
Height adjacencies
Split access
Gable roofs
Parasitic balconies
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Alongside the standard units given to us by Vinci, our team developed duplex units on the highest floors that utilize vertical circulation. Spiral stairs are inserted inside the units which allows for the living room to move upstairs and become a loft directly adjacent to the provided outdoor extension. An extension of the spiral stairs, two larger ones are placed in the courtyard which acts as the main circulation for the users. Through a simple 90 ° rotation, the exterior stairs begin to create different scenarios for the corridors, or ‘flying walkways’, to spread out to the units, thus creating a layering effect that allows for a unique experience of shading and lighting to transcend onto the ground floor.
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Units and Interior Circulation
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Ground Floor 121
Parasitic Porosity Floor Plans with Shifting Walkways
First Floor
Second Floor
Third Floor
Fourth Floor
Fifth Floor
Sixth Floor 122
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Parasitic Porosity Section Perspective 124
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Parasitic Porosity Section Perspective 126
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Throughout the design process, we adhered to the attention restoration theory and took a critical regionalism approach, which helped dictate the way the building stimulates and offers a connection between the material sensitivity of Europe as well as their affinity towards exterior space, by lending green space and visual/physical relationships to the outdoors whenever possible. Our proposal provides a unique residential typology that offers a vast collection of socially active features and gestures that utilize and push the boundaries of pre-fabrication in a global context, attempting to overcome the idea that pre-fab has restrictions and cannot be blended seamlessly into the architectural landscape.
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Detailed Section and Walkway Perspectives
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A high density complex centered on interaction
Senri New Town, Osaka, Japan
Special thanks to professors Craig Borum and Claudia Wigger, as well as Osaka University
Residential Development Fall 2019 Team: Marco Nieto, Jenny Scarborough, and Elizabeth Sinyard
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Re-Inventing Roji Introduction 130
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Senri New Town, Osaka, Japan was built after World War II ended to address the mass need for affordable housing in the wake of the war’s destruction. Over the past 60 years, the first few generations have stayed, but the younger generations have moved away as they have begun to have families of their own. The current population consists of primarily elderly residents despite the site’s proximity to several universities and a major transit hub. However, the current development did not consider accessibility and does not properly serve the older population with its steep walkways, narrow staircases, and its lack of community gathering space. The units feel very disconnected from each other and the only proper public space that people can gather in are abandoned parks and lots.
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History and Context of Senri New Town
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Our new scheme brings in the traditional Japanese concept of the Roji to increase social interaction and accessibility for the current residents as well as to make the site more appealing for a broader, more contemporary demographic, including students and young families. As defined by Heidi Imai, a roji is, “...a narrow alleyway understood as an ordinary landscape providing a [mixed-use] setting for everyday life and place based identities being shaped by varied everyday practices and collective experiences.� The close proximity of all unit types as well as the network of pathways and community spaces encourages relationships between residents. Additionally, given the variety of units, both single floor as well as multi-level, the new part of Senri New Town allows accessibility for people of all ages and abilities.
(Above) Roji implemented on the Senri New Town site. (Below) Roji taking various shapes and forms as it weaves between buildings. 133
Re-Inventing Roji Site Map and Diagram 134
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Three different building typologies are introduced to the site, and they each serve a purpose in exploring how the Japanese Roji interacts with and responds to the architecture. The Roji is the main site feature as it navigates residents and visitors through the neighborhood and provides spaces for collective experience and community interaction. The materiality of the Roji is specific to the area in which it is serving, such as: in areas where there is more activity and higher density buildings, the Roji is wider and has more paths of travel. In areas that are used primarily by residents, the Roji is smaller and has a finer grain of detail when considering steps to specific units or gardens. In addition to the Roji, there are small garden areas and a larger park that provide areas for residents and visitors of all ages to gather and meet together.
Overall site 135
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Site Isometric and Building Typologies
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Re-Inventing Roji Interior Perspective 138
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To create a contemporary feel within the traditional and neutral setting of Senri New Town, we’ve introduced wood panels and battens, CLT structure, a dark gray tile, and a very light gray plaster. As prominent materials in Osaka, Kyoto and Japan, the use of these materials keeps within the fabric of traditional Japanese architecture while offering a new texture to the existing neighborhood. Additionally, the inclusion of vegetation within the material pallete was particularly necessary. Plant life was apparent throughout the various buildings, however these spaces were curated by the residents; not every unit had the ability to grow their own gardens within their building. During the design and integration of our three typologies, spaces for individual and community gardens were included such as: roof top gardens, winter gardens, and spaces for green walls.
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Floor Plan and Roji Perspectives
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In effort to create a simple and easily deployable structural system, we based our units and structure on the proportions of the Japanese Ken measurement system. The basic building block of this system is the tatami mat with 3’x6’ dimensions. This measurement system has come to inform Japanese construction as many rooms are designed specifically for certain numbers and configurations of tatami mats. Some of the most common configurations of mats include 4, 4.5, 6 and 8 mat rooms. These various layouts have a least common multiple dimension of 12’, so to accommodate various room uses and mat configurations, we established a 12’x12’ primary structural column grid. Our structural system is primarily composed of columns and load bearing walls all composed of cross laminated timber. CLT is an incredibly strong and relatively new material in the construction industry, providing consistency with traditional Japanese wood construction methods.
6’
3’
3’ 12’ 24’ 48’
Tatami Mat Configurations 141
Tartan Grid Organizational Grid
Re-Inventing Roji Structural Diagrams and Unit Isometrics Row House Units
Courtyard Units
Apartment Units 142
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Re-Inventing Roji Section Perspective 144
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Re-Inventing Roji Section Perspective 146
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Re-Inventing Roji Model Photos 148
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Symbiotic relationships between process and product Special thanks to our advisor Perry Kulper.
??? Multiperspectival Representation Winter 2020 Team: Marco Nieto and Abby Stock
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Para//Site Para//Dise Introduction 150
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The first approach has been that of the parasite. Various projects and texts, ranging from Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Parasite installation to Michel Serres’ “Parasite” novel, have created an idiosyncratic laboratory of speculation that leverages taxonomy, etymology, alliteration, behavior, analogous relationships, and other pieces of evidence in effort to explore and investigate the lessons we can learn from the bodies and forces around us.
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Para//Site Para//Dise Mapping the Lifespan of Cordecyps A drawing that documents the stages and timeline of Cordyceps, a parasitic fungus that hijacks an insect’s behavior and manipulates the host to commit self-sacrifice in order to disperse the fungus’ spores. 152
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Mapping the way in which various parts of the word “parasite” can offer possibilities when combined with Michel Serres’ definitions. 153
Para//Site Para//Dise Parasite Definitiosn and Parasite Drawing
The biological parasite, “...changes hostility into hospitality, exchanges outside for inside.� 154
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The social parasite, for example, “...is a guest who exchanges his talk, praise, and flattery for food from his host. He obtains energy and pays for it in information.� 155
Para//Site Para//Dise Parasite Drawings
The static parasite, “...is the noise in a system or the interference in a channel.� 156
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The second approach focuses on constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing Le Corbusier’s “Walls Against Paris” and its staged elements alongside other notable villas.
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Le Corbusier Villa Collages
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Le Corbusier Villa Collage
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A deceptive modern brick Special thanks to professors Laida Aguirre and Asa Peller
Ann Arbor, Michigan Fabrication Fall 2018
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Introduction
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Kneading Clay with Dye Photos
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Kneading Clay with Dye Photos
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Printed Bricks Photos
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Zoomed In Brick Photo
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Brick Photos
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Configurations and Technical Drawings
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