In a world that is becoming more virtual by the day, there is a longing for physicality that yearns to be fulfilled. This thesis explores the potential of architecture to evoke diverse behaviors and emotions, drawing from the idea that individual perceptions of space are subjective and influenced by the memories and knowledge ours bodies have absorbed from our unique lived experiences. With Budapest as a dynamic testing ground, the thesis focuses on activating the Danube waterfront. The proposed project consists of a retreat that transitions the people from Budapest to the water fostering a more symbiotic relationship between the urban community and the river. The project comprises two parts. The first is a private bathhouse facility, nestled within a once-concrete expanse in a park and sheltered within a public layer. The result is a building that outwardly serves the public, while inwardly housing an introvert private bathing facility. The second is a public floating structure, paying homage to the evocative reminiscences of old pontoon pools with a purpose of re-activating the historical legacy of swimming in the river. By sewing these two worlds together in one area, while bridging the community physically to the river, the proposal becomes a revitalisation of the waterfront. The goal was to craft an architecture that delivers spaces capable of leaving a lasting impression on the mind and bodies of those who engage and experience them. Architecture is the set for life to happen, and we, as set designers, choreograph and orchestrate different scenarios and environments for different users to engage with - and the play plays out.

This thesis is structured like the book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Its aim is to interpret and defragment it, thus the structural organisation being the same. Eleven themes are to be tackled and inserted alternately in nine chapters, whereas some contain different definitions or subjective interpretations. Invisible Cities is a poetic narrative. Mythic, unreal and ethereal descriptions of cities serve as a metaphor to describe the decaying of some architectural principles with the start of the modern era. Calvino names these cities invisible, yet his narrative is extremely visual, in the mind. There is usually an abstract space we inhabit when we read a book. When reading Calvino’s narrative that space becomes tangible. These never-seen cities become haptic - they become, almost, real. What was he doing? Where are these cities located? What purpose do they have? Why are they invisible? The creativity, the dreams, the imagination without limits. How do people relate to the spaces described? What is the architecture behind imagination and perception? Through trying to decode the messages held within his book, this thesis will cautiously investigate and interpret these questions by analysing the deep relations between people and their experience in architectural spaces. However, the subjective individual perceptions occur to be a large part of the decoding process, as the evocative descriptions of the imagined places has been investigated by numerous literary writers, yet all with different analogies. In the second part of the body, the cities Calvino portrays will be traced as subjectively visualized in this thesis author mind and compared to other people’s personal interpretations. The consequent similarities and discrepancies will indicate the infinite number of ways of imagining virtual things based on people’s lived experience and memory. Henceforth, this paper approaches the manipulation and creativity of the human imagination. Is our basic interpretation of things based on our lived experience? Do we every so often solely see what we want to see? On the other hand, there is the unseen and its various interpretations attached that will be deciphered in this paper. The experience, the senses, the memory - the dreamlike fragments we keep when we visit a new city, a new place are discussed and portrayed in order to show that imagination is itself a space we inhabit.