This thesis project, Synergies of Trade and Waste: The Engine & the Hive, reimagines the urban bazaar in the heart of Tbilisi, Georgia, by proposing a hybrid architectural space that integrates a waste sorting facility with a Georgian "bazaar" marketplace. Situated at the intersection of informal trade networks and negligible waste infrastructures, the project explores the dual roles of trade and waste as agents of urban change. Rooted in research conducted within the "Borders & Territories" studio of the MSc Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences program, the project responds to Tbilisi’s strategic position in global trade routes and its cultural reliance on informal marketplaces. Simultaneously, it addresses the urgent challenges posed by the city’s fragmented waste management practices.

The design is located on a brownfield site, formerly a railway repair depot, and leverages its infrastructural past to propose a new civic space. By examining material flows, urban rhythms, and social dynamics, the thesis constructs a spatial dialogue between the formal and informal, public and restricted, and human and machine. Through mapping, fieldwork, and experimental modeling, the project speculates on how architecture can bridge economic, environmental, and cultural systems—proposing not only a building, but a new way of seeing and situating infrastructure within the city.

The city of Bengaluru in Southern India, like many other large South Asian cities, has undergone expansion at an exponential rate in the past few decades leading to rapid transformation of its urban landscape. This has also involved a drastic change in the forms of nature in the city, and a change in the attitude and relationship of people in the city towards nature. Having major ecological footprints, densely populated and booming cities such as Bengaluru need to be better studied when investigating the global environmental crisis. This paper is a historical analysis of the change in the material and functional role of nature in the city through an in-depth literature review. An ideological framework of nature in the city is first established. The paper then discusses nature in the urban landscape as a manifestation of these different ideologies, from the city’s formation around the 16th century CE to the colonial period, followed by the period of rapid urbanization after independence.
In Bengaluru today, several ideologies of nature that are multifaceted and often self-contradictory coexist in the same space. Remnants of the Garden city aesthetics from the colonial period intermesh with native elements of nature regarded as sacred in temples, as a source of livelihood in peripheral areas, and as spaces for recreation by the bourgeoisie. Therefore, tackling these issues must go beyond multidisciplinary action and include an approach that involves participation of multiple actors across social groups.