2020 Thesis

REVIEW SPRING 2020

MIT Department of Architecture

Thesis Reviews Spring 2020 Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Design 4 5 6 7

Zidane Abubakar Jierui Fang Effie Jia Annie Zhang

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Shepard Halsey Dennis Steven Kosovac Catherine Lie Patrick Weber Finn Xu

BSAD BSAD BSAD BSAD

Master of Architecture MArch MArch MArch MArch MArch

Master of Science in Building Technology 17 18 19

Demi Fang Mariana Liebman-Pelaez Nicole Liwen Tang

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Nawaf Bin Ayyaf Almogren Nathaniel Elberfeld Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman María Esteban Casañas Melissa Gutiérrez Soto Mengqi Moon He Rachel Pei Hirsch Yichen Jia Meng-Fu Kuo Yuxuan Liu Semine Long-Callesen Joud Mabsout Molly Mason Nof Nathansohn Jim Peraino Ayesha Shaikh Charu Sharma Michael Stradley Shaoying Tan Anna Vasileiou Piyush Verma Haoyu Wang

SMBT SMBT SMBT

Master of Science in Architecture Studies Aga Khan Program (AKPIA) Computation Architectural Design Architectural Design Urbanism Urbanism Aga Khan Program (AKPIA) Computation Urbanism Computation History, Theory and Criticism Urbanism Computation Computation Computation Aga Khan Program (AKPIA) Building Technology Architectural Design Computation Architectural Design Urbanism Urbanism

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Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Design

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Zidane Abubakar Jierui Fang Effie Jia Annie Zhang

BSAD BSAD BSAD BSAD

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A New Paradigm of Perception Zidane Abubakar (BSAD) Advisor: Axel Kilian What we experience on a day to day basis, our reality, is dictated by what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell — what we sense. These daily experiences are directly tempered by our perceptions. On one end of the spectrum, the hearing or visually impaired may experience fewer senses than most. On the other end of the spectrum exist Synesthetes — people with the condition known as Synesthesia, who experience a reality with blended senses.

Synesthesia is a condition in which stimuli in one sense involuntarily and automatically trigger perceptions in another sense.

of synesthesia, from art installations to audiovisual performances. While they are interesting utilizations of synesthesia, these replications aren’t accessible or widely known to the general public, and so the potential for this revolution has not been fully realized.

This thesis asks the question: How can we learn from synesthesia to discover and design new, useful, and accessible ways of perceiving the world? This thesis theorizes possible ways of creating new sensory experiences that utilize Synesthesia as a model in order to create new, enhanced perceptions that are as accessible as possible to the general public. Specifically, this thesis will focus on creating a new sensory experience, the realm of which will be influenced by results from a survey of the MIT population, with Arduino tools, as they grant access to a great deal of senses, and are relatively cheap and easy to construct.

The unique experience that this extra layer of perception presents could potentially revolutionize the human experience by offering a new paradigm of creation and perception. Unfortunately, Synesthesia is a very rare phenomenon that only affects a very small portion of the population. There have been some successful endeavors to replicate a variety of different forms

A first prototype of a device that allows the user to sonically perceive magnetic fields.

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Responsive Wearables for Rheumatoid Arthritis Jierui Fang (BSAD) Advisor: Onur Gun

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and create more responsive and adaptive assistive technology for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), using computational design methods to embed individualized data within the design and materiality.

accommodate the wide variety of tasks that arthritic patients go about performing in their daily lives. When sized too small, the wearable can aggravate pain and symptom flare-up or exacerbate other afflictions, while too large of size has no healing effects.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, autoimmune disease that attacks the joints and causes progressive deformity and bone erosion. Currently there is no cure, but the disease can be slowed down through a combination of drugs and physiotherapies.

RA is a painful disease with periods of painful swelling and inflammation directed mostly at joint linings and cartilage.

This thesis asks whether and how computational design methods can be applied to alleviating unique pain points faced daily by people with chronic health issues such as RA and other physical joint or musculature needs. Given that each person suffering from rheumatoid arthritis manifests the debilitating effects of the disease in different ways, this leads to the question of how more effective and personalized assistive devices can be designed using computational design methods that do not put the onus on the user to perform corrective action, but rather automatically offer responsive support as needed.

Besides invasive drugs with intensive treatment routines, there are some assistive devices such as braces, splints, and compressive gloves that people with RA have used to minimize swelling in affected joints, lessen ulnar deviating forces, and reduce pain. Many people are unwilling to wear these devices because they can be quite obtrusive and hinder patients’ lifestyles. Most assistive devices are only available in set sizes and do not 5

Living Tiny Effie Jia (BSAD) Advisor: Leslie K. Norford; Reader: Cristina Parreño With a significant portion of the world’s population moving into cities, urban environments are rapidly depleting earth’s natural resources. Never before in history has change occurred so quickly and so drastically in cities, resulting in unprecedented consequences of growth.

The drastic amount of urbanization predicted to take place could lead to significant issues such as unsafe water, informal settlements, and urban sprawl.

Furthermore, the rapid influx of urban migrants could exacerbate other problems, including poverty, slum development, and social disruptions. As cities become increasingly dense and populated, how can a different scale of living provide solutions to the environmental, social, and physical health of urban areas and their inhabitants?

By examining an existing site in Austin, Texas, it aims to imagine a co-operative society overlaid upon the neighborhood of Mueller Tower District. The role of architecture in urban futures relies on not only the design of buildings and spatial environments, but also the crafting of communities and social worlds. Through envisioning a new scale of architecture, “Living Tiny” devises a secondary system of inhabitation for already existing and future cities.

Through the study of tiny house and cohousing precedents, the thesis aims to evaluate and analyze both the architectural and social design of existing spaces. Building upon the understanding of such designs, the thesis proposes a system and structure for collective living in the neighborhood of Mueller Tower District in Austin, Texas, a site that envisions novel, collaborative, and sustainable communities of the future.

This thesis explores the creation of collective tiny homes to provide a new hierarchy of living for urban dwellers.

Tiny Living design proposal, floorplan and sitemap.

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Designing for Focus in a Distracted World: A Proposal for New Design Heuristics Annie Zhang (BSAD) Advisor: Lee Moreau People feel happy when deeply focused on something meaningful. Yet, it is increasingly difficult to focus in our attention-extractive economy because the technology driving our consumer products exceeds our human vulnerabilities. Cognition research has long shown that constantly being distracted by our devices decreases our performance on complex tasks and deteriorates our emotional health. So far, attempted solutions (such as screen usage limits) have largely placed the responsibility of corrective action on the user. However when it comes to more traditionally harmful products, the responsibility lies with product designers to design less harmful products and warn users of risks. Why should it be any different for our devices?

The responsibility still lies with the product designers to create products that don’t exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities.

However, designers have no framework to follow. Designers are currently generating concepts based on shortsighted design heuristics (guidelines) that aim to reduce product failure and user confusion when using the product. Instead of only considering functionality, we need a framework to turn us toward the freedom of focus. New heuristics should be introduced that help us to prioritize the protection of our minds and allow users to reclaim control of their attention.

This research details a process for discovering new focus-oriented design heuristics, as well as a proposal for 10 focus-oriented heuristics that have been demonstrated to improve the quality of concepts generated by junior designers.

Adam Riches, 2019 Accessed at https://facebook. com/AdamRichesArtist/photos /a.307283362760529/1201325003356356/

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Master of Architecture

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Shepard Halsey Dennis Steven Kosovac Catherine Lie Patrick Weber Finn Xu

MArch MArch MArch MArch MArch

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Cyclic Matter(s) in Architecture Shepard Halsey (MArch) Advisors: Cristina ParreĂąo, Jennifer Cookke; Reader: Mark Jarzombek

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untitled, ambiguity in architecture Dennis Steven Kosovac (MArch) Advisor: Andrew Scott; Readers: Rosalyne Shieh, Hans Tursack

This thesis seeks to expand the definition of Venturi’s concept of ambiguity to include meanings that, extending beyond the formal and semiotic, are rooted in narrative. It takes as a precedent the work of Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, two artists whose book Evidence explores both formal and narrative ambiguity in photography. This expanded definition of ambiguity evokes mercurial and conflicting thoughts, feelings, and memories.

are reproduced inversely while their materiality and tectonic languages are replaced by new mass timber structural systems and surfaces. The color of reflected light differs sharply from the existing buildings and, together with the mirrored forms, evokes divergent memories and feelings associated with the work of photographers like Diane Arbus and Stephen Shore, who capture the melancholy, peculiarities and optimism of American urban abjection.

untitled is presented as a sequence of drawings, renderings, and photographs that describe a series of interventions in the industrial town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a site of narrative tensions between strife and community, past and present, mind and body (Braddock is home to both the first Carnegie Library and the Edgar Thomson Steel Works).

The dialectic between the town and the mill is represented by a new institutionally significant building, inserted at a radically skewed angle in the large open site adjacent to the library. This singular anomaly, resembling the Thomson Steel Mill, represents the capacity of mirroring to make architecture participate in an expanding field.

Additions are made to selected existing structures by mirroring them onto adjacent empty lots. The building bounds

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sourdough architecture Catherine Lie (MArch) Advisors: Brandon Clifford, Axel Kilian; Reader: Garnette Cadogan Architecture today works on the basis of fragmentation: it is perceived as a one-man show, divorced from the larger preexisting ecological context that long precedes it. We only understand it as beginning from and within the site, without any awareness of the consequences of material conditions before or after the architecture occurs. Architecture dominates nature, rendering an idealized perfect state: ageless, seemingly unaffected by daily use or natural weathering --until it is deemed unusable. Simply said, architecture is ego-centric, where architectural time neglects the ecological deep time of geology, decay, erosion, and climate.

This thesis argues that, like sourdough starter, architecture arises from nature (flour and water) in the form of building materials and their physical existence, and with natural forces (wild yeast fermentation) such as rain or wind. Sourdough architecture is a pre-manual for recontextualizing architecture as the entanglement of architecture and ecology to reimagine architecture as a cyclical, not linear, process of change over time, embracing wind and rain as actors in the active making and unmaking of architecture. This book is a part of the pre-manual document series that lays down the production of the custom state (decay) to produce sourdough architecture and mine materials as a building stock to make more and more architecture for the next generations (sourdough starter). The architect is seen as a choreographer, a shaman that collaborates with the natural forces. In sourdough architecture, architecture becomes a means to witness natural processes through the slowness of time, depletion of materials, and context.

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Don't Be a Tourist! Imagining a Post-Touristification Berlin Patrick Weber (MArch) Advisor: Mariana IbaĂąez; Readers: Mark Jarzombek, Alexander D'Hooghe This thesis studies how an emerging form of urban tourism can manifest itself in the city within the section of the Berlin block.

Tourists and locals have traditionally been conceptualized as binary, inhabiting separate parts of the city and following their own individual agendas. In recent years however, the rise of the sharing economy and social media is opening new avenues for travel, generating an emerging form of tourist that is more interested in experiencing locality and sites offthe-beaten-path. Along with several forms of part-time city occupants, this new urban dweller embodies both the characteristics of a local and the curiosity of a tourist, thus making it a Semi-Local-Tourist.

Berlin is a city that finds itself in an era of post-touristification and is experiencing a high influx of Semi-Local-Tourists and inner-city migrants. Within the context of a highly saturated and tense housing market, both dweller-types are competing for spaces that are in vibrant, peripheral micro-neighborhoods. This thesis inserts itself into the friction that has risen from this conflict and proposes the design of an urban typology that seeks to mediate between local and tourist.

The quintessential Berlin block, which composes most of the micro-neighborhoods fabric and was originally designed as a mixed-use and mixed-class urban typology will serve as the site for this thesis. Operating between various scales within the perimeter block allows for new design opportunities that aim to renegotiate the terms on which locals and tourists engage with one another and the city.

This thesis thus proposes a new urban architectural typology that puts both locals and tourists under one roof. It challenges traditional conceptions of programmatic organization, temporality, public vs.. private, and domestic vs. urban, through the articulation of novel architectural forms and spaces across multiple scales: from a window, to the facade, the building, the section, the block, and the neighborhood.

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From Seed to Sale Finn Xu (MArch/MSRED) Advisors: AntĂłn GarcĂ­a-Abril, David Geltner; Reader: John Kennedy The history of cultivating cannabis can be traced back to at least the 3rd millennium BCE, as evidence suggests it was consumed for psychoactive effects at least 2,500 years ago in the Pamir Mountains in central Asia. Though viewed quite negatively in recent centuries, cannabis is currently illegal in most countries in the world.

Started as early as the 1970s, cannabis was first legalized in a few states in the US for medical use. Later, as more states adopted lenient policies on the substance, the voice for the decriminalization of recreational cannabis increased.

Now, as 12 states have already legalized recreational cannabis and more than 30 states permit medical cannabis, the cannabis industry presents not only core business opportunities but also an arena for related building and facility design and development.

Excited about this landscape, this thesis aims to explore unique building prototypes for cannabis operators and examine innovative investment opportunities through real estate investment trusts (REIT) in the cannabis industry.

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Master of Science in Building Technology

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Demi Fang Mariana Liebman-Pelaez Nicole Liwen Tang

SMBT SMBT SMBT

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Timber joinery in modern construction: Mechanical behavior of wood-wood connections Demi Fang (SMBT) Advisor: Caitlin Mueller Timber joinery is a method of geometrically interlocking timber elements prevalent in historic cultures around the world, including North America, Europe, and East Asia. The use of joinery as structural connections faded with the development of metallic screws and nails. Two recent developments offer the opportunity to revive this historic timber connection type: 1) the increasing desire to reduce embodied carbon in buildings by replacing more components with timber as a low-carbon structural material, and 2) recent digital fabrication capabilities which enable the precise milling of complex geometries as an alternative to the timeand labor-intensive handiwork required previously.

addresses both questions as applied to the Japanese Nuki joinery type, though the workflows may be applied to any joinery geometry. First, the rotational stiffness of the Nuki joint is characterized and crossverified using multiple methods. Second, the embodied carbon of a gravity frame using Nuki joints is compared to that of a gravity frame using conventional metallic fasteners. The use of Nuki joints not only eliminated the use of steel and aluminum but also provided rotational stiffnesses that enabled smaller beam sections to be used.

It was found that gravity frames designed with Nuki joints could reduce embodied carbon by over 70% compared to gravity frames designed using conventional beam hanger connections. The findings make a case for all-timber joinery connections to How can joinery connections be designed be implemented as a sustainable alternative in modern structural joints? Can we to conventional metallic connections used quantify the sustainability advantage of using in modern timber construction. these all-timber joints in lieu of the modern convention of metallic fasteners? This thesis

The rotational stiffness of the Nuki joint is characterized using three models: experimental, analytical, and numerical. Image produced with collaborators Daniel Landez, Jan BrĂźtting, and Aliz Fischer.

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Validating an Energy Model for a Hydroponic Shipping Container Farm Mariana Liebman-Pelaez (SMBT) Advisor: Christoph Reinhart

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) has developed within the urban context following efforts to expand local food production and provide an alternative to conventional agriculture with lower rates of greenhouse gas emissions and resource consumption. One urban CEA system that has recently gained attention is vertical hydroponic farms inside retrofitted shipping containers. Like many CEA systems, the controlled interior environments within these “shipping container farms� (SCFs) with regard to temperature, humidity, water supply, and light allow shipping container farms to grow food in a variety of locations regardless of climate and daylight availability.

While shipping container farms may provide a promising option for urban agriculture, their artificial interior environment makes them highly energy intensive, particularly for lighting and thermal control. Designers rely on physics-based energy models to analyze when shipping container farms and other forms of CEA may be viable in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of food systems. However, to date there has been a lack of energy validation studies for such physics-based models.

This research presents the results of energy measurements taken of an operational hydroponic SCF located in Boston, Massachusetts from August 2018 to July 2019. The purpose of this research is three-fold. First, this research uses the energy measurements to produce a validated physics-based energy model for a SCF. The validation focuses on the reliability of the energy model in predicting hourly conditioning loads. The validation study also comments on challenges and limitations of modeling building energy systems with dense indoor vegetation. Second, this research uses the validated energy model to explore methods for reducing energy loads of SCFs under various climate and upgrade scenarios. Finally, this research explores the integration of SCFs in a variety of urban energy supply systems and the potential for increasing the efficiency of these systems through various demand management strategies.

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Examining the Feasibility of a Proposed Ground-Storage Cooling System Nicole Tang Liwen (SMBT) Advisor: Leon Glicksman The Boston climate is infamous for its long, cold winters but it also suffers from hot, humid summers. The dehumidification needed to maintain occupant comfort in summer is often provided by vapor-compressions cycles served by chillers, typically in tandem with cooling towers. Although the availability of high-efficiency chillers and cooling towers has improved over time, alternative systems must be sought in order to achieve significant reductions in building energy use and to reduce the rate of climate change.

This research examines the feasibility of a ground-cooling storage system that utilizes Boston weather by storing the winter cold to provide cooling in the summer. The system consists of a block of soil underground that is connected to two heat exchangers – one for charging the soil and another for dehumidifying outdoor air – by a series of pipes. In winter, the charger heat exchanger uses the cold air to cool the fluid in the pipes, which then cools the soil block. In summer, the dehumidifier heat exchanger condenses excess humidity from ventilation air. In the process, the pipe fluid absorbs heat from the air, which it then rejects to the cold soil block. Therefore, only pumping energy is needed to move the fluid around the system.

The physical scale of the system required was found to be reasonable, relative to typical building sizes. The soil block, which does not use any valuable program space, was sized as less than 10% of the overall building size and did not require deep excavation. Winter thermal modeling showed that the soil block could be fully charged in a typical winter season. The summer thermal modeling showed that the system is capable of responding to cooling peaks but may need to be larger than originally anticipated to last through to the end of the cooling period. The pumping energy use estimated has not been very large, so significant savings are expected in comparison to traditional vapor-compression systems.

In conclusion, this feasibility study found that the proposed system shows promising results as an alternative to conventional systems and is worth further investigation.

Figure 2: Entering and leaving water temperatures when meeting summer load with 80 pipes

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Master of Science in Architecture Studies

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Nawaf Bin Ayyaf Almogren Nathaniel Elberfeld Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman María Esteban Casañas Melissa Gutiérrez Soto Mengqi Moon He Rachel Pei Hirsch Yichen Jia Meng-Fu Kuo Yuxuan Liu Semine Long-Callesen Joud Mabsout Molly Mason Nof Nathansohn Jim Peraino Ayesha Shaikh Charu Sharma Michael Stradley Shaoying Tan Anna Vasileiou Piyush Verma Haoyu Wang

Aga Khan Program (AKPIA) Computation Architectural Design Architectural Design Urbanism Urbanism Aga Khan Program (AKPIA) Computation Urbanism Computation History, Theory and Criticism Urbanism Computation Computation Computation Aga Khan Program (AKPIA) Building Technology Architectural Design Computation Architectural Design Urbanism Urbanism

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Diriyah Narrated by Its Built Environment: The Story of the First Saudi State (1744-1818) Nawaf Bin Ayyaf Almogren Advisor: Nasser Rabbat; Readers: Timothy Hyde, Abdullah Al-Mutawa Diriyah is a parched settlement in the arid deserts of Central Arabia. It swiftly went from not differing much compared to its local sphere, to assuming the role of a beacon capital which controlled Arabia almost in its entirety. From its ambitious emergence in 1744– which stemmed from a historical pact between political authority and religious influence, until its hefty downfall in 1818– after assuming the role of a bunker under siege for six long months, Diriyah witnessed numerous political stages which effected its built environment.

Between a dire need to defend and fortify at one point, and an eager desire to show luxuriousness and grandeur at another, Diriyah’s built environment became a shimmering pond reflecting the ever-shifting political status of the state at any given time.

The project described herein argues that the urban story of Diriyah presents an interesting paradigm for analysis in examining how a strategic pact between the two different entities of politics and religion came together to turn a small patch of land, amongst ever-battling tribally-ruled settlements, into a capital of a State which possessed the largest extent of influence in the Arabian Peninsula since the 7th century.

By relying on historical textual accounts, infused with visual means of analysis, this thesis explores, and narrates, the urban development history of Diriyah during the timeframe of the First Saudi State (17441818), through using its built environment as a main examination tool. Accordingly, Atturaif historic district in Diriyah was chosen as an urban model which directly stemmed as a result of establishing the state under the double weight of politics and religion. Located on an elevated majestic plateau, Atturaif became the center of power, and the decision-making hub of the ever-growing state. Hence, its urban form was examined, its core elements investigated, and notions of its symbolism analyzed.

A typical townhouse in Diriyah with intricately painted door. The upper part of the building has triangular pierced windcatchers for ventilation. Source: The American University in Cairo, Rare Books and Special Collections Library. Photos by Hassan Fathy. c. 1960

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Computing Embodied Effort Nathaniel Elberfeld Advisors: Caitlin Mueller, Terry Knight; Reader: George Stiny

In recent years, research in design and computation has included processes of making as an expansion of the more established study of shapes with grammar formalism. This interest parallels a rise in craft practices as, perhaps, a counterpoint to the proliferation of digital fabrication in which fidelity to original specifications is considered crucial to the success of a project but whose means and methods are often obfuscated or of secondary importance. Making grammars (Knight and Stiny 2015), by contrast, offer an opportunity to examine one of the most important yet least understood considerations of a design: the effort it takes to physically produce it.

set of making rules can achieve an infinitely variable, complex, and constructible design space. The grammar is used in conjunction with primary sources to identify the physical and cognitive effort required in each step of making bobbin lace and a mathematical model for calculating this embodied effort is introduced. A computer program is written to automate the rules and effort computation on-the-fly and an exploration of the design space is discussed weighing the effort-cost of designs with other objectives.

This thesis introduces embodied effort as a contribution from human beings or machines that includes the work, steps, routines, applied skill, cognitive processing, or other forms of output that directly contributes to the production of a design.

To compute this effort, effort grammars are introduced to expand the formalism of making grammars to include an effort-cost tabulation that corresponds to moments of making. In these grammars, constructability is embedded in a design through an emergent topology in contrast to topologies that emerge through geometric optimization that may solve form or structural considerations but can be highly effortful and costly, or impossible to make.

Final stage in a making grammar computation with two possible lace outcomes.

As a case study for computing embodied effort, an effort grammar is developed for a textile production technique called bobbin lacemaking to show how a limited 23

How to Read the Self-building Manual: Houses, Self-Builders, and Experts in Mexico Since the 1930s Rodrigo EscandĂłn Cesarman Advisors: Ana MiljaÄ?ki, Miho Mazereeuw; Reader: Susanne Schindler

How to finance your house with Antorcha Campesina

A self-building manual is a book written by an expert, such as an architect, an engineer, or a planner, to teach a non-expert how to build their own house. This thesis examines and reimagines these documents as a distinct form of architectural representation, entailing specific forms of production, circulation, and reception.

I track the history of the self-building manual within the Mexican social, economic and political context, and I perform a close reading of three of the most widely-distributed manuals: the Peasant’s Manual, the Housing Handbook, and the Manual for Housing SelfBuilding and Improvement. While these books are meant to disseminate information, bridge knowledge gaps, and ultimately empower people, they end up doing the opposite.

By representing a self-builder as a perpetual non-expert, these manuals prevent their audience from entering the realm of professional construction. Additionally, they fail to acknowledge the conditions under which self-built housing is actually produced.

Based on these findings, as well as fieldwork with two communities that are producing housing that is neither social nor commercial (Tosepan and Antorcha Campesina), this thesis results in a new kind of self-building manual. The Atlas of Housing Production is an inventory of existing protocols for housing production in Mexico. It describes the processes of financing, sourcing materials, designing, and organizing labor for Tosepan, Antorcha Campesina, commercial banks, and real estate developers. Rather than prescribing a single, ideal solution, The Atlas presents a set of equally valid possibilities, flattening the hierarchy between allegedly expert and non-expert knowledge. By splitting the process into its component parts, The Atlas allows its readers to recombine them for imagining new forms of housing production. Finally, by laying bare the virtues and shortcomings of each of these processes, The Atlas gives agency to its users, allowing them to make informed decisions on how they wish to obtain a house.

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ARTIFICIAL PERCEPTIONS: Biases, Fictionalities, and Signifiers María Esteban Cassañas Advisor: Mark Jarzombek; Reader: Skylar Tibbits

“Loop 64, 72, and 80” — Frame from video recording of author’s interactive live installation at the Night Gallery Chicago. Project in collaboration with Vivek HV and Julian Siegelmann, 2019.

Our world is emulated in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and with it, biases and fictionalities.

Through a variety of examples, speculative arguments, and performances, this study explores how biases are produced and fictionalities created through shifting signifiers.

This thesis has a dual voice. It is generated in two versions — one written by me and one developed by a text-producing algorithm I “trained”. As such, and given its generative process, this thesis could be interpreted as a performance even for those who read it.

“Artificial Perceptions” could therefore be understood as rendering a new vision of how Artificial Intelligence can be used to create new content, disclose existing predispositions, and be utilized as a collaborative tool. Shifting signifiers prompts artificial perceptions and allows us to revisit and permutate biases that are intrinsic to AI. It challenges the construction of our understanding of our own “artificial reality” and exposes the cultural idiosyncrasies of the computational discipline.

The term “semiotic deepfakes” is coined as a reaction to excerpts of text generated by the trained model, envisioning how machine learning might mislead the public on authorship.

This idea is explored further through the development of Alan Turing’s Imitation Game, allowing the reader to take the role of “interrogator” within this thesis. I use Turing as the foundational premise for the various experiments of my own design in the thesis. It concludes with a performance between all agents in this thesis, including the committee, the algorithms, and the author, adding to the semiotic discourse in a playful yet unsettling manner.

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Manual of Hospitality: Learning from Migration Melissa Gutiérrez Soto Advisor: Rania Ghosn; Readers: Arindam Dutta, Lorena Bello Gomez, Ieva Jusionyte

Guadalajara, scales of the migrants’ journey

The number of asylum seekers, refugees and displaced persons is increasing globally at an alarming, unprecedented rate. According to the United Nations, displaced persons are more likely to live in a city than in a rural area or camp, and more than 60% of the world’s refugees live in urban settlements. The migration crisis is an urban question.

Although cities theoretically present opportunities for jobs, shelter, and a better future, migrants face a range of threats, such as discrimination, detention, exploitation, and human trafficking. In addition, most urban migrants are prone to spatial exclusion, manifested as an absence of legal clarity on spatial rights and protection spaces, insufficient shelter, and discriminatory practices that prevent them from moving freely around the city.

This crisis is particularly severe in Mexico, where more than 69,000 asylum seekers and refugees are living, most from the north of Central America. Expelled from home by violence and poverty, and rejected by the United States, Central American migrant persons have no choice but to stay in México, living in a state of fear and uncertainty.

The Manual of Hospitality describes the migrant’s experience, using a vocabulary of urban design to reconceptualize the displaced person's daily life. Using urban ethnography, I represent the experiences of central American migrants, drawing on field research conducted in three Mexican cities: Monterrey, Matamoros and Guadalajara. A series of multiscalar maps and diagrams — from territory to architectural object — reveal spatial dynamics, zones of exclusion, mobility patterns, and areas of conflict and possibility. I further extrapolate from theories of hospitality to analyze the migrants’ experience, examining existing practices and challenging traditional host-guest relationships. The manual includes insights from migrants’ perspectives, and proposes a series of design interventions that create more hospitable cities for both migrants and local residents..

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From “Chinatown” to Chinatown: Investigating Water (In)Justice through Transmedia Urban Design in the L.A. River Mengqi Moon He Advisor: James Wescoat; Reader: Caroline Jones

A scene from the film “Chinatown,” a hegemonic media representation of the Los Angeles river and the immigrant community.

Credit: Polanski, Roman, director. Chinatown. Paramount Pictures, 1974.

Presenting a case study of the Los Angeles River, this thesis analyzes the river revitalization masterplan published in 2007 and the subsequent efforts by public and private entities. While attempting to create “an equitable, natural river,” the current urban design framework overlooks a fine-grained approach to distinctive river stretches and communities, lacks clear water justice objectives, and fails to represent various stakeholders, thus lacking momentum in actualizing their vision. This thesis argues that it is critical to problematize the cultural hegemony in the L.A. River revitalization process to achieve water justice objectives.

Through an explication of the film “Chinatown” (1974), a hegemonic media representation of the Los Angeles river, water injustice in Los Angeles is unraveled, specifically in the Chinatown community. Since the 1930s, Chinatown in Los Angeles has long suffered from hegemonic representation, serving a nostalgic and archaic oriental imagination. This misrepresentation of Chinatown has led to river revitalization and urban renewal processes that neglected the communities, thus resulting in water injustice. As an alternative, this thesis proposes multiple counter urban design schemes for the river stretch in Chinatown and for the community, using the proposed method of Transmedia Urban Design. The method and proposal aim to spatialize and achieve three water justice objectives: corrective, distributive, and procedural.

This thesis connects the discourse and practice of urban design with the conceptual framework of the emerging field of water justice and transmedia storytelling. It argues that water justice objectives can both inform and benefit from design thinking. Furthermore, it contends that the discourse and practice of urban design can use transmedia source and transmedia storytelling techniques to investigate and communicate water justice issues and designs. The thesis argues that the proposed transmedia urban design method informing and representing urban design schemes can help envision, propagate, and achieve water justice objectives.

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Constructing Mughar Burhanpur Rachel Pei Hirsch Advisor: James Wescoat; Readers: Timothy Hyde, Nasser Rabbat In 1601, Emperor Akbar successfully conquered Burhanpur, a major Sufi center and capital of the Khandesh Sultanate. A decades-long process of urban construction followed, transforming the city into a regional capital on the frontier of the Mughal Empire. However, the twentyfirst-century challenges of reconstructing the seventeenth-century city have largely obscured Burhanpur’s significance, and isolated attempts at textual analysis or conservation fieldwork have provided only partial understandings of the city’s history.

Responding to these challenges, this thesis proposes a method that privileges the experiential elements of understanding a city—whether gathered from textual accounts, personal observation, or visual evidence—and posits them within a larger discourse of travel and place formation.

From this method emerges a reconstruction

of a new Mughal capital that was built in a series of spatial and architectural developments carried out between 1601 and 1631. The function and form of these layers of construction shifted rapidly over the course of three decades based on the needs of the expanding MughaAl Empire and the priorities of the individuals sustaining it. Taken together, this thesis reveals a previously unknown process of producing a Mughal capital constituted through successive shifts in patronage that, while varying in their urban priorities, shared the collective goal of creating a legibly Mughal capital.

Ahukhana Bangla Roof.

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Constructing Virtual Reality Exhibitions with Multimodal Interactions Yichen Jia Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura; Reader: Arvind Satanarayan

Art of Memory VR Exhibition - Scene B: Map Room

Even though the concept of virtual museums is still young compared with the “brick and mortar� museum, it has been receiving increasing attention over the past decades. With the rapid development of the internet and ubiquitous digital devices, human activities and focuses have been shifted dramatically from physical spaces to the virtual realm, and museums must reconsider their paradigm in order to remain relevant in the new environment.

This thesis studies the concept of virtual museums and how they could be constructed with Virtual Reality (VR) as the media. It consists of four parts in terms of methodology: a background research of the evolution of museums and the development of virtual museums; a field survey on the status quo of virtual museums and observation of existing design methodologies; two case studies during which two virtual exhibitions in VR are developed and evaluated; and finally a design guideline and six design templates generated from previous studies that museums can refer to when designing such exhibitions in VR. The thesis shows that museums, as cultural institutes, have been changing their identity and shifting their focus throughout the past centuries. As the tension between their new goal to serve the general public and their long-term mission to safeguard its collection increases, VR is proving to be a good media for museums to extend the experience and service it provides. Compared with traditional physical exhibitions, virtual exhibitions in VR have advantages in terms of their capacity, connectivity, and ability to showcase spatial contexts with time factors and multimodal interactions. In addition, they could provide customized or user-generated contents, as well as convenient methods for quantitative user evaluations. When designing such exhibitions, an object-oriented approach could help museums utilize their existing collection datasets to reduce cost while remaining flexible in terms of the narrative they want to deliver.

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Urbanism Across: New Urban Ground in Taipei's Old City Core Meng-Fu Kuo Advisor: Rafi Segal; Readers: Rosalyne Shieh, Miho Mazereeuw This thesis re-imagines Taipei’s urban core as a series of above and below urban spaces that weave together disparate neighborhoods around the city’s main train station. In the late 20th-century, following the post-war economic boom of Taiwan, the government initiated a huge construction project that relocated Taipei’s railway infrastructure under the ground. This project initiated the new construction of metro systems and a total of two-kilometer-long underground passageways, which accommodated the commercial and public activities originally existing on the ground level. This adjustment resulted in a huge sterile plaza in the city center surrounded by large driveways devoid of the formation of public activities. This thesis explains how this overly engineering-oriented thinking of underground space design that channeled pedestrian movement away from the street disconnected the city's public space and the trace of local history. Instead, this thesis proposes urban strategies and designs across several scales: human perception, architecture, cultural-scape, and landscape, to create an active, accessible, sustainable, and multi-layer public space to breathe new life into Taipei’s historic core.

This thesis proposes a set of new linkages between the public space above, and pedestrian flows below, challenging the government and international renewal plans proposed in the past decade, that densified the site without much consideration to the historic context, pedestrian network, and surrounding neighborhoods. New designs proposed in the thesis transform the current pedestrian experience through establishing a network of semioutdoor, outdoor, and interior gathering spaces, and in between the urban ground and infrastructure. Activated by a diverse range of programs, the city center is thus ‘liberated’ from its current infrastructural limitations and is offered back to the residents and the multicultural identity of Taipei, and Taiwan.

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Measuring the Immeasurable: An Experiment for a Machine to Map Low-Level Features to High-Level Semantic Representation of Architectural Space using a Single View Photo Yuxuan Liu Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura; Reader: Axel Kilian

Original photo in the diagram: El Croquis, issue 71, Toyo Ito & El Croquis, issue 157, Studio Mumbai

Constructing experience is an important part of architectural design, and experienceoriented design is highly dependent on an architect's subjective understanding of space.

Although design and computer science have become more closely integrated in recent years, commercialized computer-aided design (CAD) systems are still only able to substitute labor-intensive processes, such as auto-generation of architectural drawings from digital models but offer little support in actual design. The human-centric design process is still not yet substitutable by a non-human system, due to a non-human system’s lack of the ability to understand space subjectively.

This thesis’ focus is on developing machine awareness of space. The research method is on translating human-level spatial awareness represented by adjectives in language to a non-human system through single shot architectural photo based on a data-driven machine learning method. As humans show general consistency in subjective understanding of space, experiments are designed and published on crowd-sourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) to match architectural space represented in a single shot photo with the subjective understanding of it represented by adjectives in language. This collected data will assist the development of a machine system. The completed proposed system employs techniques such as 3D geometry reconstruction from a single image, surface simplification, scene attributes extraction, color vividness extraction, and vocabulary classification in order to understand low-level features of space. This low-level understanding is then translated to the likeliest high-level, text-based understanding by the machine system based on a datadriven machine learning method.

As in this thesis, adjectives are regarded as the signal of human’s subjective understanding of space; it also explores the subjective mental process in people’s minds of decoding the space’s nature through text-based representation. If we consider design as a sophisticated mental mechanism that manipulates multiple information and space as the key element in this phase, a deeper understanding of space will definitely help us to design better.

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Illuminating The Raffles Museum in the Shift from Nature to Culture Semine Long-Callesen Advisor and Reader: Arindam Dutta; Reader: Timothy Hyde This thesis examines the formation of a national culture through the case study of the Raffles Museum in the late 1950s. Today, the institution is known as the National Museum of Singapore. In contrast to what we might assume from the museum’s current status, it was not obvious that the museum would become a “cultural,” “national,” and “Singaporean” institution.

The Raffles Museum was established in the early nineteenth century and was instrumental in the British colonial search for revenue and resources. In collecting specimens and samples, the museum invented Malaya’s distinctive “nature.” Importantly, the natural history collections included anthropological and archaeological artifacts. In the early twentieth century, such objects were extracted and separated from the category of natural history to aid the colonial administration in defining a distinctive Malayan “culture” for governmental purposes. During the period of decolonization, the colonial notion of “Malaya” – and its nature and culture – was adopted by anti-colonial nationalism. The Raffles Museum became part of the endeavor of transforming the synthetic colonial category of “Malaya” into one of national self-determination.

The Raffles Museum simultaneously created, destroyed, and preserved Malaya’s nature and culture. The museum blurred the lines between the colonial and national, the natural and cultural, the British Malayan and Malayan, taxonomy and preservation, the traditional and modern, the exterior world and the inside of the museum, and other and self. What eventually became Singapore’s national culture was initially Malayan, colonial, and natural.

The Raffles Museum, 1938-39. Courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board, Singapore.

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Contested Landscapes: Reclaiming the Common Landscape in Bisri, Lebanon Joud Mabsout Advisor: Rafi Segal; Readers: Rania Ghosn, Miho Mazereeuw

Toolkit of interventions within the Hima Collective landscape.

Failed infrastructure initiatives have been at the forefront of Lebanon’s 2019 October Revolution, a nationwide movement born from the frustrations of unjust laws and misuses of public funds. The uprising has put the government’s corrupt plans in the spotlight, one of which is a national strategy of dam construction spanning the entirety of the country. This thesis re-examines how large-scale water infrastructure in Lebanon has disrupted ecologies and uprooted local communities, exacerbating existing social tensions for political gain. Visualizing river valleys as contested landscapes, this thesis explores the transition of these valleys from a constant state of destruction to places where people can reclaim their rights to the landscape.

transforming it from a politically contested dam reservoir, to an environmentally and socio-culturally preserved collective landscape. Through sectional studies, design strategies are proposed as a way to both protest the continuous threat on the landscape and offer a toolkit for action. This toolkit presents a set of interventions that allow for the activation and preservation of existing landscape ecologies and communities, amounting to a constant act of reclaiming and protecting the land.

This project reimagines the landscape as a new hima, a locally rooted meaning for the commons. The proposed design operations aim to act as a prototype for collective actions of preservation and engagement, reanchoring people with their landscape in the face of divisive projects.

Taking the case of the Bisri Valley, where a highly contested Dam mega-project is in the process of being built, this thesis proposes an alternative future for the valley, 33

Crafting Decisions: Integrating Design, Fabrication, and Assembly for Robotics Molly Mason Advisors: Axel Kilian, Lawrence Sass; Reader: Nathan King Within the contemporary practice of architecture, what we design often determines how we make it. Digital fabrication provides designers the opportunity to directly link digital models with CNC (Computer Numerical Control) equipment such as robotics. This direct link eliminates the ability for a craftsperson to adjust forms on-site using their knowledge of material and process. In order to take advantage of material and tool capabilities, it becomes important to then embed this craft knowledge into the design model itself. Crafting decisions include both the “live” choices made while making, which pull from past experiences, material behavior, and tacit knowledge, and the choice of how one formalizes descriptions of making.

assembly and assembly requires certain formal part characteristics for handling.

This thesis proposes integrating robotic fabrication and assembly constraints into the design process to use them as drivers for form-finding. It does this through codifying material processes and assembly logics into making verbs which act as descriptions of tools, material, and movement. Through the combination of multiple verbs, the designer is able to explore formal design spaces which are informed by fabrication and assembly constraints. The design of parts is kept “live” during the process of making, capable of being altered based on constraints of material process and assembly. The resultant workflows propose an active dialogue between design, fabrication, and assembly where the act of making is described through actions rather than explicit geometrical models.

The act of making consists of both how material is shaped into parts and how these parts come together to participate as a whole. However, the majority of the last fifteen years of research using industrial robots has examined the acts of fabrication and assembly separately. This does not consider bidirectional relationship between part formation and assembly where customized parts require new modes of

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Digital Nomads: Space+Narrative Computing of the village of Al Araqib Nof Nathansohn Advisors: Lawrence Sass, Skylar Tibbits; Readers: Rafi Segal, Sarah Williams

For political reasons, the officially unrecognized Bedouin village of Al Araqib in Israeli’s Negev desert is prevented from building permanent structures. The state of Israel does not issue demolition warrants for new illegal houses; it instead demolishes these houses without a warrant, under the auspices of a law that allows the police to destroy new illegal structures within 30 days of construction.

conflux of physical architecture and digital technologies in an effort to create innovative modes of communication that speak to the experiences of unrecognized populations, struggling for cultural survival.

Specifically, through collaborative work by the people of Al Araqib, this thesis initiates a laboratory of tools and techniques that harness the spatial characteristics of the land and the social narrative of its people. Aiming to strengthen their ability This situation has encouraged the people to communicate more widely and more of Al Araqib to become familiar with productively, the thesis proposes a platform specific useful technologies. They use solar that includes a set of digital and physical energy to provide electricity to the village, tools, such as digital design and fabrication, and smartphones to document and report hackable devices, the internet of things, demolitions. As an act of resistance as much architectural drawings, videos, sensors, as a practical measure, they repeatedly GPS, automatization and GIS. Lastly, this rebuild their houses, appropriating thesis catalogs these diverse tools as architecture as a political tool. This creates part of a content management system a situation where the Bedouin with their and as a ‘cookbook’ composed of spatial strong nomadic history, uses physical information, automated and visualized to permanent structures — the language and create a more persuasive narrative, and logic used by their oppressors — in the fight of journalistic strategies that introduce for their ancestral land. knowledge sharing and evidence of the reality of demolition and its impact on Beyond supporting and recognizing human lives. the Bedouin people’s fight for justice, this design thesis asks to harness the 35

Architectural Epidemiology: A Computational Framework Jim Peraino Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura; Readers: Michael Stonebraker, Andrea Chegut

Isovist Analysis of Inpatient Unit

Architecture affects our health, but our ability to learn from existing hospitals to design buildings that improve patient outcomes is limited. If we want to leverage large datasets of health outcomes to build knowledge about how architecture affects health, then we need new methods for analyzing spatial data and health data jointly. In this thesis, I present several steps toward the goal of developing a computational framework of architectural epidemiology that aims to leverage both human and machine intelligences to do so.

Next, I outline the four components of the framework: 1) data sources, 2) feature engineering, 3) statistical analyses, and 4) decision making activities. Two case studies provide in-depth illustrations of these components: The first presents a 3D interface that enables developers to create 3D visualizations of large health outcome datasets in architectural space while taking advantage of the Kyrix details-on-demand system’s backend performance optimizations. The second tests the efficacy of several data science and machine learning techniques to shed light on relationships between architectural characteristics and health outcomes using a synthetic dataset.

I establish a set of criteria for the framework by reviewing work that highlights opportunities and barriers to implementation: we need structured architectural datasets that capture spatial information in schemas that current drawing formats do not allow. These datasets need to be wide to capture multifaceted and qualitative aspects of the built environment, and so we need new methods to generate this data. Finally, we need methods for surfacing insight from these datasets by involving both humans and machines in the process.

By overcoming current technical barriers we can work toward utilizing both human and machine intelligence to make evidence from large datasets actionable.

Ultimately, we can learn from our current environments to design buildings that improve our health.

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The Yenidze Tobacco and Cigarette Factory: An Example of Neo-Mamluk Architecture in Germany Ayesha Usman Shaikh Advisor: Nasser Rabbat; Reader: James Wescoat

Yenidze, 1908.

Image via Dresden Stadtarchiv.

This thesis aims to show the neo-Mamluk style as an architectural building tradition brought forth within a European context during the 19th century by investigating both textual and architectural evidence.

By examining Germany as a geographic context which adopts the neo-Mamluk style in its own building projects, this thesis aims to identify an introspective intellectual tradition which continues as a self-referential discourse well into the 20th century.

seen as an example which carries forth this particular intellectual tradition which furthers the insularity of a neo-Mamluk architectural style and its own life within a German context.

By meditating upon the tobacco factory as a prime example, this thesis aims to formulate reasons why a neo-Mamluk design program was being implemented.

This is done by explicating the factory’s geo-agricultural and geo-political associations with regard to the building’s own historical, mercantile, and imperial precedents. Ultimately, this thesis aims to trace the ways in which a neo-Mamluk style developed in Europe and was further utilized within a German context well into the 20th century.

This is done by investigating the formal elements of the Yenidze Tobacco and Cigarette Factory built in Dresden in 1909 through an investigation of the dissemination of textual evidences such as pattern books and building manuals brought forth by amateur architects and designers to the field of Islamic architecture in the 19th century. The tobacco factory can be 37

Building an all-electric Volpe: A perspective on economic consideration and carbon emissions Charu Sharma Advisor: Leslie K. Norford; Reader: Christoph Reinhart Recent studies show the need for deeper and faster cuts to global emissions if countries/cities are to meet goals set out in the Paris agreement. Buildings account for 35% of US greenhouse gas emissions and offer a unique opportunity to help reduce a large part of these emissions while providing net benefits. In the US, buildings rely on natural gas for 40% of their energy demand and primarily use it for space and water heating. This leads to higher emissions, leaky infrastructure, and public health risks. Devising economic alternatives that can help offset this natural gas dependency while making low energyconsuming buildings offers the best chance to reduce emissions at scale.

This thesis focuses on exploring such alternatives by taking the case of a mixeduse site. We take the example of John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems

Center, Cambridge, MA — a mixed-use site being developed by MIT consisting of housing, retail, offices, and laboratories.

To analyze its carbon emissions over its lifetime, this research first estimates energy demand and compares different energy sources — local electricity grid and an on-site cogeneration plant. Second, we analyze the use of natural gas for heating in each of the above supply scenarios in addition to making projections for future carbon intensity and energy costs.

Third, we evaluate the impact of the recommendations in different landscapes by forecasting the price trend of electricity and natural gas. We find that an all-electric model is profitable for residential buildings and only marginally more expensive for other typologies over its lifetime than the baseline buildings.

Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions. Forecast from EIA and IEA

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COLORZOOM Michael Stradley Advisor: Hans Tursack; Readers: Brandon Clifford, Nora Schultz

COLORZOOM is an investigation into the disciplinary status of color in architecture. The design investigations of COLORZOOM pursue architectural color in both the broad context of increasingly image-driven architectural practice and a discrete historical moment in which architecture must proceed in a digital and distributed manner. COLORZOOM is a proto-pedagogy which positions color as the central driver of the design process.

It proposes its series of didactic color exercises as a new curriculum for architects exploring the perception and production of color in the context of contemporary design tools.

saturates the built environment and daily life. As the techniques and technologies of architectural production transition architecture from a practice of drawing to one of image-making, pixel and image become elevated to a status typically reserved for form and line. In the context of this disciplinary and technological shift, COLORZOOM identifies a necessity for image-making expertise. And, if a future of architectural imaging is to have a kind of tectonics, color may well be its structure.

COLORZOOM attempts to wrangle with the disciplinary haiku of color — to wade through its uncomfortable mixture of light and material and culture and perception — to reposition color as an active protagonist in architectural design.

Despite a widening void of expertise and the disappearance of color curriculum from most architectural academies, color 39

Space is the Interface: Evaluating Spatial Knowledge Acquisition in Virtual Reality from the Perspective of Locomotion Shaoying Tan Advisor and Reader: Takehiko Nagakura; Reader: Arvind Satanarayan Humans acquire spatial knowledge through sensory integration, which comes from constant interaction with the environment.

Locomotion, one of the earliest behaviors developed by infants, are the foundation of many such complex interactions. Similar to what we experience in the physical world, the way we interact with the virtual space plays a crucial role in how we receive the spatial information delivered. In this thesis, I conduct an experimental study on the influence of locomotion interfaces, i.e., motion-based locomotion, joystickbased locomotion, and teleportation, on information-in-context virtual reality experience and acquisition of spatial knowledge. Then through the analysis of experiment results and case studies, I propose a framework for designing a suitable locomotion interface for different virtual experiences.

In order to study and reveal the impact of different locomotion technologies, the research project includes a series of experiments in virtual rooms. Different tasks will be developed from three different objectives, to study the following three

types of experience in virtual reality: the city wanderer, the book seeker, and the bus traveler.

The results of the experiments are used to analyze the effectiveness of the locomotion interfaces, on use’s acquisition of spatial knowledge the virtual environment intended to convey. Based on the analysis, primary guidelines are derived and applied in case-studies on projects from the MIT Design Heritage Catalogue. The case studies, serving as more complex real-world application scenarios, involve virtual environments of distinct scales and styles. Both the experiments and the case-studies contribute to the proposal of a locomotion design framework for virtual reality experience. In summary, the thesis suggests that the design of the locomotion interface should consider the purpose of the experience and target user groups, and provides insights into how these considerations should be made.

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Thinking Manual: A Digital Framework for Designing and Making Anna Vasileiou Advisor: Axel Kilian; Reader: Mark Goulthorpe

Origami Tessellations: Blended model (thesis outcome)

In the wake of a new form of craftsmanship, we, architects and designers have adopted a new digital mindset. Design is considered not only a tool of making but also one of thinking, with us transitioning from inventing analog machines as thinking, drawing, and making tools to designing and fabricating with computercontrolled machines. Yet, although these digital technologies are conceived as tools augmenting certain aptitudes we have, they fail to communicate the creative and inventive aspects of the act of design.

For even though up to a degree we have embraced this new digital mindset, we use more and more computation-based software to solve even more challenging geometric problems and reach higher degrees of accuracy and efficiency in design and fabrication. However, computers’ binary structural and representational logic focusing mainly on the symbolic and computational design aspects is neither similar nor fully understandable to our way of thinking. Hence, this very lack of understanding of the tools’ operational

logic repositions our creative role from making by thinking to making by calculating.

Yet, can the computer as a digital tool augment the human mind and render design a pedagogical act of creative thinking?

This thesis explores ways of introducing computational tools into design processes of advanced geometry for a more creative and open-ended human-machine symbiosis.

To this end, I propose the Thinking Manual, a hypothesis in the form of a new design workflow enhancing and reconciling the designer’s creative thinking with the computer’s image processing and simulation capabilities. I use the problem of paper folding to question my initial hypothesis, test my proposal, and prove the necessity of a paradigm shift in design practice and pedagogy. Herein, design stands as the interface between unconscious and conscious thinking, doing, and making, driven by the triptych eye-mind-hand with or without geometric precision.

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Rainwater Harvesting in Western Ghats of Maharashtra, India The Case of Velhe Block, Pune District A comprehensive multi-scalar approach Piyush Verma Advisor: James Wescoat; Reader: Chintan H. Vaishnav Pune district lies in the Deccan Plateau and is a part of the Western Ghats of India.

Some parts of Pune district receive a high amount of rainfall (more than 1000mm) at a high intensity for three months of the year, but face water scarcity during the major part of the year. Due to high runoff and limited ground water infiltration, it has been challenging to utilize the heavy rainfall that is available. One of the hilly blocks in Pune named Velhe is such an example.

From 2003 to 2012 Velhe received 2667.7 mm average annual rainfall, more than twice the average annual rainfall of Pune district during the same period. Velhe block has dense Deccan Trap basalt geology, which has low ground water development potential. In addition to its groundwater conditions, the high steep slopes of Velhe make it difficult to supply water through tankers. This is another reason why the region has a lack of water, particularly in the summer season.

The study seeks to understand the geographical, social and cultural causes that affect inefficient management of rainwater. The project proposes design and planning interventions to solve the seasonal water scarcity problem in a village called Metpilaware in Velhe block, Pune District, Maharashtra, India. It builds upon the existing work done by governmental and non-governmental organizations. It provides solutions at the village scale through a comprehensive analysis at the block scale with the help of three different approaches (scientific, on-ground participatory community planning, and 42

theoretical framework). At the block scale, Gram Sevaks (Village officers) collected water service data that led to the selection of a case study village, and we conducted precipitation data analysis to identify key rainwater harvesting design criteria. At the village scale, we test village preferences for different combinations of integrated rainwater harvesting solutions in an integrated framework watershed, stream channel, and household structures.

This thesis was done as a part of the Jalswarajya 2 project of MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design.

A CITY OF PLACELESSNESS: Digital Nomads and Tallinn's Urban Future Haoyu Wang Advisor: Rafi Segal; Reader: Brent D. Ryan

Reinventing Estonian housing clusters for shared living and digital work

Placelessness describes a state of people and activities that are not confined to fixed places. By creating a placeless ground for work and social activities, digital connectivity redefines work-live habits, contributing to a growing population of digital nomads: people who utilize remote work and personal mobility to avoid restrictions of fixed places in their living.

Through activities of digital nomads, this thesis explores potentials of placelessness in shaping an alternative urban future.

architecture and urbanism that integrates placeless people into local identities. It proposes design interventions on a former industrial site that accommodate an alternative urban life informed by digital nomads while encouraging placeless people to take an active part in the city’s postindustrial transitions.

The thesis demonstrates new spatial forms and typologies across scales which seek to inspire future urban developments in Tallinn and other cities populated with placeless people. On the other hand, while we witness placelessness through the work-from-home scenarios under the crisis of COVID-19, this thesis encourages us to look beyond the current state of emergency and reimagine placelessness in a future urban life where we reclaim our access to the public ground and personal mobility.

As a mobile workforce with increasing powers in technology, digital nomads gain political supports from Estonia where their visits have transforming the capital city of Tallinn into a digital nomad hub. On the other hand, their spatial implications and social segregations from local people have drawn little attention in Tallinn’s urban developments. To envision Tallinn’s urban future under placelessness, the thesis takes digital nomads as a stimulus to an 43

Spring 2020 Thesis Reviews Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture & Planning Department of Architecture 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 7-337 Cambridge, MA USA 02139 617 253 7791 / arch@mit.edu architecture.mit.edu © 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Individual contributions are copyright their respective authors. Images are copyright their respective creators, unless otherwise noted.

Special Thanks Eleni Aktypi José Luis Argüello Darren Bennett Kathaleen Brearley Renée Caso Stacy Clemons Chris Dewart Eduardo Gonzalez Gina Halabi Matthew Harrington Timothy Hyde Chris Jenkins Duncan Kincaid Terry Knight

Terry Knight Doug Le Vie Inala Locke Tonya Miller Amanda Moore Leslie K. Norford Jennifer O’Brien Andreea O’Connell Paul Pettigrew Alan Reyes Andrew Scott Cynthia Stewart Phil Thompson Russell Webster

Advisors & Readers: Abdullah Al-Mutawa Lorena Bello Gomez Garnette Cadogan Andrea Chegut Brandon Clifford Alexander D’Hooghe Arindam Dutta Antón García-Abril David Geltner Rania Ghosn Leon Glicksman Mark Goulthorpe Onur Gun Timothy Hyde Mariana Ibañez Mark Jarzombek Caroline Jones Ieva Jusionyte John Kennedy Axel Kilian Nathan King Terry Knight Miho Mazereeuw Ana Miljački Lee Moreau Caitlin Mueller Takehiko Nagakura Leslie K. Norford Cristina Parreño Nasser Rabbat Christoph Reinhart Brent D. Ryan Lawrence Sass Arvind Satanarayan Susanne Schindler Nora Schultz Andrew Scott Rafi Segal Rosalyne Shieh George Stiny Michael Stonebraker Skylar Tibbits Hans Tursack Chintan H. Vaishnav James Wescoat Sarah Williams

— Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Design (BSAD) Zidane Abubaker A New Paradigm of Perception Jierui Fang Responsive Wearables for Rheumatoid Arthritis Effie Jia Living Tiny Annie Zhang Designing for Focus in a Distracted World

Nicole Liwen Tang Examining the Feasibility of a Proposed GroundStorage Coding System — Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) Nawaf Almogren Diriyah Narrated by Its Built Environment Nathaniel Elberfeld Computing Embodied Effort

Semine Long-Callesen The Raffles Museum in the Shift from Nature to Culture Joud Mabsout Contested Landscapes Molly Mason Crafting Decisions Nof Nathansohn Digital Nomads Jim Peraino Architectural Epidemiology Ayesha Usman Shaikh The Yenidze Tobacco and Cigarette Factory

— Master of Architecture (MArch)

Rodrigo Escandón Ceserman How to Read the SelfBuilding Manual

Shepard Halsey Cyclic Matter(s) in Architecture

María Esteban Casañas ARTIFICIAL PERCEPTIONS

Dennis Steven Kosovac untitled, ambiguity in architecture

Melissa Gutiérrez Soto Manual of Hospitality

Shaoying Tan Space is the Interface

Mengqi Moon He From “Chinatown” to Chinatown

Anna Vasileiou Thinking Manual

Catherine Lie sourdough architecture Patrick Weber Don’t Be a Tourist!

Finn Xu From Seed to Sale — Master of Science in Building Technology (SMBT) Demi Fang Timber joinery in modern construction Mariana Liebman-Pelaez Validating an Energy Model for a Hydroponic Shipping Container

Rachel Hirsch Constructing Mughar Burhanpur

Charu Sharma Building an all-electric Volpe Michael Stradley COLORZOOM

Piyush Verma Rainwater Harvesting in Western Ghats of Maharashtra India

Yichen Jia Haoyu Wang Constructing Virtual Reality A CITY OF Exhibitions with Multimodal PLACELESSNESS Interactions Mengfu Kuo Urbanism Across Yuxuan Liu Measuring the Immeasurable