Advanced Architecture Studio VI
Havana Micro X
Everything Must Scale 3
Forest-to-City
Copula Hall
Urban-scaled Architectural Speculation in Tokyo
The Space of Water
Infrastructural Geography
Factory
Architectonics of Music
Makergraph
The Street
Kitchenless Stories
Amazonia After Fitzcarraldo
Mixed-Use, Staircases, Social...
Something of Value
Open Work
Cultural Agents Orange (Vietnam)
Eoys viewercovers 03
In the final semester of the architecture studio sequence, Advanced Architecture Studio VI brings together students from the Master of Architecture and Advanced Architectural Design programs to explore new instruments, techniques, and formats of design across a multiplicity of existing realities. The studios function as laboratories for discussion in which students and critics test new ways of mobilizing architectural concepts, programs, tools, and methods to intervene on specific layers of the everyday.
Introduction
Advanced Architecture Studio VI
Architecture and Environment

In Advanced Architecture Studio VI, each of the 17 studios creates its own world—each with its own intersection of social, cultural, formal, material, economic, and environmental concerns. This Spring semester, these worlds ranged from infrastructure in the Amazon to rural experiments in Spain, from cultural interventions in Cape Town to domestic settings in Lima, and from mega-buildings in Tokyo to micro-schools in Texas.

At the same time, the various students and faculty of Advanced VI engaged in a shared discussion about the most interesting research, designs, practices, and ideas related to the built environment. They addressed the theme of “Architecture and Environment” and fortified the hypothesis that climate change is ground zero for a shared discussion about architecture’s engagement with the world. Responding to climate change requires attending not only to technical matters like energy consumption and carbon footprint, but also social and political issues, such as inequality and public policy. In this context, the Advanced VI studios were framed as a unique and multifaceted opportunity to tackle climate change at the scale of the building and to address climate change through design.

Over the semester, faculty and students responded to COVID-19 by quickly and creatively reinventing the studio format with virtual meetings, new working methods, and experimental representation strategies. Confronting these pedagogical shifts with determination and ingenuity, they used the new constraints to create architecture with the urgency, flexibility, and creativity that our new era demands.
Advanced Architecture Studio VI TA: Skylar Royal
03_Architecture.gif
1
Havana Micro X
This studio Havana Micro X: Modernist City Planning Model in a Post-Modern World proposes urban hybrids to question inherited cultural, economic, environmental, and technological assumptions. Modern precedents assist participants in re-interpreting historical efforts and ideologies and, hopefully, proposing an alternative urban discussion capable of addressing contemporary issues. Students examine four tissue samples of Havana modernist fabric and study their development under the current conditions of a weakened state. The result is an urban proposal for the selected areas and a zoomed-in examination of a single hybrid building.
Students: Anna Creatura, Berkhan Eminsoy, Rebecca Greenberg, Shengyang He, Sirenia Kim, So Jin Kim, Frank Mandell, Kate McNamara
Hybrid-01_Diapositiva14-AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_SireniaYKimBerkhanEminsoy_SP20_01_Masterplan_sm.jpg
Hybrid 01: United Community of Los Pinos
Hybrid-01.1_Diapositiva18-AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_SireniaYKim_SP20_02_Collage_sm.jpg
Hybrid 01.1: United Farms of Los Pinos
This project is a collective farming campus maintained by the community. It provides local food, ...
Hybrid-01.2_Diapositiva24-AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_BerkhanEminsoy_SP20_04_Collage_sm.jpg
Hybrid 01.2: Los Pinos – La Comunidad Extendida
Consolidating building materials already committed to a local public housing project by the Housi...
Hybrid-02_Diapositiva27-AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_RebeccaGreenberg-AnnaCreatura_SP20_01_Masterplan_sm.jpg
Hybrid 02: Entre Les Arboles
Hybrid 02.1_Diapositiva33 AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_AnnaCreatura_SP20_03_Collage.jpg
Hybrid 02.1: Entre Les Arboles
The project addresses the housing crisis in Havana by infilling existing modernist housing blocks...
Hybrid-02.2_Diapositiva37-AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_RebeccaGreenberg_SP20_03_Collage_sm.jpg
Hybrid 02.2: Entre Les Arboles
The underutilized ground floor of an existing modernist housing block is transformed into a small...
Hybrid 03_Diapositiva42 AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_SoJinKim-ShenguangHe_SP20_01_Masterplan.PNG
Hybrid 03: Housing for Healing
Hybrid-03.1_Diapositiva47-AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_ShengyangHe_SP20_02_Axo_sm.jpg
Hybrid 03.1: Healthcare Assemblage
The prosperous medical tourism in Havana attracts many foreign patients to seek treatments. This ...
Interior rendered perspective by So Jin Kim
So Jin Kim: Interior rendered perspective
Hybrid-04_Diapositiva55-AAD_Burdova,Aleksakova,deBacker_KateMcNamara-FrankMandell_SP20_01_Masterplan_sm.jpg
Hybrid 04: Aguas de la Habana Libre
Aguas de la Habana Libre is a political organization and light ecological infrastructure that cre...
2
Everything Must Scale 3
The studio Everything Must Scale 3: Architecture and the Teacher-less School follows a series that have looked at architectural building types increasingly being challenged if not made obsolete. This edition explores what will become of schools as education is increasingly automated, achieved without the same type or number of on-site teachers and in the realms of software and media as education becomes less place-specific and can occur almost anywhere. The studio addresses issues of architecture and scalar realms of economy, energy, and the forms of power or authority that shape the built world. This includes examinations of how the expanded presence of automation, renewable energy, new forms of mobility meet older forms of settlement, architecture, and place.
TA: Sunghoon Lee

Students: Leon Esmaeel, Ge Guo, Hyeokyoung Lee, Adam Susaneck, Jiacheng Wang, Qi Yang
ARCH-Bell-Ge-Guo-SP20-01--Occupying-Language.GIF_sm.gif
The notion of “language” is experienced in space through children’s navigation. If the syntax of the space is its physical structure, the semantics of the space is constructed in children’s minds by connecting previous memories when physically moving inside/outside the architecture. Just like the complexity of language, diverse human experience is achieved through elemental, repetitive, sequential architectural elements in multiple scales.
ARCH-Bell-Adam-Susaneck-SP20-01-GIF_sm.gif
Railway School
The relationship between people and the infrastructure is never fixed. Expecting the expansion of...
ARCH-Bell-JiachengWang-SP20-01-RelativeMovement_sm.gif
Stretch of Mind: The Observation in the Relative Movement of Object and Ego
Architecture, as the container of education, will materialize the opaque learning process in peop...
ARCH-Bell-Qi-Yang-SP20-01--MindInMotion_sm.gif
Knowledge is never static, and so should the experience of architecture also be never static. This micro-school puts students’ minds and bodies in motion. The traditional auditorium and classroom are dismantled into an open canopy—a space of discovery. All furniture is movable to encourage self-organization. The school becomes a wonderland that also encourages students’ self-exploration, self-reflection, and cross-disciplinary opportunities.
ARCH-Bell-HyeokyoungLee-SP20-The_Medium_of_Architecture_sm.gif
The Medium of Architecture as the Possibilities of the Universe
The medium of architecture has relied on mechanical tools, materials, and more recently the compu...
ARCH-Bell-Leon-Esmaeel-SP20-01-Spatial-Sfumato_sm.gif
Spatial Sfumato
The project draws inspiration from a Renaissance painting technique called sfumato, used for soft...
3
Forest-to-City
This studio addresses the massive global construction and rapid urbanization that will occur in the same ten years in which it is critical to drastically cut carbon emissions. We explore a new type of design. We simultaneously design materials, typologies, prototype buildings, forests, and supply chains. We explore architecture as an open system. We explore the use of engineered wood in buildings and the idea of mass timber as a system. We take a critical look at the farm-to-table movement—as well as at some of the past models of architecture as a system—and we develop new kinds of open systems for architecture.
TA: Alexander Odom

Students: William Anderson, Jack Blythe, Zeid Ghawi, Eduardo Meneses, Arvin Mirzakhanian, James Piacentini, Luo Qingkai, Peter Stoll, Yankun Yang, Shangyu Tian
ARCH-Benjamin-EduardoMeneses-SP20-02-Aerial-Render_2.jpg
Who Says City Hall is Only Good for Marriage Licenses?
The civic depot, sited in the small city of College Station, Texas, is a model for intervening in...
ARCH-Benjamin-LuoQingkai-SP20-02-Resource-Diagram_2.jpg
Bam-ino
This project focus on an underexplored aspect —the interior arrangement—of CLT, the community par...
ARCH_Benjamin_WILLIAMCANDERSON_SP2020_Near-Coastal-Forestry,-Littoral-Zone_2.jpg
Plant-Base
Hi! This is Plant-Base, we make buildings, furniture, and fabrics from plants. Why? Carbon, and i...
ARCH_Benjamin_PETERSTOLL_SP2020_04_Street-Perspective-copy_2.jpg
Plant a House, Build a Tree
Built across two sites in Seattle—a post-suburban sustainable timber forest and newly densified h...
AAD-Benjamin-Arvin-Mirzakhanian-SP20-04-Transformation-of-Car-Culture-to-Urban-Forest_2.jpg
Urban densification through overbuilding is a cost-reduction strategy for imminent population growth in metropolitan areas which will decipher the concealed potentials of the underutilized territories. Furthermore, the adoption of mass timber for the development procedure through its properties and carbon sequestration capabilities is an adequate apparatus for encountering climate change challenges.
ARCH-Benjamin-YankunYang-SP20-03-Plaza_2.jpg
Jack and Beanstalk
The development of Jack and Beanstalk aims to re-balance the social hierarchy inequalities caused...
ARCH-Benjamin-JackBlythe-SP20-01-Section_2.jpg
The Canopy City
In response to the growing population, the built environment will gain approximately 13,000 build...
ARCH_Benjamin_ZeidGhawi_SP2020_05_Atrium-Shot_2.jpg
Automorphic City
With the resurgence of the traditional building material, timber this project asks: how will our ...
ARCH_Benjamin_TIANSHANGYU_SP2020_SuperTimberBlock,-Axon_2.jpg
Timber Super Block
For a more sustainable and walkable city, the mixed-use Timber Super-block brings people together...
4
Copula Hall
China Miéville’s novel The City & The City serves as the site, program, and universe of the studio. Beginning with close and rigorous reading, analysis, deconstruction, and re‐composition of the text through analytic drawings/models, each student enters and re‐constructs the implied geographies, styles, and site conditions on their terms and in their visual language. The studio progresses from this projective cartography into the iterative exploration and design of a 3D formal language that enables the novels’ inhabitants to negotiate two opposing and intertwined cities.
TA: Vanessa Arriagada

Students: Sara Almutlaq, Stone Cheng, Jinish Gadhiya, Aayushi Joshi, Jingyuan Li, Jack Lynch, Massimiliano Malago, Tola Oniyangi, Rohan Parekh, Morgan Parrish, Yixuan Shi, Ericka Song
ARCH-CassellBarrett-ErickaSong-SP20-01_sm.gif
Cupola Hall is the physical manifestation of the deeply convoluted, somewhat claustrophobic, and perpetually intertwined relationship between the fictional cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma. Built on the ruins of an unshakable shared history, Cupola Hall allows both cities to define themselves not only in relation to one another but also to an intangible greater presence.
_ARCH-Cassell_Barrett-MassimilianoMalago-SP20-01-RENDERS_sm.gif
Tale of Two Cities & One Building
This project envisions the design for Copula Hall & the border between the two fictitious cit...
ARCH-Cassell_Barrett-RohanParekh-SP20-01-GIF_sm.gif
Copula Hall
Copula Hall and its current manifestation is a result of threading together moments within the no...
ARCH-CassellBarrett-JinishGadhiya-SP20-01_sm.gif
Chunking the Chaos: Copula Hall
In this project, Copula Hall attempts to structure the chaos in the two cities at this manifestat...
ARCH-CassellBarrett-Tola-Oniyangi-SP20-01-GIF_sm.gif
Copula Hall: Twin Cities in Tension
This project explores Copula Hall’s urban condition. Its approach of anchoring the city to this s...
ARCH-CassellBarrett-SaraAlmutlaq-SP20-01-GIF_sm.gif
Inspired by the Catholic Church’s use of confessionals as pressure valves to mitigate dissent within its community, the projects’ provocation becomes: can a structure invite its own dissent as a way to legitimize its authority? By understanding spaces of dissent as synonymous with “safe space” their architectural representations elude to the obscure and detach from reality. The architectural language of Copula Hall is derived from an architectural language that is predicted to entice safety in dissent.
MSAAD-Cassell_Barrett-JingyuanLi-SP20-01.GIF_sm.gif
This project starts with the understanding of two cities and Copula Hall in the book. Through the exploration of a simple curved wall, the entire architectural system is constructed. Meanwhile, a sense of indeterminacy is created with the consideration of material, texture, and spatial sequence. In Copula Hall, you are not entirely in one city and will gradually lose your cognition of specific cities, so as to reach the so-called Orciny.
ARCH-CassellBarrett-JackLynch-MorganParrish-SP20-01_sm.gif
Copula Hall
The design for Copula Hall, the government building that serves the two municipalities of China M...
ARCH-CassellBarrett-StoneCheng-SP20-01_sm.gif
Copula Hall
The project embodies the symbiosis of both conflicts and harmonies. Architecturally, it represent...
ARCH-Cassell&Barrett-YixuanShi-SP20-01-RENDERS_sm.gif
Copula Hall
Design of Copula Hall is a rigorous exploration of how spaces carved out of two different curves ...
ARCH-CassellBarrett-AayushiJoshi-SP20-01-Axo.gif
Discord in the City & the City
This project offers a new perspective on the building ‘Copula Hall’ which becomes a premise inter...
5
Urban-scaled Architectural Speculation in Tokyo
The studio engages and explores the formal and programmatic possibilities of invented large-scale architecture in the city. In a back-and-forth process with key historic projects, the studio develops a series of design-based scenarios that leverage specific qualities of the city and seeks to mine these scenarios for their formal possibilities. With the addition of infrastructure, the studio posits that architecture can be both/and—it can be both about growth and about the environment—through the manipulation of form and the tactical deployment of social and ecological systems.
TA: George Louras

Students: Tarun Abraham, Dalton Baker, Stephanie Bigelow, Ben Gillis, Xiaoxuan Hu, Ningxin Huang, Timothee Mercier, Chang Pan, Lena Pfeiffer, Randall Scovill, Shiyin Zeng, Xinglu Zhu
ARCH Dunn_LenaPfeiffer lmp2196 SP20_01.jpg
Mottainai Tokyo is new urban typology specifically designed to house and maintain a bustling zero-waste community, serving as an inclusive catalyst for the city. A mega-scale architecture could begin to fulfill the needs of residents, businesses, and service workers, creating a harmonious culture of reuse.
ARCH-Dunn_-Ben-Gillis-bjg2158-SP20_01-RESIZED.jpg
What if the forest, bathhouse retreats, and recreational groups of rural Japan were brought into the center of Tokyo and provided access without compromising the urban fabric.
ARCH-Dunn_Chang-Pan-cp3119-SP20_01_ssm.jpg
Imperial Palace’s New Moat
What if the moat of Imperial Palace in Tokyo becomes a new typology of social club, then the moat...
ARCH-Dunn_Dalton-Baker-db3177-SP20_02_sm.jpg
The New Olympic Village
In order to support a decreasing population in Japan, the New Olympic Village brings a second lif...
ARCH-Dunn_RandallScovill-rs3999-SP20_01-RESIZED_sm.jpg
Activity Overload
The megastructure combines activities such as meditation, sports, and cosplay and generates new s...
ARCH-Dunn_Shiyin-Zeng-sz2856-SP20_01_sm.jpg
New Kabukicho
What if we were to consider Kabukicho not as a neighborhood, but as a new urban typology specific...
ARCH-Dunn_Tarun-Abraham-tta2118-SP20_01_sm.jpg
Urban Megastructure for Expanded Work Environments
What if there was an urban scaled megastructure in Tokyo that accommodated a spectrum of both exi...
ARCH-Dunn_XiaoxuanHu-Xinglu-Zhu-xh2430_xz2851-SP20_01-RESIZED_sm.jpg
One day of a Salary(wo)man
What if an urban-scale architecture could begin to transform salary(wo)men’s commuting time into ...
ARCH-Dunn_NingxinHuang-nh2561-SP20_01_sm.jpg
The Anti-university Oasis looks into the pressure Japanese young people bear and the ways they seek relaxation through different Japanese sub-cultures, recognizing their value. First, it celebrates modern trends and perceptions in popular culture while staying connected with traditional art forms. It is also so colorful, eclectic, and unique that it has the potential to attract a global following and has seep into other countries’ cultural consciousness. Anti-university is an oasis for young people to develop their interest in Japanese subcultures while maintaining their ordinary school schedules. The mega-structure also contemplates a scenario in which these subcultures might be the mainstream.
ARCH-Dunn_StephanieBigelow-smb2269-SP20_05_sm.jpg
The Japanese word for heartbreak is Takotsuba. People now buy relationship experiences where they can achieve desire “a la carte”. The physical and psychological pains of rejection are catalysts to emotional or physical dependencies. Begging the question, what if the surrounding air-space of the Marunouchi district of Tokyo was transformed into a place for salary-people to process Takotsuba?
6
The Space of Water
The studio is informed by the history of radical thinking about architecture in the 20th century yet looks beyond to the Afro-Imaginary to present an experimental curriculum deploying techniques culled from the visual arts as well as design theories of geography, infrastructure, engineering, and architecture to initiate dialogues about geography and spatiality in an era of global crisis due to human-induced climate change. More specifically, the studio investigated the cultural topographies of water informed by the line from colonialism to climate change in consideration of forced-migration, resource extraction, environmental degradation, and water scarcity.The studio investigates filmic techniques of narrative, fragment, and structure as analytical and generative tools to speculate towards the design of architectural interventions upon either the land or the sea.
Students: Hajir Al Khusaibi, Sultan Alfaisal, Benjamin Gomez Arango, Jolene Jussif, Brandon Kapel, Ugur Tan, Ye Xiong
Toxic Sea
Project research looked at the oil industry and post-disaster effects following oil spills or lea...
Pheonix: The Fire and Water Laboratory
The project proposes a fire resilient building that can withstand the “fynbos,” presc...
How to Adapt
This is a story about how an analysis of the largest involuntary mass migration of marine animals...
Heliocoidal Entanglement
A project for a green-belt/blue-belt in Khayelitsha township of Cape Town, where the program is d...
The Pier
The project is a two-kilometer-long pier that connects the community of Kayelitsha and the sea. T...
Traces
Research on forced migratory patterns in the wake of natural disasters lead to an investigation i...
False Bay Fishery
The False Bay Fishery seeks to examine the balance between what is sustainable for the planet, an...
7
Infrastructural Geography
What is the role of architecture in an environment that needs to invest a lot of energy to get a significant transformation? Where are the limits of scale, amount of architecture and Technification of the territory? What are the pertinent typologies, construction systems, and preservation protocols? The studio Infrastructural Geography: Water, Leisure, and Every Policies imagines a new generation of low-impact clean industry nurseries, research centers, pedagogical institutions, and residential complexes that bring new ways of living to re-equip this geography in an endeavor to redefine its character. This studio wants to design and build a new “rural-urban culture” that takes advantage of dualities such as isolation-connection, natural-artificial, hybridization-specificity, individual-collective, sophisticated-elementary technologies, density-porosity…to create new forms of living, working, leisure and socialization.
TA: Jesse McCormick

Students: Joud Al Shdaifat, YixuanCheng, Allison Fricke, Frederico Gualberto Castello Branco, Guillermo Hevia, Alex Hudtwalcker Rey, Ian Lee, Xiaoxuan Li, Michael Mc Dowell, Farah Monib, Zihan Yu, Mengzhe Zhang
Center for Agricultural Knowledge
The Center for Agricultural Knowledge seeks to improve the conditions of depopulation and water s...
Alex Hudtwalcker Rey Guillermo Hevia_04_Sacedon_sm.jpg
Deploying the Archive: Cultural Decentralization through Archival Programs
The project proposes to build a network of archives through the “Empty Spain” bullrings to decent...
Digital Landscape: New Rural Infrastructure for Industry Transitions
The architecture exists in synergies with a social dynamic around the disused historical heritage...
Frederico Castello Branco_08_Isometric.png
Monument of Memory
Drawing from the scale of the existing infrastructural architecture distributed across an empty s...
New Rural Urban Culture
Nowadays, urbanization is a global shift. In Spain, roughly 81% of the population is now living i...
Rural Retrofit
Rural Retrofit is a series of typologies that build on Buendia’s architectural history of collage...
Allison Danielle Fricke_Joud Hasan Irshaid Al Shdaifat_Ian Lee_13_Library-Section_sm.jpg
The New Main Square
The village of Cañaveruelas in Cuenca is symptomatic of the shrinking and isolated state of rural...
8
Factory
Students design an urban factory complex that creates collective spatial structures for the manufacturing of artifacts and the shaping of exchanges. The work requires critical engagement with the many historical, social, economic, and technological contexts influencing the design of factories; the studio asks students to re-frame these conditions as innovative spatial formats for manufacture in their architecture. The site is the Bush Terminal; the studio reconsiders this entire complex and envisions a future for it as a center for new industries. The studio considers how each project connects to or informs others in the studio as the semester unfolds—ie. an exquisite corpse, collage, or as part of a master plan—to define the unifying and anomalous criteria of each project in relation to the whole.
TA: Eugénie Bliah

Students: Feibai An, Joyce Chen, Karen Choi, Xueqi Hu, Junwei Li, Brenda Lim, Wenya Liu, Chun-Chang Tsai, Qingying Wang, Rui Wang, Tianyu Wang, Jingyuan Zhang
Factory Habitat
The Factory Habitat reinvents the typology of the pier, factory, and park by interweaving the pro...
Foodbelt Collective
The factory upcycles food waste and provides a shared roof garden for the community to facilitate...
ARCH-Jingyuan-Zhang-_-Chun-Chang-Tsai-SPRING20_06_Axonometric_sm.jpg
Reformative Modernity
Reformative Modernity is a project that challenges the tradition of construction. The vertical fa...
ARCH-Hoang-Karen-Choi-Brenda-Lim-SP20-13-Barge-Armature_sm.jpg
Urban Garment District
The Urban Garment District weaves together different aspects of garment-making through the insert...
ARCH-FeibaiAn-XueqiHu-SPRING20-11-microclimate_sm.jpg
Wood Factory
The Wood Factory recycles wood waste from the city and invites local designers to fabricate furni...
9
Architectonics of Music
The studio makes a typological analysis of 12 different halls presented by student teams. Based on a musical fragment from a composer (Dvořák, Pärt, Saariaho, Feldman, Ravel, Cage) the students build a model in 20”x20” cube of space focusing on interior geometry with acoustic potential for midterm. Driven by their composition and language experiments each team then designs a 1200 seat concert hall sited in Prague.
Students: Siying Chen, Peizhe Fang, Yining He, Yuxin Hu, Lihan Jin, Maini Ke, Jose Vintimilla Granda, Linxiaoyi Wan, Wei Wang, Ziyue Wang, Jingjing Wu, Shuchang Zhou
Space of Recurring Melody
This project envisions a concert hall developed from the reinterpretation of the “New World...
Tension Instrument
Tension is a material property that creates both music and architecture. Inspired by Dvorak&rsquo...
Mirror In The Mirror (Concert Hall in Prague)
This project is inspired by music—"Spiegel im Spiegel" and “Laterna Magica.&rdquo...
Present? Presents!
Inspired by two music pieces, Kaija Saariaho’s Laterna Magica and Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel,...
Spatial Transformation of Glissando
The design comes from the movement of a linear glissando model and develops its potential of tran...
Jose Luis Vintimilla, Wan Lin: Concert Hall in Prague
The project is inspired by “Water Walk.” To connect with Prague, we introduce flying ...
10
Makergraph
The Makergraph Studio is a personal, actual, material, and physical investigation of how materials become things, how things make places, and how places shape people. Operations like forging, molding, weaving and stitching are metaphors for how we invent and discover ourselves as people. By paying attention to how you make things, you will understand more about how you make yourself—as a designer, and maybe even as a person.
TA: Zia Reza

Students: Anam Ahmed, Shaolin Feng, Ambra Gadda, Shanti Gollapudi, Dylan Goldweit-Denton, Jacob Gulinson, Yulin Peng, Christian Pineda, Sofia Rivera Saldana, Aseel Sahab, Christopher Spyrakos, Mingyang Yu
Polyphony
My book explores the embedded polyphonic relationships between my objects, my preoccupation with ...
My Monograph: Taco y Tacos
This book is about my ongoing preoccupations and obsessions. I will share the love I have for my ...
Airy: Soft Delight
Airy: Soft Delight is a story about how my aesthetic perception gets translated into objects, and...
Breakergraph
Breakergraph is a retroactive perspective on my journey between breaking and making, peace and ch...
Noxious Breakfast: or How I Throw Up Decade-Old Strawberry Pancakes
This monograph investigates the author’s obsessions towards the combination of metal, machi...
Dripping shadows
Dripping Shadows is a collection of stream-of-consciousness obsessions existing in the student’s ...
Makergraph
Inspired by my daily food journal, which collects the meals I consume every day, this project re...
Starstruck Paranoia and an Onslaught of Everyday Things
This final studio project is a book in and of itself. It is a monograph. A makergraph. The makerg...
Introspective Futurism
Welcome to Introspective Futurism, built over and with the essence of time. Introspective Futuris...
Eye + Eye
This is the story of my visual journey. As one eye will always have its other pair reflected on ...
Home: objects, notions & other things
This book explores the meaning of the term “home” from a personal perspective. Throug...
11
The Street
In late Modern city planning, street design was almost entirely driven by traffic planning parameters with moderate consideration for vegetation. Today, from the homeless population in LA’s Skid Row and London’s tunnels, to the surveillance system deployed via street cams in Beijing and Hong Kong, from Google’s much-contested Sidewalk Lab pilot in Toronto to the pink pussyhats and the yellow vests, the street in the new millennium is nothing short of the new frontier of cultural expression, public discourse, and technological transformation. Thus in the streets around the world, along with the apparent as well as latent fault lines of social fabrics and technological apparatuses, profound fractures can be seen everywhere. This studio researches the new players in the street, rediscovers past experimentations that might still offer relevance, and studies possible new typologies that might be constitutive of contemporary discourse.
TA: Kevin Lamyuktseung

Students: Haeri Choi, Hyung Rok Do, Yanxi Fu, Dexter Gao, Wendy Yunting Guan, Byungryoung Lee, Changbin Lee, Zhibin Li, Dylan Mo, Jae Kyun Park, Euna Song, Zifan Zhang
The Green Belt
With well-developed online shopping services, how can the physical commercial street be transform...
Everyday Theater Day
Life in the street is always an interchangeable relationship between performer and audience. Eve...
Albee Square Renovation
The project aims to preserve the existing buildings, embrace public performance space, and celebr...
Meshing It Up
This project expands the public realm of Fulton Street into the void spaces between its diverse c...
Aqua-walk
Aqua-walk explores the possibility of combining infrastructure with urban experience on Fulton St...
Building as Filtering Machine
Facades are not simply a costume covering a building, but a medium covering the street. Buildings...
Pollination on Fulton Street
This project envisions a green infrastructural system that will encourage citizens to participate...
Diverse for All
“Diverse for All” proposes to create minimal architecture in the street that accommodates as well...
Urban Coral
This project proposes to create a new street over the buildings in Fulton Street. For reviving th...
Bubble Puddle Cuddle
At the end of the era of expansion, ‘play’ emerges as a value of architecture. With t...
Multi-functionality as resiliency solution: 4 Daycares Being One Infectious Clinic
Located on an existing block at Fulton Mall, instead of creating a temporary hospital when a pand...
12
Kitchenless Stories
This studio looks at the contemporary reality of the city of Lima as a radical trial-and-error urban and architectural experiment. Studying the current community kitchens as a starting point for architectural speculation, the studio researches and understands how these urban infrastructures operate to imagine possible futures for the city of Lima. As a response, the students speculate and design a contemporary domestic landscape where homes rather than being isolated entities are part of a complex whole of shared infrastructures. The students understand the home not simply as an isolated space but as a part of a wider system where the boundaries between public and private, urban and domestic spheres are blurred, but also understand the kitchen as a tool able to redefine preset social, political and economical systems.
TA: Juan Pablo Uribe Morales

Students: Blithe Archbald, Adina Bauman, Mercedes Castrelo-Huntley, Luiza Furia, Julia Gielen, Andrew Keung, Azul Klix, Ibrahim Kombarji, Kabir Sahni, Emily Tobin, Jamie Vinikoor, Luna Yue Zuo
13
Amazonia After Fitzcarraldo
In 1982, Werner Herzog went to Amazonia to shoot Fitzcarraldo. The character decides to make a shortcut and transport his ship up a muddy hill to avoid water streams. The scene illustrates the clash between the time of the river and western civilization. Five hundred years after the first European expeditions, the forest, its populations, and cultures are still understood as enemies to be defeated and exploited. In this context, what does it mean to design for Amazonia? In the studio, students investigated networks and systems at a local and global scale and proposed alternative development scenarios through buildings, infrastructures and public spaces.
TA: Khoi Nguyen

Students: Gauri Bahuguna, Hongyi Chen, Matteo Cordera, Marc Francl, Hector Garcia, Ghaidaa Gutub, Bassam Kaddoura, Lucy Navarro, Matthew Ninivaggi, Julia Pyszkowski, Maxime St. Pierre Ostrander, Xinyi Zhang
ARCH Rivera LucyNavarro GauriBahuguna SP20 06 Barge Exit Scene.png
Scales of Fragility: Rethinking the Acai Trade
Our proposal operates as a collective in the waterways of Para, introducing a series of architect...
ARCH-Rivera-BassamKaddoura-GhaidaaGutub-SP20-6-PALAFITAS-REMIX_sm.gif
Palafitas Remix
The project provides public permanence, a space for relaxation, appreciation, and community in Ma...
ARCH-Rivera-MarcFrancl-JuliaPyszkowski-SP20-06-Axon_sm.gif
Manaus Dialogues Network
Our project proposes a network of community centers focused on the strengthening and adaptation o...
ARCH-Rivera-MatthewNinivaggi-MatteoCordera-SP20-01-ProjectGIF_sm2.gif
AM-352: Sustainable Forestry and Local Development
The project proposes a vertically integrated, sustainable timber supply chain, which supports the...
ARCH-Rivera-MaximeStPierre-HectorGarcia-SP20-06_sm.gif
Eldorado Flutuante
Our project, titled Eldorado Flutuante, examines how colonial histories and modern consumer appet...
ARCH-Rivera-XinyiZhang-HongyiChen-SP20-01-Process_sm.gif
Co-Market
The market is a connection point between city and rural areas; it is no longer a one-way trade ma...
14
Mixed-Use, Staircases, Social…
This studio investigates the qualities of “large scale public spaces contrasting with the small private-scale patterns required within.” Given a generic structural grid and nondescript facade, that signals an architecture that is adaptable in the future. This studio researches, examines, and designs a new paradigm for social spaces within a proposed mixed-use program. Staircases, passageways, and associated vertical circulation elements can be rethought as interconnected social collective circulation space(s) instead of discrete, or residual spaces. This studio explores the intersection of the social, technological, and cultural practices within the discipline of architecture. The final design problem is a set of connected, collective circulation spaces, stairs, elevators, escalators, ramps, landings, handrails, walls, etc… that propose a paradigm for reimagining the interior life of a building.
TA: Paul Ruppert

Students: Matthew Acer, Chutiporn Buranasiri, Qiazi Chen, Yanan Cheng, Bokang Du, Luyi Huang, Hanseul Jang, Miles Mao, Guangwei Ren, CJ Wang, Lu Xu, Han Zhang
ARCH-Sample-CJWang-SP20-05-Axodrawing_sm.jpg
The project explores the monumentality and publicity in Washington, D.C., and questions and speculates a new typology of mixed-use building. Monument, community, residential and commercial space composite and redefine a new normality. Progressive architectural solutions as such must combine the dynamics of evolving economic and social systems with urban place-making.
ARCH Sample Guangwei SP20 02 EastElevation.jpg
Bifurcator
This project is about the duality of people and vehicles’ movement, and the interaction between t...
ARCH-Sample-Han-Zhang-SP20-05-Rendering_sm.jpg
Staircase as a monument
Building on Kahn’s stair design and the local courtyard typology in Washington D.C, this pr...
ARCH Sample Hanseul Jang SP20 01 Section.jpg
Layering Mobility
The project explores types and embodied functions of a staircase to investigate means of connecti...
ARCH Sample Lu Xu SP20 05 View.jpg
Staircase Narrative
A cooling center for Washington, D.C. with architecture and natural environment. Staircases are e...
ARCH-Sample-LuyiYanan-SP20-05-View_sm.jpg
Cultural Nest
This project is a cultural community center located in downtown Washington, D.C. We use wood, a r...
ARCH Sample MatthewAcer SP20 05 Projected Section.jpg
Center for Urban Species
Center for Urban Species aims to re-imagine the typical atrium space of buildings in Washington, ...
ARCH Sample MilesMao SP20 01 Axon.jpg
Fire escape stairs: silent mitosis behind the scenes
In this project, fire escape stairs regain their urbanity and architectural identity. Always loca...
ARCH-Sample-NeuyBuranasiri-SP20-01-Axon_sm.jpg
Static Shift
The project’s goal is to break away from the rigid nature of architecture prevalent in Washington...
ARCH-Sample-QiaziChen-SP20-05-Circulation-Diagram_sm.jpg
Open Staircase
This project discusses notions of flexibility, mixed-use, and interior-versus-exterior through ve...
ARCH-Sample-Bokang-SP20-01-Projected-Plan_sm.jpg
From Sculptural Museum to Urban Garden
This project aims to propose a sculpture museum from a generic circulation element: the staircase...
15
Something of Value
The studio’s mission is to design Something of Value. The students design for an assumed “client,” who is in charge of the “X” company, comparable to Related or SL Green in the US, that is headquartered in London. The “X” company owns millions of square feet of real estate around the world, the majority of which is commercial office space. With commercial office space currently shifting towards sharing types, the client wishes to experiment with new hybrids that combine work, art, commerce, and education, but not residential use. The project is to design a building(s) as a “gift”, Something of Value, for the city of London, which would give the “X” company additional development rights in return, with the exact program to be defined by each student or team.
TA: Udit Goel

Students: Munise Aksoy, Qianfan Guo, Gin Jin, Yoonwon Kang, Niki Kourti, Haoming Li, Xutian Liu, Oscar Mayorga Caballero, Alexandros Prince-Wright, Xin Qin, Helena Ramos Musetti Pestana, Christine Shi
ARCH-Solomonoff-GinJin-MuniseAksoy-SP20-01-Perspective_sm.jpg
arTECH
arTech is designed to contribute value to London City’s economy by connecting art and tech creati...
ARCH-Solomonoff-HelenaPestana-SP20-04-Perspective-01_sm.jpg
Shoreditch Art District
The project takes place at an abandoned and partially demolished train station in Shoreditch, Lon...
ARCH-Solomonoff-XinQin-HaomingLi-SP20-04-Section_sm.jpg
Connecting through Technology
ARCH-Solomonoff-QianfanGuo-ChristineShi-SP20-01-OverallRender-RESIZED_sm.jpg
Fashion Threshold
ARCH-Solomonoff-Oscar-M-Caballero-SP20-02-Master-Section_sm.jpg
Memorial Park & Museum | Stolen Heritage during British Colonialism
By following the liquid traces of the British Invasions, this project navigates through the memor...
AAD_Solomonoff_XutianLiu_SP20_06_perspective section.png
Neo-Nomadic Garden
ARCH Solomonoff AlexandrosPrince-Wright SP20 05 Axonometric.jpg
The Underground
The park is designed to activate commuting to improve physical and mental health, and to increase...
AAD-Solomonoff-NikiKourti-SP20-07-Section_sm.jpg
The Story of No Matter Who
This project is an imaginary story that critiques a part of our real world. Beginning from the cu...
16
Open Work
This studio addresses three open-ended buildings in Japan, namely: Masato Otaka’s Sakaide Artificial Ground, Sachio Otani’s Kawaramachi Housing Project, and Kenzo Tange’s Dentsu Headquarters Building. The studio brief is simple. Each student joins a team, is assigned to a building, and is asked to double its surface. Do you endorse openness, and observe, refine, or redefine the original script? Do you argue against it, and monumentalize? What is at stake is to design in conversation with, and take a position on, a building and the arguments it advanced, and to tackle a longstanding question within the field, again, half a century later.
Students: Haitong Chen, Qifeng Gao, Xinning Hua, Isaac Kim, Yu Kon Kim, Kyu Chan Kwak, Sanggyu Shin, Helena Urdaneta Palencia, Yanni Wang, Yechi Zhang, Chenyan Zhou, Tim Zhou
17
Cultural Agents Orange (Vietnam)
With the Vietnam war and its legacies as persistent reference, in light of Vietnam’s new antagonisms with China and other neighbors, and with the intertwining of culture and environment at stake, this studio worked through the architecture and cultural agency of concentrations. Through concentration the studio analyzed and reconceived cultural institutions, archives, and processes that assemble artifacts, objects, and bodies. It also studied Agent Orange, carpet bombing, and other elements of the chemical war that so drastically altered the Vietnamese environment and that continue to communicate their histories and effects. Hence, for this studio, concentration served as a marker of environmental contamination and alteration, cultural institutions, political histories, and their architectural and spatial manifestations.
TA: Jarrett Ley

Students: Sneha Aiyer, Grace Alli, Sritoma Bhattacharjee, Seid Burka, Gabriel Chan, Shailee Kothari, Maria Macchi, Rafaela Olivares, Manuela Siffert Porto, Nika Teper, Uthra Varghese, Kachun Alex Wong
ARCH Wasiuta Maria Victoria Macchi SP20 2 Manifesto Drwaing.jpg
The project creates a series of interventions throughout the existing War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh. Understanding and acknowledging the complexity and articulation of the war crimes committed, these spaces focus on how the body engages with the evidence and the different layers of comprehension that they imply.
ARCH-Wasiuta-NikaTeper_Perspective_sm.jpg
An over-sized urban amenity whose organization is determined by the bombing radius that links target sites and unintended civilian strikes. This project is a monument to Hanoi’s “Victory over the B-52’s” during the Vietnam War. It demonstrates the imprecise nature that directly impacted the dense urban fabric. Hanoi was not bombed nearly as heavily as the rest of Vietnam and the Vietnam War saw major development in precision bombing. At the same time, there were insurgent defense mechanisms and strict air regulations on Hanoi specifically. The radius of error demonstrates that even in a highly controlled urban space with specific military targets, the entire civilian population was too under threat and the entire city was within a zone of danger. Imprecision was built within highly specific targets. With Hanoi’s massive bomb shelter campaign and the quick repair after bombing strikes, this impression was understood and lived within the city.
ARCH-Wasiuta-KachunAlexWong-SP20-03-design-isometric_sm.jpg
Cultural Agents Orange
Cultural Agents Orange deals with the toxic legacies of Agent Orange. Sited at A Luoi Valley, the...
MARCH3-Wasiuta-GabrielChan-SP20-05-Factory-Exterior_sm.jpg
Cohabiting Bien Hoa: Soil Rehabilitation Factory
The Soil Rehabilitation Factory proposal hybridizes soil remediation processes that purge dioxin ...
ARCH_Wasiuta_GraceAlli_SP-20_08_cosmetic-station_sm.jpg
Militarization of Memory: Ho Chi Minh’s Mummy-Stem, the Mausoleum-Laboratory, and the Architectures of Afterlife
Re-orienting the state’s sacred and memorial core away from mausoleum towards an additional cente...
Spring2020_ShaileeKothari_UthraVarghese_HamletEvaluation_sm.jpg
Camp Reversal: A Space for Reunification and Relocation
Camp Reversal aims to create a socio-technical system that aids in the reunification of separated...
AAD-Wasiuta-SritomaBhattacharjee-SP20-05-Exploded-View_sm.jpg
Engineering Consent
The proposal imagines the US Embassy in Vietnam as a space of saturation: of messages and messagi...
AAD-Wasiuta-RafaelaOlivares-SP20-01-diplomatic-meetings_sm.jpg
Systems of Sympathy
“Systems of Sympathy” addresses different kinds of support demonstrations (protests and meetings)...
ARCH-Wasiuta-Sneha-Aiyer_SP_2020_06_Manifesto-Drawing_sm.jpg
Mediatic Devices of Measuring the Vietnam War
The project commemorates the mediatic devices of the military and marks the histories of bombing ...
Manuela Porto_Analysis_Starfish_sm.jpg
Condemned Island
Johnston Atoll can be read as an accumulation of toxic memories. Besides other military missions,...