M.ARCH SMBT BSAD THESIS PROJECTS
ALICIA JAEL DELGADO-ALCARAZ, ANNIE DONG, NATASHA HIRT, NIKITA KLIMENKO, SESIL LEE, CHARMELLE
HANU PARK, ADRIANA RAMIREZ CUEBAS, SHRUTHI RAVICHANDRAN
MHUNGU
M.ARCH | SMBT | BSAD THESIS PROJECTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Kitchen Table as Pedagogical Boundary Object
Alicia Jael Delgado-Alcaraz
Dishing it Out:
Reimagining Multicultural College Dining Through StudentCentered Design
Annie Dong
Structural Analysis at Scale:
Computational Modeling of Embodied Carbon in Complex Floor Layouts
Natasha Hirt
Cooling Machines:
Exploring the Heat Mitigation Effect of Urban Trees with Computer Vision
Nikita Klimenko
Hidden Monuments
Sesil Lee
Control the Archive, Control Potential:
The Value of the MIT BSU’s Community Archive
Charmelle Mhungu
Design for Memory: A Prototype Camera to Capture Experience.
Do All Photos Need to be Realistic?
Decarbonizing Urban Landscape Architecture: Assessment of North American Typologies
Adriana Ramirez Cuebas
The Image of the Tunnels: Mapping Perception of the MIT Underground
Applying Lynch to Pseudo-Urban Underground Spaces
Shruthi Ravichandran
ALICIA JAEL DELGADO-ALCARAZ
Kitchen Table as Pedagogical Boundary Object
This thesis begins at the kitchen table—my realm across borrowed kitchens, the one constant through the shifting thresholds of my upbringing.
It reimagines the Mexico–US border as a third space: an interconnected cultural territory where memories linger, narratives merge, and identities intersect. I was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, living in the in-between, where life unfolds in both-ness—through meals prepared in one city, eaten in the other, as mountains blur and the Rio Grande does little to separate the scent of wet grass between sister cities. From that place, this thesis asks how architecture might begin at the table—not from form alone, but from gestures of care, conversation, and shared space.
Using the Mexico-US border as a case study, I propose a methodology grounded in the everyday, one that challenges architectural processes by centering lived experience and collective reflection. Through this process, the recipe book (the thesis itself) becomes both method and structure, organizing reflections through themes of movement, resilience, and cultural memory. The imaginative digestion of these recipes is guided through a curated menu of questions, organized as appetizers, entrées, and desserts, inviting responses rooted in dialogue and reflection, rather than critique. Guided by interviews, surveys, and acts of shared storytelling, the design emerges through a table for one, for two, and for a collective, each form explored through figure, material, and scale. Together, these elements propose an architectural pedagogy that is assembled, not prescribed—a practice that remains unresolved without participation, and one that begins not at the building scale, but at the table.
Ultimately, this thesis serves as an offering to those who came before me, my borderland community, my family, and ancestors—preserving the cultural narratives of the border not as a fixed history, but as shared heritage and future possibility.
Advisor: William O’Brien Jr.
Reader: Sheila Kennedy
Table for Two — A Structure of Relation. Image by Author
Dishing it Out: Reimagining Multicultural College Dining
Through Student-Centered Design
Dining halls are central spaces in colleges, fostering not only nourishment but also cultural connection and community. However, when dining centers fall short in catering to the needs of their multicultural student body, students are often left feeling isolated and even further from home. Using MIT as a case study, this thesis employs user research and digital storytelling to explore how collecting student perspectives can inform college dining centers on better supporting the diverse cultural backgrounds and dietary needs of their students. The research and findings highlight the critical gaps and strengths in cultural representation within MIT’s dining halls. Through surveys and user research, this thesis gathers student perspectives on food authenticity, comfort, and identity, which inform the design of an interactive website prototype exploring student culinary backgrounds and preferences. This project serves as both a resource for dining services and a digital cookbook curated by the student body. By centering student voices through a culinary lens, this project aims to reimagine dining spaces as inclusive, representative, and comforting shared spaces within college campuses.
Co-advisor: Tony Hu
Co-advisor: Paul Pettigrew
by Author
Image
Structural Analysis at Scale:
Computational Modeling of Embodied Carbon in Complex Floor Layouts
To mitigate the environmental consequences of the built environment, we urgently need to rethink how we build. This thesis discusses one possible approach: improving the material efficiency of flexural systems. Of all the structural systems in a building, flexural systems such as flat slab floors are among the most materially wasteful. Despite the decades of work developing optimal floor systems, the complexity and impracticality of the results in the literature is prohibitive, limiting their implementation and construction. Consequently, most flexural systems today are designed using approximations and rules of thumb rather than by mathematically optimal designs.
This thesis bridges the gap between practical engineering, material efficiency, and design freedom. It presents novel, code-compliant tools for the computational analysis and optimization of flat slabs supported by a network, or grillage, of beams, using a model system of reinforced concrete supported by steel W-sections. The method is used to perform a large scale analysis of 24,192 unique combinations of beam topologies and assembly design decisions. The results of this analysis find improvements in structural embodied carbon of up to 53.4% over the business-as-usual design case, and also yield generalizable takeaways about the key factors influencing material efficiency in floor slabs.
One of the advantages of the method is its flexibility in taking on a range of complex design challenges. These are presented as extensions to the method, and include designing with a constrained inventory, and automatically deriving high-performing structural geometries from a dense groundstructure.
The method and results shown in this thesis expand the range of analysis tools that engineers have access to, enabling a wide range of creative designs and explicitly linking design decisions to environmental impact.
Advisor: Caitlin Mueller
Top: rendering of alternative beam grillage. Image by Author Bottom: conceptual overview of method. Image by Author
Cooling Machines: Exploring the Heat Mitigation Effect of Urban Trees with Computer Vision
As the impacts of climate change on cities become more pronounced, urban authorities are under pressure to prepare existing streetscapes for increased levels of heat stress. While many aspects of existing urban morphology impact heat exposure (sky view factor, glazing levels, facade materials), they cannot be rapidly changed at large across existing urban infrastructures. Urban authorities worldwide increasingly turn to planting trees as a way of cooling urban streetscapes. Urban vegetation is indeed known to have a cooling effect, primarily due to trees providing shade and preventing urban materials from heating up, as well as due to their ability to maintain their own internal temperature via evapotranspiration. While the positive impacts of urban trees on thermal comfort are well-studied, little work is dedicated to how impacts vary across tree species and morphology. Despite the complexity of studying vegetation life cycles at sufficient scale, and due to the dispersed nature of the issue across disciplines of biology, urban climate, design, and data science, this specific knowledge is vital to urban planners for deciding which trees have the most cooling effect in specific parts of the city. This thesis embraces the notion of trees as ‘cooling machines’ and dissects the diverse morphological and contextual factors that affect the role of individual trees on local urban heatscape. Leveraging a set of computer vision methodologies, including species recognition, context-aware segmentation, and photogrammetry, the thesis examines a large dataset of thermal imagery of urban trees collected in Los Angeles and Dubai to describe the impact of individual tree species, height and form, as well as spatial context on the cooling effect. Building on this approach, the thesis proposes a prototyping framework for architects to cure urban heatscapes via targeted curation of tree planting schemes, tying the visual and thermal aspects of urban greenery. This approach will allow cities to leverage urban vegetation in the most efficient way, and tame urban heat in a scalable and globally affordable manner.
Advisor: Carlo Ratti
Reader: Daniela Rus
Radiative effect of tree crowns. Image by Author
Hidden Monuments
Jeju Island’s burial culture is embedded in the island’s distinct landscape, where sandam burial mounds are not isolated monuments but quietly coexist with fields, ranches, and forests. These sites are living records of intangible heritage—ancestral beliefs, Beolcho rituals, and vernacular stone-stacking practices—manifested not through formalized memory, but through their modest yet persistent presence in the landscape. Today, however, these spaces are under threat: policies favoring cremation, rapid urbanization, and shifting land values render them increasingly invisible or obsolete. In the past few decades, two-thirds of sandam have been exhumed, and with fewer than six out of over 100,000 burial sites designated as cultural heritage, traditional models of conservation are inadequate—unable to engage with the dispersed, landscape-bound nature of these burial grounds.
This project reimagines Jeju’s burial mounds not as relics to be preserved, but as spatial anchors for cultural and communal expressions. Through a series of small-scale architectural and landscape interventions—gates, stages, passages, and shelters—deployed along paths tracing sandam clusters, the work explores how memory can be practiced rather than displayed. By offering ways to engage with the buried, the forgotten, and the living simultaneously, the project expands the idea of heritage: not as a static record, but as a participatory and evolving relationship between people, land, and memory.
LEE
Advisor: William O’Brien Jr.
Reader: Angelo Bucci
Aerial view of a recently displaced sandam burial mound within a farmland Image credit: Kim Jongbeom / Monte Publishing
Control the Archive, Control Potential:
The Value of the MIT BSU’s Community
Archive
For the first time in recent memory, the MIT Black Students’ Union (BSU), a student group on MIT’s campus, has been conducting a centralized effort to catalog, organize, and digitize its internal archive. This thesis examines the role of an archive, the role of the BSU archive specifically, and the relationship between the BSU archive and MIT’s archives. This thesis relies on archival theory and case studies to examine different forms of alternative archiving, and also documents two BSU community events (a collaborative organizing/cataloging event and exhibition) inspired by those examinations. This thesis explores how a partnership between the Institute and BSU may very well be necessary for the successful establishment (and continuation) of the BSU archive and its documents, given the lack of expertise within much of the student body. At the same time, this thesis argues that to ensure access to the materials for students, future BSU executive boards, and researchers alike: 1) The BSU archive remain in the BSU Lounge; 2) The establishment of the archive be a collaborative effort within the Black community at MIT; and 3) The main responsibilities for maintenance lie within the BSU.
Advisor: Cherie Abbanat
by Author
Image
Design for Memory: A Prototype Camera to Capture Experience
Do all photos need to be realistic?
Accessible camera technology through smartphones and other devices has made photo-taking a regular part of daily life. While photos can serve to document memories and capture experiences, the prevalence of picture-taking also presents challenges, such as reduced enjoyment of the moment, impaired memory, and increased data loads. Designing a camera that is non-intrusive, subject-oriented, and functionally restricted can alleviate the pressure of picture-taking and provide an alternative to the distractions of conventional cameras. This thesis explores the design of a camera that mitigates these effects by using digital collaging, a technique rooted in visual arts. The design is driven by user needs and tested on various image subjects and experiences. This work contributes to the field of experience-capturing technology, offering an interpretive alternative to traditional cameras.
Advisor: Marcelo Coelho
Prototype Camera / Photo by Ava Dijstelbloem
Decarbonizing Urban Landscape Architecture:
Protecting Public Space On Boston’s Waterfront
Urban landscapes are increasingly recognized as critical to climate mitigation, yet they remain underrepresented in carbon accounting frameworks. This thesis introduces a typologybased Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework to benchmark 50-year carbon footprints and evaluate the mitigation potential of decarbonization strategies aligned with real-world design constraints.
Urban ground-plane systems are grouped into Activity Land Covers—including High-Traffic surfaces (e.g., asphalt, pavers) and Low-Traffic surfaces (e.g., turfgrass, stabilized stonedust)— and Ecological Land Covers, comprising Canopy systems (large trees) and Understory-to-Midstory systems (shrubs, grasses, and small trees). These are assessed across four typologies: Streetscapes, Plazas, Green Courts, and Urban Parks. Results span three levels of analysis: land cover performance, typology-level carbon trajectories, and the outcomes of targeted and combined decarbonization strategies. Turfgrass and pavements are leading emitters, while canopy systems consistently sequester carbon. Understory systems are more variable, depending on species mix and maintenance intensity. When the most aggressive commercially deployable strategies are applied, all typologies achieve net carbon sink status at the high-bound, including Streetscapes. Time to net-zero ranges from immediate in Urban Parks to year 31 in Streetscapes. By aligning assessment with how landscapes are designed, built, and maintained, this thesis offers a practical framework for embedding climate accountability into urban design practice and policy, supporting future benchmarking, target setting, and performance standards.
Advisor: John Ochsendorf
ADRIANA RAMIREZ
Removed sod around stormdrain in MIT Campus. Image by Author
The Image of the Tunnels: Mapping Perception of the MIT Underground
Applying Lynch to Pseudo-Urban Underground Spaces
Kevin Lynch’s famous book, The Image of the City, proposes five elements (paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks) that residents of a space utilize in creating mental maps of their neighborhood and use for defining their spatial perception and navigation. The MIT Tunnels are pseudo-urban underground spaces utilized daily for a myriad of purposes: to reach labs and offices, avoid slow-moving tourist traffic and biting Boston cold, and explore MIT’s iconic hacking spots. This work sought to understand if Lynchian principles apply to the tunnels and culminated in a GeoGuessr-inspired virtual game where students could test and grow their knowledge of tunnel navigation. The hypotheses tested in this work revolved around extending Lynch’s framework to relevant tunnel analogs: familiar paths, districts (clusters of buildings and departments), tunnel landmarks, and cross-level mental mapping. Experiments involved various surveys of students, gathering controlled information on each of the hypotheses. Fifty students were then asked to “race” through the tunnels: given a starting building, navigating only through the tunnels to reach a defined target building. The final game was created using 360 images acquired around the tunnels, allowing students to use arrow keys to traverse the tunnels in a Google Maps-like view. Similar to the in-person race, they were dropped in a random location in the tunnels and had to use visual cues to navigate to a target building. Results from this game confirmed conclusions drawn from previous experiments that Lynchian principles do extend to the tunnels via relevant analogs and above-ground knowledge and connection points offered even more information than the original Lynch-analogs alone. Students consistently rely on heavily-traveled paths, navigating through familiar districts, and using above ground knowledge to traverse in unknown underground buildings. This work can be extended to help grow students’ understanding of these tunnels, fostering further creativity and student expression in this complex network of spaces.
Advisor: Takehiko Nagakura
Image inspired by Kevin Lynch’s The Image of The City, adapted from MIT Tour Guide Map
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
STAFF
Eleni Aktypi, Taariq Alasa, Kathaleen Brearley, Darren Bennett, Kateri Bertin, Joél Carela, Nandini Chowdhury, Christopher Dewart, Jacqueline Dufault, Mike Enos, Michael Gallino, Eduardo Gonzalez, James Harrington, Tessa Haynes, John Hoder, Douglas Le Vie, Inala Locke, Tonya Miller, Nicholas de Monchaux, Claudine Monique, Paul Pettigrew, Alan Reyes, Diana Rooney, Georgia Voyiatzis
FACULTY,
ADVISORS AND READERS
Cherie Abbanat, Xavi L. Aguirre, Angelo Bucci, Marcelo Coelho, Tony Hu, Sheila Kennedy, Caitlin Mueller, William O’Brien Jr., Takehiko Nagakura, John Ochsendorf, Paul Pettigrew, Carlo Ratti, Daniela Rus, Antonio Torralba
INVITED CRITICS
Cristina Parreno Alonso, Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, Yolande Daniels, Bo Won Keum, Les Norford, Rosalyne Shieh, Skylar Tibbits
MArch DIRECTOR
William O’Brien Jr.
UNDERGRAD DIRECTOR
Skylar Tibbits
SMBT DIRECTOR
Caitlin Mueller
BOOKLET DESIGN BY
Tejumola Bayowa, Suwan Kim, Samantha Ratanarat
2025 MASSACHUSETTS INSTUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. ALL MATERIALS ARE COPYRIGHT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE AUTHORS AND CREATORS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.
FINAL REVIEW HELD ON MAY 14, 2025
