MIT Architecture Final Thesis Reviews, MAY 15, 2024
SMARCHS
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
MIT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING SA+P
MIT Architecture Final Thesis Reviews, MAY 15, 2024
SMARCHS
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
MIT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING SA+P
Gender Glitch Matrix: Queer Aesthetics and the Politics of Error in Digital Media
Merve Akdogan SMArchS COMP
Advisors: Azra Akšamija & Larry Sass Reader: Panagiotis Michalatos
Situated at the intersection of digital media studies, queer theory, and glitch art, this thesis critically examines the normative biases and centralization in artificial intelligence (AI) and, more specifically, machine learning systems as they relate to marginalized identities. Unlike conventional approaches that prioritize optimization and polishing of AI, this thesis introduces the notion of a glitch—a short-lived digital error—as both a metaphorical and an artistic technique that critically subverts societal norms. The thesis interrogates AI’s structure, dissecting it to reveal “black box” complexities to question the vulnerability of computational systems. It proposes an alternative approach that embraces error as a means of resistance, developing a critical commentary on technology production through artistic interventions.
Grounded in Judith Butler's "Matrix of Intelligibility," the artistic interventions introduced in this thesis aim to craft a glitch aesthetic that integrates queer theoretical perspectives with practical machine learning applications. This thesis interrogates how AI models can potentially propagate entrenched societal norms about gender, what the
political errors made by AI systems are and what can be the activist potential of technology in challenging these cisheteronormative renderings.
Aiming to develop and test machine learning models for identifying bias in digital media, this research is organized into four sections, beginning with the development of a theoretical framework and a review of relevant literature on AI errors and glitch art. Subsequently, the thesis explores the design of glitch prototypes through training and testing machine learning models. Finally, through experiments using these methodologies, including archival work, media manipulation, and attribution studies with AI models, this thesis reveals the AI systems' deficiencies as they relate to queer identities. This work underscores the transformative potential of integrating artistic techniques to subvert and reveal technological development. It envisions technology not merely as a mechanism for perfecting systems but as a powerful conduit for advocating a more inclusive future.
Image 1 (opposite): Non-binary objects; Credits: Author. Image 2 (below): Example of a queer zine page that reproduced by a "glitched" machine learning model; Credits: Author.
ECHOES FROM THE STONE: Reframing Preservation in Syria Through Haurani Folklore
Hajar Alrifai
SMArchS
AKPIA
Advisor: Nida Sinnokrot
Reader: Garnette Cadogan
Partially buried in the landscape of Hauran in southern Syria, my family’s 1500-year-old house, Alali—formerly a Byzantine church further erodes with each passing year. Throughout the decades, the house has been subjected to various forms of destruction: from development, demolition, and rocket strikes to violent reconstruction. Its crumbling stones are laden with the memories of four generations and echo with a way of life that is disappearing. At the heart of Hauran are the fellahin, farmers like my ancestors who permanently settled in its villages in the late 19th century. As they settled, the fellahin reclaimed, inhabited, dismantled, and rebuilt the Byzantine structures, often rearranging or reimagining the original programs: chapels, houses, and cemeteries.
In my family’s border village of Nasib, a place both liminal and at the margin,this rich local history lives not in formal archives but, in scattered material and sonic artifacts like architectural ruins, oral poems, folk songs, diasporic transcripts, and 8mm video cassettes. What began
as a project of documenting the decay of our old house evolved into a meditation and manifesto on preservation outside the purview of top-down institutions. Through creative writing and film, Echoes from the Stone asks: what does it mean to preserve a place, and preservation for whom? The story interweaves my journal entries with the encounters of my great-great grandfather, Hassan Ali, an oral poet who founded the village. I further draw from my grandfather Faisal’s diaries, our family’s archival videos, and interviews with residents of Nasib, including my grandmother Um Ghazi, an olive farmer, and Um Saado, a Bedouin matriarch and shepherd who once lived in Alali with her family.
By foraging for this counter-archive of living memories, I reveal intergenerational intersections which complicate and reimbue the colonial history of the village—and of Syria—with voices that echo from the stone: voices that persist and whisper from the ground, from across borders and oceans, and from within. This interdisciplinary chronicle draws from sources in architecture, agriculture, literature, anthropology, and film, to reconstruct a social history of the village and speculate on alternate ways of dwelling, building, and preserving—reclaiming the archive, reinserting the narrative, and reframing preservation through the folklore of Hauran.
Images by Author. Left: A Child Plays in the Old Neighborhood, Nasib, 2023. Below: Mama Takes Measurements at Alali, Nasib, 2023.
Between City and Self: Reading Beirut in Mohamed Soueid’s Tango of Yearning
Ghida Anouti
SMArchS AKPIA
Advisor: Nasser O. Rabbat
Readers: Caroline A. Jones & Renée Green
Set in Beirut in the aftermath of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), the pseudo-documentary film Tango of Yearning (1998) follows the lives of several subjects who speak of love, loss, dreams, and cinema as they navigate their fragmented postwar city. Directed by underground Lebanese filmmaker Mohamed Soueid (b. 1959) and shot purely on video, the film is saturated with cinematic references, images of urban sites, sensual and religious symbols, and sociopolitical intimations. Soueid sees Tango of Yearning – the first in a trilogy titled Civil War – as an ‘obituary’ of his life prior to making this film. Hence, for him, the film is rooted in the past, yet I argue that it is a significant augury of Beirut itself as a palimpsest of urban memories unacknowledged by Soueid. This argument is nestled between Soueid’s assessment of his film as a personal work of cinema, and my own reception of it as symptomatic of Beirut’s history in the periods prior to, during, and after the Civil War.
Through a close reading of the film, I reveal how an ostensibly private essay is also a medium for archiving memories either forgotten or suppressed by the nation’s contested amnesia of the war, while also investigating how the postwar city’s history intertwines with the filmmaker’s biography. A largely unrecognized yet significant contributor to the Arab world’s video and cinema scene, Soueid – an agent, actor, and narrator of the city – is one of the most sensitive chroniclers of life in Beirut during the 1990s and early 2000s. Weaving historical realism with fabulation to fill or distort representational lacuna, his film offers doubled lenses – one of his life and another of Beirut’s contemporary history. Through a chronological reading of an otherwise nonlinear film, I extract a history of Beirut in three stages: its cosmopolitan 1960s with a brimming arts, film, and literature scene; its violent war characterized by sectarianism and fragmented nationalism; and its amnesic postwar era in which the film was created. Accordingly, I ask how Soueid’s private image-making apparatus draws an image of Beirut through his own autobiographical narration.
(Images above) Stills from Tango of Yearning (1998), directed by Mohamed Soueid.
SALT TO SCALE The Seasoning of Buildings
Christina Battikha
SMArchS AD
Advisor: Cristina Parreño Alonso
Readers: Ana Miljački & Brandon Clifford
We exist in thick layers of ancient minerals and material formations that perform to shape human architectural practices. Yet, with a continuous desire to force materials into designs, humanity has never ceased to disregard the active strength of a material to perform with time. The next twenty years align with a future of salt in the form of a dynamic, preservative, and corrosive mineral that shall never expire from Earth’s crust. Nevertheless, aspiring to mine, build, maintain, and preserve, humanity remains in constant search of other more durable materials designed with the presumption to last forever. Salt is certainly not the neutral product of a chemical reaction. It actively performs to preserve, corrode, accumulate, or maintain humanity’s creations. Embracing its ability to expand and reduce timescales, I investigate salt as a material that provides both corrosive and preservative properties offering current architectural practices the choice and responsibility of building for eternity or for a finite moment.
I explore ancient salt cycles shaping the last human activities remaining on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean, in Anfeh, Lebanon. Molded into a series of geo-cultural objects, salt containers embrace their materiality and escape the dullness of a mold to acknowledge the continuous cultural cycles that exists between time, salt, and its people.
This thesis invites current design and construction practices to think across new intervals of time that reflect the building and un-building capacities of salt as a scalable mineral contributing to a salty architectural ritual that passes from generation to the next; a source of luck amidst a time of ongoing crisis.
Providing recipes from a salty kitchen, the work integrates seasonal practices to mine and craft salt into animate typologies embracing the forces of salt to challenge the standard architectural practice against one that thinks with the durations of salt.
Images by Author. Image (Left) Fig 1. A Salampi, ancient tuna can, Rendered Collage, (Right) Fig 2. Concrete salt pans, Rendered Collage
OFFICE OF BACK OF HOUSE
Ekin Bilal SMarchS AD
Advisor: Ana Miljački
Readers: Miho Mazereeuw & Jaffer Kolb
Office of Back of House (OoBoH, pronounced “ooh-boo”), is an architectural practice at the intersection of arts and culture ducts, conduits, scaffolding, custodial carts, mechanical rooms and sheds. OoBoH conducts design experiments in and around these maintenance objects and spaces typically separated from “architecture-proper.” By looking at the regulations, funding initiatives, zoning amendments and energy consumption routines that rule these spaces, OoBoH questions the boundaries that separate them from the “front of house” to begin with.
These “back of house” spaces exist right inside the thick poché line that bounds what is thought to be the domain of design. Back of House (BoH) is dictated by an obscured regime of maintenance processes, and by leveraging these currently unexamined spaces, OoBoH believes that they can become the site for tactical design interventions and new visions of maintenance culture. OoBoH is an attempt at entering architecture from the back door, re-characterizing existing building stock as dependent on the space often hidden behind the facade.
Though it might seem that an architecture is complete when the crane and the scaffolding leaves the construction site, BoH residing all across the built environment stands as an evidence of the ongoing (re)construction of our spaces. Without the BoH constantly churning and maintaining, our fragile architectures would quickly fall into obsolescence. BoH renders our buildings habitable but our relationship to it is a bit strained, a bit antagonistic, imbued with disdain. We hide it, tuck it away, scared for the safety of the image of totality our beautiful buildings project to the world around them. OoBoH is invested in looking at the rear of the illusion of completeness to strategically conduct experiments to either reveal and celebrate acts and spaces of maintenance necessitated by our built environment, or leverage their inherent concealment for averting surveillance.
(Left) OoBoH Experiment: Sheddy, (Right) OoBoH Experiment: Puffler. Images by Author
In Tension: Computational Exploration of the Design Space of Tensile Network Structures
Adam T. Burke
SMArchS BT
Advisor: Caitlin Mueller
Reader: Terry Knight
Cable and rope net structures are lightweight tensile systems and generally cannot resist compression or bending. Tensile network structures are often used to span long distances without intermediate supports and have found applications in both art, architecture, and structural engineering due to their physical and visual lightness and opportunities for transparency when combined with membranes or other cladding systems. However, the design of tensile net structures is generally challenging since their form cannot be arbitrarily defined. Instead, a process of form-finding must be used to establish a geometry where all edges of the network carry only tensile forces.
Physical models and computational methods can be used for the form-finding of tensile network structures; however the primary challenge in the design process is the adjustment of the network parameters to achieve a specific design goal. Recent work has shown that automatic differentiation software packages can be used to efficiently design funicular structures with additional designer driven objectives, but these techniques remain largely inaccessible to general designers, architects, and engineers due to the involved process of problem setup and limited interactivity.
This thesis outlines a tool set for general users and case studies that utilize differentiable programming techniques implemented within a common 3d modeling environment and demonstrate how to achieve efficient inverse design of tensile structures with domain specific objectives. Additionally, new directions of further exploration are demonstrated, such as geometry driven by semantic input, more complex 3D networks, and networks that maintain constant edge length while relative anchor positions change. This enables a more expansive exploration of the design space of tensile networks while respecting design intent and practical considerations.
Images by Author
When the Earth Breathes An Anthology of Volcanic Urbanism
Maria Gabriela Carucci
SMArchS URB
Advisor: Cristina Parreño Alonso
Readers: Mohamad Nahleh & Nicholas De Monchaux
Malpaís. A Spanish word used in volcanically-active landscapes to refer to the new basalt terrain that solidifies after an eruption. It translates literally to “bad country”, and it is defined as a “sterile, arid surface”. This thesis looks at the Tajogaite volcano, the most recent eruption in La Palma, one of the youngest of eight islands in the oceanic volcanic arc formation of the Canary Islands. It positions this event not as a unique site but as a manifestation of a network of bureaucratic colonial imaginaries that still operate within a disaster relief framework that exists in volcanic landscapes throughout the world. Together, these imaginaries draw an unyielding binary narrative about volcanoes as purely destructive entities, and further dismiss the porosity that exists between the geos, the bios and the polis.
Igneous landscapes, through the production of new basalt floors, rich soils and ocean intrusions, traverse and redefine property boundary lines and national coastlines, which extends beyond plan views and into sectional shifts. This project aspires to spatialize the temporal moments of one volcanic eruption, questioning, ultimately, how the ownership of materials in flux, along with their transformations, can reframe our imagination of a cityvolcano production that frames both as ephemeral, ever changing entities.
Through ten allegories, cities are positioned inside of the geological realm, and are de-centered to contextualize them within a volcano’s lifespan. The first five stories describe the current framework, while the other half become allegories through which architecture and urbanism are leveraged as tools through which to understand the earth’s movements at different scales, temperatures and states of matter, in order to provide an alternative imaginary to current answers to the question of volcanic urbanism.
Image by Author. Allegory No.10: Future Cosmologies
Damp Skin: Portraits of Taiwanese Domesticity, Resilience, and Otherness
Cheng-Hsin Chan
SMArchS
URB
Advisor: Rosalyne Shieh
Readers: Roi Salgueiro Barrio & Jaffer Kolb
This thesis is an intricate exploration of Taiwanese life under the constant dampness, weaving together the present with historical threads and personal memories of home and motherhood alongside broader socio-historical narratives. It examines Taiwanese domesticity through the dual prisms of “dampness”—as both a tangible condition and a metaphor—and “enclosure failure” to reveal how these elements influence or fail to meet Taiwanese people’s physical comfort and needs. Central to this study is exploring the historical marginalization of the Taiwanese body in domestic spatial development under the influence of external powers.
Damp Skin unfolds through three intertwined registers that offer diverse materials and perspectives spanning time and space, providing a layered understanding of Taiwanese history and contemporary experiences: I. Home, Memory, and Motherhood, II. Planetary Climate and Body, and III. Domesticity and Architectural Enclosure in Taiwan. This thesis argues the continuous repositioning of our bodies (ourselves and family) in response to external factors — climate, society, and power. It serves to revisit the past, document the present, and speculate on the future, enhancing our understanding of everyday life in Taiwan and exploring potential cultural adaptations. Each of these narratives collects materials and offers distinct perspectives on Taiwanese identity and space’s historical and contemporary shaping. Together, they form portraits of the complexities and nuances of Taiwanese domesticity, resilience, and otherness, framed through the intimate and expansive lens of dampness and enclosure.
Image: No. 60 house. by the Author
The Cycles of aMaízing Things
Juan Manuel Chávez SMArchS AD
Advisors: Jaffer Kolb & Xavi Aguirre
Reader: Renée Green
Throughout this thesis, 'maíz' (also known as corn, or maize) becomes a trans-scalar agent of exchange across time, cultures, and territories. As both a symbol and a subject, it is intensely charged with tradition and disruption, operating within a jumbled feedback state that transcends myths and industry. The work situates my reading of the artwork, ‘Río Revuelto’ by the Mexican artist José Chávez Morado (1949), as a guiding framework to approach a kaleidoscopic entanglement of different narratives. Considered under four different lenses: the cosmological, the national identity, the resistance, and the product, I argue for constant feedback between them for the re-transforming cycles of maíz. The crucial concern driving this exploration is how maíz and humans are ingrained into each other's systems — re-configuring methods, spaces, and forms of display. The display refers not only to maíz as a ‘product’ but as a continuous entity in transition, transforming and adapting to the social and cultural conditions where it circulates — whether through myth, ritual, portrayal, strategy of preservation, building typology, commodity, by-product, or history.
The design approach is presented through performative artifacts that symbolize the systems through which maíz circulates. They are further represented in an essay film. Whether referencing myths, projections, displays, or products, the artifacts become mnemonic objects to think with—depicting the cycles of maíz as a world-building exercise. Maíz becomes the point that traces simultaneity in the history of humanity, representing a symbol eternally under construction. Acknowledging this monumental scale requires my work to be only a grain-sized glimpse of speculative potentials in design.
(Above) collection of artifacts; (Below) a maíz constellation. Images by Author.
Developing frameworks for an equitable future: from building decarbonization to generative modeling
Zoe De Simone SMArchS BT & SM EECS
Advisors:
Christoph Reinhart & Ashia Wilson
Part 1 - Equitable building decarbonization
With buildings contributing to nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, society has a deep routed interest in decarbonizing the building sector to stay on track with 2050 climate change targets. Fortunately, there have been major steps towards carbon neutrality on a policy level: the US has set a goal of net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050, more than 100 US cities have pledged to reach carbon neutral by 2050 and, federal and tax incentives have been put in place towards incentivizing building upgrades.
Deep retrofitting all US single family homes at current costs would amount to an estimated $US 240 billion. There is not enough public funding available to retrofit all the buildings. A “best bang for your buck” approach to government funding favors giving the least possible amount
of money to homeowners to convince them to initiate a building retrofit. However, we know that such an approach perpetuates inequality as higher income homeowners will adopt retrofit technologies at a much faster rate for the foreseeable future. Focusing on equity instead, one can decide to exclusively spend government incentives on currently and historically disadvantaged households. The risk of this approach is that we might run out of public funding before energy measures become self-sustaining.
This leaves us with a question that is to equal parts philosophical, economic, political and mathematical: what would be a just and effective decarbonization policy that will lead to healthy, low carbon homes for all? The thesis seeks to address this gap by presenting a model to analyze the long-term carbon reduction trajectories based on different incentive policies based on diverging notions of fairness and equity, using the city of Oshkosh, WI, as a case study.
Images by Author Left: based on work by Ang (2022)
Alive Scene: Synergizing Human Insight and AI in Dynamic 3D Spaces
Chi-Li Cheng
SMArchS in Computation
Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura
Reader: Diego Pinochet
This thesis introduces "Alive Scene," an online participatory platform for recording dynamic 3D environments and building collective interpretations of objects, events, and atmospheres within them. For instance, a user can browse a recording of a room and describe objects or events to locate them; or select a time frame, adjust the camera angle, and add a comment to share a new narrative of the scene with others. Unlike traditional digital formats such as simple videos or 3D models, this platform is both threedimensional and temporal at the same time, and the views are searchable using natural language sentences and sorted by relevance. By building the platform and testing it with human subjects, this thesis demonstrates that such a new participatory media of dynamic 3D environments fosters communal knowledge and enhances the spatial understanding of individual users. Alive Scene produces rich, semanticlevel communication among users, akin to the dynamic propagation of cultural memes.
"Alive Scene" continuously evolves as users interact with its semantic AI powered system, refining its capabilities and offering increasingly tailored insights for specific contexts.
This adaptive progress transcends traditional AI applications, facilitating nuanced, user-driven interpretations and fostering conversations that build on previous perceptions.
Additionally, integrating the Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining (CLIP) model enables "Alive Scene" to archive user inputs and suggest new avenues for exploring each other’s views. The system offers a simple interface for prompting and finding related views, along with descriptions of perceptions in words. This thesis explores methods to optimize the view recommendation system.
By blending computational analysis with human experience and leveraging AI and user feedback, "Alive Scene" transforms into a vibrant knowledge hub. It fosters a layered, communal understanding of environments, marking a shift from simple interactions to meaningful contributions. Through this evolution, "Alive Scene" nurtures a collective digital narrative, significantly enhancing digital communication by making it more immersive, intuitive, and insightful.
(Left) Gaussian splatting 3d scene of student lounge' (Right) Alive Scene User Interface. Images by Author
Redefining Urban Landscapes: A
Methodological Approach to Transforming Underused Parking Spaces with Dynamic Urban Functions
Jie Fan
SMArchS URB & SM EECS
Advisors: Miho Mazereeuw & Phillip Isola Reader: Andres Sevtsuk
Employing machine learning algorithms and informed by comprehensive urban datasets spanning various cities worldwide, urban workers are able to cope with the urban dynamics during the design process. This study presents a comprehensive approach to identifying underutilized urban spaces, focusing on parking areas, and explores potential reutilization strategies in Boston. The MBTA communities and Boston City are the research sites as there could be more opportunities around public transportation that can be transformed. Under the milieu of the information age, global urbanization, and technological development, the prosperity of urban data serves as the new method to approach urban proposals. The city, as a multifaceted artifact, is examined through the lens of advanced datadriven techniques.
By utilizing computer vision models with MAE, CNN etc, we can automatically detect surface parking usage according to satellite maps, which identify the potentially underused parking space. A misalignment of the supply-demand pattern caused by the dichotomy between the current infrastructure planning and the actual urban needs can be identified along with miscellaneous urban factors. In light of this reality, can we rejuvenate " unnecessary", under-used, neglected parking spaces into more vibrant urban spaces? What criteria should we use to evaluate the redundancy?
This evaluation method tends to combine the quantified analysis with qualitative discussion. It indicates a systematic method supported by data, where the number calculated according to various urban features serves as the reference for future planning decision-making. Beyond those numbers, discussion involving policy, regulation, and ownership should be included.
Boston's high density has contributed to expensive prices and a housing crisis. The MBTA community's upzoning act proposed to reduce the low density and sprawl that comes with single-family houses and add more residential units.
Image 1 (above): Parking spaces (incomplete) in the MBTA subway area, by Author.
Image 2 (below): "A family of object recognition definitions." from A. Torralba, P. Isola, and W. T. Freeman, Foundations of Computer Vision. MIT Press, 2024.
Designing
(with) Trees: Active Agents in the Architectural Production
Laura-India Garinois
SMArchS AD
Advisor: Mohamad Nahleh
Readers: Rania Ghosn & Roi Salgueiro Barrio
Image Caption: Site 01 - Thermal Value of Two Callery Pear trees onto a residential building in Boston, shifting the traditional top-down hierarchy of value of apartments. Image by Author
This thesis embarks on a multifaceted exploration of the relationship between urban trees, architectural representation, and the legal framework governing their existence, with a particular focus on tree hearings in Boston as a platform for this study. Against the backdrop of capitalist influences shaping urban landscapes, standardized modes of representation often prioritize economic interests, relegating urban trees to twodimensional depictions in architectural drawings. Such representations obscure the rich complexity and ecological significance of trees, thereby influencing design choices that impact their vitality. Amidst these challenges, Massachusetts has initiated efforts towards granting public trees legal recognition, providing a foundation upon which this study builds on to advocate for further improvements in tree rights and protections. This encompasses tree hearings, where developers and residents seek permission for the removal of healthy public trees, involving municipal authorities, tree wardens, and local communities.
Through extensive dialogue with experts and stakeholders dedicated to this cause, the thesis identifies loopholes within existing laws and institutional frameworks, leading to the development of a tree appraisal system that employs alternate representations of trees that encourage new ways of valuing their role within the architectural thinking and production. The exploration examines how a more nuanced collaboration with trees in design processes can enhance the value of architecture, and how design can in turn contribute to the protection of trees. Ultimately, the goal is to enrich tree hearing conversations by recognizing them as microcosms of a larger climate conversation around trees and nature, and to intervene in their legal site and imagination, fostering a more inclusive dialogue that transcends the binary decision of where to cut down a tree or not.
Mapping Wildness: Simulating Post-extraction Wildland Regeneration
Crystal Griggs
SMarchS COMP
Advisor: Terry Knight
Readers: Cathryn Dwyre & Takehiko Nagakura
This thesis introduces a novel approach to wildlife habitat classification for ecological regeneration. It is focused by the extreme environmental degradation of mountaintop removal (MTR) in the Appalachian Mountains, a violent practice that has significantly altered the landscape of this ecologically sensitive region. By integrating remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with machine learning, this research aims to develop a method that transcends traditional human egocentric landscape assessments, advocating for a model that foregrounds the habitats and needs of critically endangered species by simulating landscape regeneration and assessing topographical alterations in terms of how design decisions impact wildlife. Central to this study is the concept of Umwelt, the subjective experiences of nonhuman species, including how their spatial perception and spectrum are used to discern details within their environment. Umwelt broadens traditional spatial understanding by emphasizing that each species experiences the world through its sensory filters, which shape its interactions within their habitat. This understanding guides the research’s approach to approximating the Umwelt of the Cerulean Warbler (Setophaga cerulea), a surrogate species in this work,
which has faced steep declines due to habitat loss in Appalachia. Through the development of a habitat suitability model that utilizes advanced computational tools and multispectral imagery, the thesis endeavors to offer a new perspective on environmental planning and conservation efforts - a computational approach to near-approximations of Umwelt. The methodological framework seeks not only to classify post-extraction landscapes for their potential in supporting wildlife but also to inform design and land use decisions that are sensitive to the temporal and complex processes of natural habitat regeneration. By challenging the prevailing paradigms of landscape restoration, which often lack consideration for the intricacies of wildland dynamics such as the multitudes of species interactions and interdependencies, this research proposes a new methodology that empowers wildlife to guide the ecological recovery process. The findings underscore the potential of applied GIS and machine learning in environmental advocacy, setting a precedent for future research and practice aimed at the regeneration of ecosystems that considers the ecological realities of all species involved.
Image Credits (left) Simulation of landscape regeneration on Hobet 21 Coal Mine, West Virginia. A new landscape proposal can be generated based on existing topography that can then be classified to see how it may affect Cerulean Warbler habitat. (below) Habitat suitability approximation for the Cerulean Warbler habitat on 'Twilight' mine in Lindytown, West Virginia as part of a larger dataset.
Images by Author
Alternate Imaginaries for the Kinara: River Ravi's Edge as a Threshold
Mahwish Khalil
SMArchS AKPIA
Advisor: Mohamad Nahleh
Readers: James Wescoat & Huma Gupta
In the lower riparian landscape of Punjab, Pakistan various communities confront the challenges of living within the active floodplain of river Ravi as it flows alongside the city of Lahore. These communities navigate the dissonances of the river’s edge—its Kinara, marked and molded by persistent colonial (mis)representations rooted in practices of erasure and division. Stepping away from historical depictions that have reduced the river to a mere resource for acquisition, this thesis engages with design and the oral tradition of storytelling, known as Qissa Khwani, to propose new modes of knowing, witnessing, and ultimately, cultivating alternative imaginaries for Ravi.
This thesis seeks to illuminate the overlooked narratives of a river and its communities by drawing inspiration from and centering the voices and legacies of those most impacted by regressive depictions of a linear floodplain. It stages newer encounters and engagements with Ravi and its communities by stitching together stories of numerous community members, the dwellers, the boatmen, and the civil defense divers, actively defying and transforming the seemingly static Kinara—their home—through cultural and economic production. These pluralistic alternatives serve as a deliberate departure from the current largescale, mega-urban development projects planned for the riverfront, which not only overlook the communities living along its banks but also employ idealized depictions of Ravi to attract capital.
Finally, this thesis questions how can the river's edge be remapped to allow for the dismantling of top-down visions while addressing an urgency embodied within the shallow, receding flows of a polluted river, whose uncertain future remains contingent on distinct lines.
Tracing Imaginaries: Stories from Ravi Image by Author
Common Grounds in Shared Waters: Integrated Design for Negotiating Equitable Development In
Gosabara-Mokarsagar
Dhwani Mehta
SMArchS URB
Advisors: Brent Ryan & Roi Salgueiro Barrio
Reader: Huma Gupta
Along the west coast of India, in the waters of GosabaraMokarsagar, conflicting visions for the landscape mix and muddle. In 2016, Muslim fisherfolk of Gosabara, 100 families, already marginalized by religious, caste, and class distinctions, were banned from fishing, which was their sole traditional livelihood due to environmental protection claims. This led the community to file a petition for mass euthanasia to protest the loss of their rights. Despite their protests, the Government of India announced the Kerly Recharge Reservoir Ecotourism project in 2022 that, overlooked their needs, threatened their cultural identity linked to fishing, and exacerbated their traumatic history of displacement that dates back to India and Pakistan’s 1947 partition.
Although many groups' contested visions map onto the shared waters of Gosabara-Mokarsagar, the fisherfolk are particularly excluded from decision-making processes. Finding a singular common ground among the contesting groups is challenging due to vast differences in power, position, and privilege. This thesis, therefore, aims to
ensure equitable representation for all stakeholders, particularly disempowered fisherfolk, by an integrative design approach of forging a network of multiple 'common grounds.' The term ‘common grounds’ defines partnerships of two or three stakeholders, instead of all, based on mutual understanding and shared objectives like sustainable livelihoods, economic development, ecotourism, and avian conservation.
First, I established a common ground with a local NGO, Mokarsagar Wetland Conservation Committee, by using photography, videography, and drawings to raise public awareness about this unique landscape. Initially intuitive and later strategic, I represented the lush waters as a shared home for both the fisherfolk and the birds. Second, I present a network of localized design strategies to enable partnerships that position the NGO as a mediator between the government and local communities, especially the fisherfolk, enabling it to foster alternative models of environmental stewardship. Through these partnerships, rooted in figurative ‘common grounds,’ the fisherfolk become primary, active collaborators in development processes. This thesis creates the conditions for a more equitable development model for this landscape by using design to enable grassroots partnerships that integrate communities into ecological conservation and economic growth projects.
Image (Left): Photograph of the Gosabara Fishing Village by the Author; Image (Right): Waters of Gosabara by Author
Bridging the Health Divide: Achieving Equitable Healthcare Access in Kenya through Artificial Intelligence
Geoffrey Mosoti Nyakiongora
SMArchS URB
Advisor: Nicholas de Monchaux
Readers: Skylar Tibbits
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), providing quality universal healthcare is regarded as a human right and a key hallmark of a prosperous nation. Ensuring access to healthcare is essential in safeguarding the well-being of a country’s citizens.
Kenya's doctor-to-patient ratio is a staggering 1:5,725, far exceeding the recommended 1:1,000 ratio, according to the WHO. This means that the vast majority of Kenyans do not have access to any form of medical care and many who do have to struggle to access it.
Another glaring issue plaguing Kenya's healthcare system is the lopsided allocation of medical personnel, facilities, and equipment - with urban centers enjoying a high amount compared to rural areas. Though the geographic dispersion of nurses is more equitable than doctors, their overall numbers across the country still fall short of the 25 per 10,000 population ratio recommended by the World Health Organization for adequate healthcare provision.
This skewed urban-rural divide leaves many Kenyans residing in remote or impoverished rural regions grappling with little to no access to essential medical services and expertise available to their urban counterparts, highlighting an acute need to address this inequitable distribution of vital healthcare resources.
A recent health facilities census by the Ministry of Health revealed that 93% of over 12,000 facilities are unable to provide basic outpatient services due to lack of equipment. 78% of these facilities cannot offer critical care, with a paltry 2,304 public ICU/HDU beds serving a population of 50 million people! For maternity services, 84% of around 5,000 facilities lack essential equipment.
This research seeks to assess if AI could also aid in designing the functional requirements and layouts of these new rural hospitals based on local health needs, climate, and culture. The study also seeks to investigate if harnessing AI across planning, design, construction and resource management, stakeholders in Kenya’s healthcare sector could leapfrog conventional methods to build a new network of high-quality rural hospitals rapidly and costeffectively. This could drastically increase healthcare access for underserved populations .urban-rural facility divi could drastically increase healthcare access for underserved populations and help alleviate the urban-rural facility divide.
Images by Author. Renditions of a level 1 hospital in Narok County
The Shape of Culture Contact: George
Kubler in Peru, 1948-49
Johann Schweig
SMArchS HTC
Advisor: Timothy Hyde
Yale art history professor George Kubler’s seminal 1962 publication The Shape of Time is, according to his own words, representative of a “crossroads between the history and anthropology of art.” This work does not stand alone, but is rather part of a larger corpus of study through which Kubler recurred to disciplines, methods and tools outside of what is traditionally considered art historical—including anthropology, architectural representation, and biology— in order to generate new readings and understandings of the history of Central and South American art. This thesis takes a look into a year of Kubler’s life between 194849, spent in Peru conducting research and fieldwork with the Smithsonian’s Institute for Social Anthropology and teaching a seminar at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima. The thesis argues that Kubler, himself a highly “acculturated” individual, found within the anthropological theory of acculturation the tools through which to understand the culture that emerged from the encounter between the indigenous peoples of the Americas
and Spanish colonizers. Drawing from his experiences in Peru, a dual portrait emerges one of an increasingly cosmopolitan Lima and another of the underdeveloped, feudal Andean world, frozen in colonial times; I contend that witnessing the coexistence of various temporalities within a single geographic territory had a significant effect on Kubler’s later theories on spatialized historical time.
Image Credits: Kubler's photographs of rural Andean Peru (left) and cosmopolitan European friends in Lima (right).
35mm negatives, 1948-49, Article 8, Series 3, Box 29, George A. Kubler Collection, Yale University
From Waste to Structure A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach to Circular Design
Karl-Johan I. Sørensen
SMArchS
COMP & SM CEE
Advisors: Caitlin Mueller & Larry Sass
The design-to-construction process of buildings predominantly follows a top-down linear workflow, where a design is drawn and subsequently refined to determine the required materials and components. This approach assumes an infinite material supply or the capability to manufacture what is needed for the design. Constructing in this manner is resource-intensive and wasteful, making it incompatible with our global climate goals. One way to significantly reduce our material and environmental footprint is by extending the lifespan of building materials through circular design practices. In this approach, the available materials define the architecture, inverting the process from top-down to bottom-up. This method, known as Inventory-Constrained Design, enables the creation of new buildings using materials sourced from construction and demolition waste streams. These inventories, characterized by their non-standard and uniquely varied elements, are hard to design with due to the enormous quantity of possible combinations of even a few discrete elements. Identifying a feasible design that aligns with the designer's intent and meets functional requirements becomes an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, heavily reliant on manual trial and error. Computational optimization has been implemented to automate the process, but state-of-the-art algorithms still require manually pre-defining a parametric target design-space or take too long to compute when applied to larger problems.
This thesis proposes a new method for circular design utilizing Reinforcement Learning (RL) to de-sign structures, requiring only a design gesture and the inventory as input. It works by training an artificial neural network to sequentially assemble a structure from inventory elements, following the gesture while meeting a structural goal. Hence, the design layout directly arises from available inventory.
After training, the neural net can be employed instantaneously to design new structures with new inventories, without any significant computational expense. To evaluate the effectiveness of the RL method, it is applied to the specific problem of inventory-constrained design of planar roof truss-es and demonstrated on a realistic example of assembling a long-span roof from a disassembled transmission tower.
Structural Policy
Images by Author
Non-structural policy
The Technical Discourses of Miyake Design Studio: Episodes in the Interpretation of Cloth, 1995–2007
Tan Yi-Ern Samuel
SMArchS HTC
Advisor: Timothy Hyde
Readers: Nicholas de Monchaux & Melissa McCormick
In the late 1980s, Miyake Design Studio began to register patents concerning the Studio’s development of novel techniques to process pleated clothing. Their first patent, filed in 1989, was registered in designer Issey Miyake’s name, detailing the use of an industrial machine to pleat an entire garment after sewing, reversing the order of the conventional approach to creating pleated garments. In the years that followed, this entry into what I term “technical discourse” would proliferate with the Studio’s establishing of the PLEATS PLEASE brand specializing in pleated garments, and the A-POC (“a piece of cloth”) project with designer and textile engineer Fujiwara Dai. Each of these projects produced numerous patents, including a period between 1997 and 2008 I call the “Miyake Patent Explosion” when the Studio filed twenty patents with the Japan Patent Office and its international counterparts.
In contrast to aesthetic discourses proposing the value of a work on its artistic merits and intellectual content, technical discourse points to the profusion of texts produced and circulated by the Studio—in this thesis, patents and legal claims to uphold the utility of their
products and their protection as intellectual property. By engaging with technical discourse, Miyake Design Studio positioned Miyake as a figure who exceeded the boundaries of fashion, approaching its adjacent categories of unhyphenated design, architecture, and art. Examining three episodes where technical discourse opens the way for historical narrative—a lawsuit over imitation goods, a case of mistaken identity in design criticism, and a moment of technological dissolution—I suspend the promise of monographic history that peers into the mind of the individual and probe instead the possibilities of seeing agencies beyond those attributed to the authorial figure of Miyake— his corporate apparatus, his allies, his admirers, his critics, his opponents, the receptive public.
(Left) Opening page of Aera, vol.7 no.44, 1994, showing Miyake's pleats (Right) be side its imitation.
Parametric PAINT-OVER: \\Generating Design Models via Image Encoders and Latent Trajectories
Demircan Tas
SMArchS HTC
Advisors: George Stiny & Phillip Isola Reader: Caitlin Mueller
Design is an iterative process where physical or virtual models of objects are created or rendered, evaluated and modified repeatedly. Sketches and other direct manipulations are made on the rendered or fabricated mediums to communicate intended changes.
Parametric design is a prominent paradigm in design and architecture where models map input parameters into a design space to rapidly generate samples. Modifications that are congruent with the semantics of a model are easily implemented. However, direct modifications to the result of a parametric model often exist outside the possibilities of the parameter and design spaces defined for the model. Parametric models have two aspects that lead to incompatibility with direct modification. Design spaces and parameter spaces are separated by an interpreter. Moreover, variables that comprise the design spaces are defined by the actions/nodes of the parametric model within the proprietary tools of their host application. This requires the re-configuration of the models to accommodate novel changes. These properties prevent parametric design tools from being integrated into early phases of design where changes are commonplace.
(Left) Sketch drawing, depth estimation, sketch augmentation, and rendered NeRF (Right)Visualization of linear interpolation among latent vectors. Images by Author
We propose pre-trained auto-encoders as an extension of the parametric design paradigm that is compatible with an iterative design process, enabling direct manipulation. We use images as a shared medium for traversing latent spaces of generative models and define a software agnostic design space for generating 3 dimensional models as output. We implement rendering and image encoding to use images as a common medium among the output and input spaces of the model, enabling users with direct modification by textit{painting over}. By using multiple images to locate and traverse along multiple points in latent spaces, we provide examples where the model approximates parametric design model with generalization capacity. We also provide an augmentation model for using hand drawn sketches as an additional layer of abstraction.
EXŒRCISING A HAUNTED CITY
Bryan Hon Ting Wong
SMArchS URB
Advisor: Arindam Dutta
Readers: Carrie Norman & Jaffer Kolb
With the looming threat of cultural erasure posed by Hong Kong’s repatriation to China no later than 2047, rituals emerge as the last resource sustaining the collective identity of the city. This thesis documents, through the study of local Taoist-Buddhist practices, the choreographies of rituals as a reparative tool to resist the disappearance of local culture. It is linked to findings from everyday domestic offerings to ancestors, annual festive performances of traumatic cleansing, and the booming clientele businesses of precautionary rites, all of which demonstrate their spatial and temporal qualities as methods to resist modern state control.
To retain the residue of pre-modern practices as a critique of socio-political turmoil, this thesis suggests an alternative design that preserves and promotes the annual ghost festival for public participation. By revising the festival’s pilgrimage route and ritual sheds, this thesis transforms the traditional nature of ephemeral scaffoldings into permanent poles and follies. Situated along the city’s most haunted public estate, these structures are programmed as public facilities for fitness training and children's playscapes. During the festival, they will be activated into ritual sheds, demonstrating a formal and functional contrast between the everyday and the ritual—from form to formlessness, exposure to closure, and lightness to heaviness.
Designed to evade institutional surveillance, these clandestine transformations preserve solidarity and identity not by emphasizing the significance of priests exorcising in rituals, but by highlighting the quotidian motor memories developed from locals exercising within. The duality of ritual and everyday movements shall exœrcise the ghosts of a haunted city.
(Above) The rites of Breaking Hell's Gate. (Below) Ghost Grappling. Images by Author
MIT Architecture Final Thesis Reviews, May 15, 2024
SPECIAL THANKS
Architecture Faculty and Staff
Eleni Aktypi
Taariq Alasa
Darren Bennett
Kateri Bertin
Kathaleen Brearley
Joél Carela
Nicholas de Monchaux
Christopher Dewart
Jackie Dufault
Mike Enos
Michael Gallino
Eduardo Gonzalez
Jim Harrington
Tessa Haynes
John Hoder
Alejandra (Alixe) Huete
Douglas Le Vie
Inala Locke
Tonya Miller
Claudine Monique
Jennifer O'Brien
Paul Pettigrew
Alan Reyes
Jennifer Roesch
Diana Rooney
Venecia Siders
Advisors and Readers (MIT and External)
Xavi Aguirre
Azra Akšamija
Brandon Clifford
Garnette Cadogan
Arindam Dutta
Cathryn Dwyre
Renée Green
Rania Ghosn
Huma Gupta
Timothy Hyde
Phillip Isola
Caroline A. Jones
Jaffer Kolb
Emanuel Admasu
Sarah Brown
Janet Echelman
Brittany Ellis
Antonio Furgiuele
Rania Ghosn
Elise Hunchuck
Terry Knight
Melissa McCormick
Miho Mazereeuw
Panagiotis Michalatos
Ana Miljački
Caitlin Mueller
Mohamad Nahleh
Carrie Norman
Cristina Parreño Alonso
Nasser O. Rabbat
Thomas Reese
Brent Ryan
Larry Sass
Invited Critics
Joris Komen
Marie Law Adams
Ang Li
Diana Martinez
Krista Palen
Bobby Pietrusko
Amanda Reeser Lawrence
Roi Salgueiro Barrio
Andres Sevtsuk
Rosalyne Shieh
Nida Sinnokrot
Nicholas de Monchaux
Ashia Wilson
James Wescoat
Diego Pinochet
Takehiko Nagakura
George Stiny
Skylar Tibbits
Maia Simon
Dina Taha
Nada Tarkhan
Daniel Tish
Shanta Tucker
Sheila Kennedy
Kiley Feickert
Massachusetts Institute of Technology • School of Architecture and Planning Department of Architecture, 77 Mass Avenue, Room 7-337, Cambridge, MA 02139 617 253 7791 • arch@mit.edu • architecture.mit.edu
© 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Individual contributions are copyright their respective authors. Images are copyright their respective creators, unless otherwise noted.
Booklet design by Suwan Kim
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