This research investigates guilt as an underexplored category in architecture and urbanism. Beginning from a personal confrontation with environmental guilt within architectural education, the project asks how guilt is produced, regulated, displaced, or suspended through spatial design. Rather than treating guilt solely as an individual moral emotion, the study approaches it as a historical, psychological, political, and spatial construct. Drawing on Nietzsche’s genealogy of guilt, histories of Western Christian guilt culture, psychoanalytic accounts of repression and fetishization, and theories of collective guilt, the research argues that guilt operates not only through discourse and institutions but also through the built environment.

The central claim is that architecture and urban planning can function as technologies of guilt regulation. Through scale, visibility, concealment, boundaries, hierarchy, atmosphere, and aesthetic coding, spaces can intensify guilt, direct it toward ritualized forms of atonement, contain it, or temporarily neutralize it. To examine this, the research combines theoretical analysis with case studies of architectural typologies and urban situations, including the church, the prison, the monument, the club, sex-work spaces, green architecture, and ascetic architecture. These cases are read not simply as programs but as affective arrangements that shape moral experience.

A second part of the research focuses on Amsterdam as a city with a persistent mythology of sin, tolerance, pleasure, and transgression. Through experiential observations and narrative accounts of places, events, and everyday encounters, the project investigates how guilt is lived, negotiated, and spatialized in the city. Amsterdam serves here as a testing ground in which issues such as sex work, nightlife, tourism, intoxication, queerness, and public disorder reveal how urban space mediates morally charged behaviour. These situated accounts are used not as autobiography for its own sake, but as a method for tracing how architecture and urban atmospheres participate in the management of guilt in lived experience

Public transport hubs become ever more important in our daily mobility pattern. As central places in our cities they have, therefore also become important public spaces. However, the gradual built up of mobility infrastructure around hubs has resulted in stations that are poorly navigable and fragment instead of connect the city around them. 

Through an approach based on Richard Sennett's open city this project aims to create a public transport hub that mitigates boundaries caused by mobility infrastructure and become a public space that is open towards its surroundings. The station Méndez Álvaro / Estación Sur in Madrid is taken as a case study. 

The thesis proposes the transformation of two of Madrid's decorative fountains into functional public pools, addressing the city's residents’ needs for leisure through physical activity and cooling in a hot city like Madrid. Additionally, the project seeks to enable public access to the Manzanares River—an element currently missing within the city centre and the river’s urban planning. The intervention reclaims water as a shared urban resource for people to experience, while offering accessibility and public space next to the city’s forgotten river. Additionally, it programmatically and volumetrically enhances the surroundings of the Puente de Segovia site. This is done by adding a water management and sanitation research centre and a wastewater treatment plant next to the CEDEX (centre of hydraulic works of Spain). In this way, the water that is being treated and studied is later used for the public pools and the irrigation of the whole intervention. Hence,the hidden mechanisms of water regeneration, from hydraulic engineering to water regeneration are made visible to the public.

The premise of this thesis is not to prescribe what architecture should do, but to explore how it might be thought and experienced. This inquiry focuses on an often overlooked minor art: the rural architecture of the Po Valley, materialized in the cascine – entities that, beyond their dwelling function, preserve the historical memory of a territory.

The concept of assemblage (agencement) developed by Deleuze and Guattari proves remarkably effective in analysing these heterogeneous structures. Far from being a theoretical imposition, this contemporary approach dialogues surprisingly with classical architectural treatises, which already described how different parts should relate to form a coherent body. These two strands of thought, although separated by centuries, converge in a vision of architecture as a system of relationships rather than a static object.

The multiplicities of events that animated the cascine find in Deleuzian thought a revelatory interpretive key, while their spatial organization recalls ancient architectural principles. In these deeply functional principles, a symbiotic relationship with the territory manifests itself, perfectly mirroring the notion of assemblage: not a simple aggregation of parts, but a continuous process of relationships between heterogeneous elements that maintain their identity while forming a coherent whole.

This perspective invites us to reconsider all architecture: are we not all bodies that maintain constant relationships? Every entity is composite, made of elements different in nature and quality that do not simply merge, but coexist in productive tension. What defines these bodies is not a presumed intrinsic unity but the relationships they establish with other bodies, places, and environments. Against the classical ideal of the one, contemporary philosophies propose a complex structure that does not presuppose an a priori unity, but recognizes and values the constitutive multiplicity of every phenomenon.

The thesis will methodically explore the various concepts that compose this vision of architecture as assemblage, tracing their meanings and interconnections. This is not merely a terminological exposition, but an investigation that, in illustrating these concepts, makes them operative – because understanding architecture means, ultimately, entering into a relationship with it.

The Local Taste introduces a slow cooking project: a productive garden and cooking residency. It explores how locally grown food and the act of gardening hold the power to reconnect humans with their ecosystems. Set on a small German farm, the design brings together the disciplines of gardening and cooking, blurring the line between architecture and landscape. Rooted in the local soil, bricks fired on-site become the main design element—framing beds, retaining slopes, and forming a greenhouse, kitchen, and infrastructure for compost and water. These cycles, along with the human workflow, guide the redesign of the farm and the shaping of the garden. The brick becomes the link between old and new, house and landscape, cultivation and care. A curated experience that invites for reconnection through growing, processing, and tasting locally grown food.

Beyond the Black Box proposes a radical transformation of how citizens interact with digital infrastructure and cultural archives through architectural intervention at Madrid's Plaza de Colón. This project addresses a critical democratic crisis where massive digital systems—data centers consuming 613 MW of power and 665 million liters of water annually, alongside cultural archives increasingly training AI systems—remain invisible and inaccessible to the citizens they serve.

The project confronts three interconnected "black boxes" that undermine democratic participation in the digital age: Infrastructure Invisibility through data centers hidden 8-12 kilometers from Madrid's center; Archive Digitalization that transforms physical collections into abstract digital processes without public engagement; and Digital Literacy Gaps caused by the absence of civic spaces where citizens can understand and participate in algorithmic systems.

Located at Plaza de Colón—a site that has evolved from Royal Mint to National Library to public plaza—the intervention creates a new civic typology employing a cloud-fog-edge computing framework that reveals resource flows while integrating technical functions with public programs. Three programmatic axes converge at a central data center: the Digital Infrastructure Axis features transparent server rooms that transform technical systems into educational features; the Digital Archive Axis connects to Spain's National Library through visible digitization labs; and the Digital Literacy Axis provides hands-on workshops and AI-integrated study spaces.

This hybrid architecture materializes the shift from static containers to dynamic circuits in memory practices, establishing a new civic institution where cultural heritage is continuously activated through technological engagement and democratic participation. The project demonstrates that architecture can transform traditionally separate systems—hidden data centers and digitizing archives—into integrated civic platforms that serve both knowledge preservation and democratic resilience, creating spaces where citizens become active participants in their digital future rather than passive consumers.

During the summer months, Madrid endures extreme heat. These high temperatures strain both the infrastructure supporting the city and the well-being of its inhabitants, disproportionately impacting marginalized populations. Marginalized populations such as the homeless population and inhabitants of “Poblados dirigidos” face heightened risks due to inadequate shelter and limited access to cooling infrastructure. While previous research has addressed the technical dimensions of urban heat mitigation, there is a lack of focus on the socio-spatial inequalities of vulnerable populations regarding urban heat. To address this, the research combines quantitative analysis with qualitative fieldwork. San Cristóbal de los Ángeles was selected as the intervention site due to its socio-economic challenges, historical context, and observed urban heat vulnerabilities. The findings show that the impacts of urban heat are rooted in existing social, historical, and spatial inequalities. Responses include the development of climate shelters that offer relief from extreme heat, as well as its establishment in a broader network that ensures spatial distribution, accessibility, and integration within the city’s existing infrastructure. This study highlights the need to rethink the role of shelter in responding to overheating cities. Addressing Madrid’s urban heat is not solely about reducing temperatures, it is about rethinking the socio-spatial systems that shape its city, ensuring they are inclusive, resilient, and just.

In the face of climate change, we are confronted with both rising water levels and water scarcity almost simultaneously. These challenges have brought new attention to rivers as crucial elements in urban planning. Yet often in architectural design, rivers are treated as existing elements on site rather than actors that can express their needs in shaping the city. This research constructs a narrative of the Vistula River’s voice in Warsaw, interpreting its needs through its social and ecological significance. It explores how reimagining the river as an active participant of planning debates can inform more responsive, context-sensitive urban design and architecture.
The paper addresses the question of what it means to design with the river, rather than merely around it. It challenges the dominant paradigm, which often disregards the complexity of the environmental role of the water bodies. Instead, the research highlights the intricate relationships between water, land, and community. The emerging global movement of granting legal personhood for rivers has expanded environmental protection, especially in the Global South. The presented approach focuses on building engagement and a personal relationship between the river and people as a key step to protect riverine ecosystems.
The goal of this research was to come as close as possible to the voice of the river – what the Vistula in Warsaw would say about itself and its future. Through qualitative research methods - on-site observation, audiovisual documentation, and interviews with stakeholders connected to the river - the study generated individual narratives that were analyzed and interpreted poetically to construct a collective voice for the river.
Findings reveal that the Vistula’s voice is one rooted in biodiversity, historical identity, and inclusivity. While its interpretations differ across user groups, there are aspects that are common and can be defined as the core of the river’s voice. Vistula gives life and seeps into its surroundings, influencing the biological richness of the area that it flows through. Animals are seen as the river’s primary users, but the Vistula welcomes all living beings, and responsible human activity. Its voice advocates for unregulated flow and improved water quality, while opposing development driven by short-term economic interests. At the same time, it encourages to keep a safe distance from sensitive areas, but bring people close enough to observe nature and be willing to protect it.
The study proposes a design approach grounded in attentiveness to natural rhythms and traditional practices, such as those of the Olęder culture. By shifting perspective toward the river’s own voice, designers and policymakers can increase sensitivity to the impact that their project will potentially have. It can also help them build more sustainable, respectful relationships between urban life and the river. The methodology offers potential applications in environmental education, legal frameworks, and further research on rivers in similar contexts.

Academic architectural education trains students to operate within an abstracted reality, operating through drawings, models, and calculations to bring together materials and approach design challenges. While this abstraction facilitates the dissection of complex problems, it risks disrupting the direct relationship between (future) architects and the materials they work with. Limited opportunities for hands- on engagement with materials and their processes on a full scale can alienate students from the tactile, contextual, and embodied knowledge of materiality.

This research explores ways of overcoming that material alienation by investigating the act of making as a physical material encounter within the context of architectural education. Emphasis is placed on both the pedagogical qualities and the spatial contexts of the act of making, with the aim of deriving its value for architectural education and exploring how a school environment can facilitate, or even stimulate, these activities. On a broader scale, it addresses the relationship that our mainstream building culture has with materials, accepting the extraction, processing, consumption and eventual disposal of precious resources.

The thesis Post-Military Landscapes explores the adaptive reuse of a former military compound in Pardubice, Czechia. The site is examined through the lenses of its past, present, and potential future to uncover its values, assess its cultural significance, and articulate the rationale for its transformation. Drawing on insights from relevant case studies, I identified key principles that inform successful adaptive reuse. In the design proposal, I chose to repurpose the central part of the compound into an educational facility. This involved exploring the concepts of traditional and progressive schooling and investigating how reused buildings can contribute to meaningful and dynamic learning environments.

Since Roman times, the Sicilian island of Favignana has been shaped by stone extraction, leaving behind a hidden architecture of quarries beneath its surface. This project asks how the spatial dualities of light and materiality below could be translated into an architecture above.
To capture these buried qualities, conventional design methods do not suffice. It requires a mixture of digital and physical experimentation. Through 3D scanning and printing, the embodied experience underground is translated into a spatial vocabulary that guides the design process through physical model-making.
Here, the construction site becomes a testing ground for post-anthropocenic architecture, shaped equally by human and non-human actors. Built with salt and stone, it anticipates erosion and reuse, questioning static architecture, where humans are only brief visitors before nature returns.

This project begins with a question, not an answer.
What is public space, and who is it really for?

The Anarchisphere explores how architecture might provoke awareness of invisible systems of control while creating conditions in which power relations are critically dismantled. It asks how people might reclaim the ability to shape their surroundings through self-organisation, mutual aid, and collective action.

Rather than prescribing use or behaviour, the project proposes architecture as an open framework: unfinished, unstable, and open to appropriation. Public space is treated not as neutral ground, but as a contested terrain shaped by power, regulation, and design decisions that often go unquestioned.

Situated along the railway corridor between Rotterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Blaak, the project intervenes in a landscape defined by speed, infrastructure, and surveillance. A rigid triangular grid establishes an imposed order, which is disrupted by a new anarchic axis. Along this axis unfolds a system of mobile units, climbable towers, and wild ecologies. These elements resist a fixed program and invite misuse, transformation, and collective negotiation.

The Anarchisphere is not a singular object, but a lived condition. It is both an actual place and a theoretical understanding of space and its function. It is a desire for more: for freedom, autonomy, and comfort within the public realm. Through exposure, friction, and disruption, the project challenges preconceived notions of publicity and freedom within existing structures of hierarchy and power.

Architecture is turned inside out: a host rather than a master, a provocation rather than a solution. By giving people the means to create, occupy, and redefine space, the project asks what public space could become when authorship is collective and authority is no longer fixed. Ultimately, The Anarchisphere positions architecture not as a tool for control but as a catalyst for awareness, creativity, and freedom within the urban public realm.