The Jukebox is a day hotel segment that where lovers cross paths and share fleeting intimacies. It is part of The Hotel, a collective project that studies the hotel, both as a building type and as a place of hospitality, through a collection of fourteen individual contributions inside one skyscraper. The project imagines hospitality as a realm of exchange that condenses the diversity of the city through an assortment of guests, staff, and the broader public.

The hotel is a function of temporality and hospitality. The study questions the requirements for an architecture of hospitality to welcome, host, and entertain. As an architecture of temporality—an architecture that is dynamic and ever-changing, embodying a sense of transience and constant activity—the hotel allows for experimentation, while anticipating adaptation to meet the changing demands of its temporary residents. The hotel, as type, is understood beyond its curated front. It is, instead, a place of anonymity and exchange, of served and serving, a place characterized by short stays in a lasting structure.

The skyscraper, as a formal and monumental object, appears to contrast the hotel’s temporality. In its autonomy, the skyscraper is a landmark in the skyline. Located in Midtown Manhattan—on the former site of Hotel Pennsylvania and adjacent to Penn Station—this project is a reflection on the metropolis of New York City.

The Hotel consists of the design of the skyscraper as landmark—The Metropolitan—and the hotel as tenant—One Hotel.

Collective propositions:
1. The Hotel embraces the frenetic energy of New York City while opposing its outward expansion.
2. The Metropolitan will outlast One Hotel.
3. One Hotel accommodates fourteen types of guests, and its staff.
4. One Hotel shares accommodation, amenities, systems, and services with a 24/7 cycle.
5. The Hotel sets a standard for an architecture of hospitality.

Day segment propositions
1. The Day segment sifts through New York City’s multiplicity of crowds.
2. The Day segment is a 24/7 hub at the base of the skyscraper.
3. The Day segment goes beyond the traditional day-hotel model through its diversification of room types, supporting activities, and retail options.
4. The Day segment makes itself financially feasible by pooling resources such as foot traffic, infrastructure, and labor.
5. The Day segment offers a range of fleeting intimacies somewhere between commodity and serendipity.

Capsule Metro is a capsule hotel segment that treat cheapskates with a good deal. It is part of The Hotel, a collective project that studies the hotel, both as a building type and as a place of hospitality, through a collection of fourteen individual contributions inside one skyscraper. The project imagines hospitality as a realm of exchange that condenses the diversity of the city through an assortment of guests, staff, and the broader public.

The hotel is a function of temporality and hospitality. The study questions the requirements for an architecture of hospitality to welcome, host, and entertain. As an architecture of temporality—an architecture that is dynamic and ever-changing, embodying a sense of transience and constant activity—the hotel allows for experimentation, while anticipating adaptation to meet the changing demands of its temporary residents. The hotel, as type, is understood beyond its curated front. It is, instead, a place of anonymity and exchange, of served and serving, a place characterized by short stays in a lasting structure.

The skyscraper, as a formal and monumental object, appears to contrast the hotel’s temporality. In its autonomy, the skyscraper is a landmark in the skyline. Located in Midtown Manhattan—on the former site of Hotel Pennsylvania and adjacent to Penn Station—this project is a reflection on the metropolis of New York City.

The Hotel consists of the design of the skyscraper as landmark—The Metropolitan—and the hotel as tenant—One Hotel.

Collective propositions:
1. The Hotel embraces the frenetic energy of New York City while opposing its outward expansion.
2. The Metropolitan will outlast One Hotel.
3. One Hotel accommodates fourteen types of guests, and its staff.
4. One Hotel shares accommodation, amenities, systems, and services with a 24/7 cycle.
5. The Hotel sets a standard for an architecture of hospitality.

Capsule Segment Propositions:
1.⁠ The Capsule segment provides a temporary rest stop in the center of Manhattan, a simple and affordable space after long hours of work.
2. The Capsule segment arranges the space and circulation between the skyscraper’s infrastructure and lodging near the core, creating a cozy temporary resting stop surrounded by cluttered service spaces.
3. The Capsule segment t formulates the physical space of the capsule by considering different postures and perceptions of minimum comfortable distances.
4. Despite being adjacent to other hotel segments with various statuses, the Capsule segment nests in the elevator corridor with a vertical arrangement, providing anonymity and indifferent contact with limited amenities.
5. The Capsule segment provides an affordable option for temporary stays in New York City, alleviating financial burdens and enabling visitors to enjoy what the metropolis offers.

“Almost Home” is a residential hotel segment that is (almost) home to precariats on the move. It is part of The Hotel, a collective project that studies the hotel, both as a building type and as a place of hospitality, through a collection of fourteen individual contributions inside one skyscraper. The project imagines hospitality as a realm of exchange that condenses the diversity of the city through an assortment of guests, staff, and the broader public. 

The hotel is a function of temporality and hospitality. The study questions the requirements for an architecture of hospitality to welcome, host, and entertain. As an architecture of temporality—an architecture that is dynamic and ever-changing, embodying a sense of transience and constant activity—the hotel allows for experimentation, while anticipating adaptation to meet the changing demands of its temporary residents. The hotel, as type, is understood beyond its curated front. It is, instead, a place of anonymity and exchange, of served and serving, a place characterized by short stays in a lasting structure.

The skyscraper, as a formal and monumental object, appears to contrast the hotel’s temporality. In its autonomy, the skyscraper is a landmark in the skyline. Located in Midtown Manhattan—on the former site of Hotel Pennsylvania and adjacent to Penn Station—this project is a reflection on the metropolis of New York City. 

The Hotel consists of the design of the skyscraper as landmark—The Metropolitan—and the hotel as tenant—One Hotel. 

Collective propositions:
1. The Hotel embraces the frenetic energy of New York City while opposing its outward expansion. 
2. The Metropolitan will outlast One Hotel.
3. One Hotel accommodates fourteen types of guests, and its staff.
4. One Hotel shares accommodation, amenities, systems, and services with a 24/7 cycle.
5. The Hotel sets a standard for an architecture of hospitality.

Residential segment proposition:

1. Purposeful precariats in New York City reject traditional senses of home.
2. Only in the middle of the skyscraper can precariats find seclusion and connection to Manhattan.
3. A residential hotel encourages its guests to consider the value of a life unbound from place.
4. By sharing with other long-term guests of One Hotel, the Residential segment asks the guests to consider either staying alone “at home,” or together “at home.”
5. A home is a space where you have to do chores.

Fashion is technological, since the first clothing worn by early humans, the garments have been developed radically to become efficient and comfortable (quick dry, highly warm, extremely light) to match weatherability.
Up until the last decade, fiber technology and materials science was limited to specialists. Since then, textile and clothing brands decided to invest in research and development. The lower costs of cutting-edge technology made it possible for independent designers as well as medium and larger companies to create concepts using innovative products. Additionally, there is a new consumer profile opting for environmentally responsible products that reflect their digital lifestyle.
The Try It Out contribution - sited in the Andermatt, a village in the Swiss Alps - proposes a facility for the development of prototyping and testing of the textile
performance.
Material research becomes increasingly paramount, as material innovation is one of the main drivers for the fashion industry to tackle environmental challenges. Improving the lifespan of fabrics (duration), creating better-performing garments (higher value), and revolutionizing production processes (production), will change how fashion is consumed (consumption).

This contribution is part of Fashion House, a collective project on the spatial implications of a decentralized and more tightly regulated fashion industry across Europe that reimagines the function and design for a fashion house.

Autonome architectuur en de stad gaat over de ‘revisie van de moderne architectuur’ na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Frappant is de complete ommekeer in de appreciatie van de moderne architectuur die in de jaren zeventig heeft plaatsgevonden. In een breder verband getuigt de introductie van de term ‘post-modernisme’ daarvan. De rol van monumentaliteit in architectuur, wat te doen met de historische stadscentra, het vraagstuk van regionale tradities, kortom de relatie van architectuur tot de geschiedenis kwam in het centrum van de discussie te staan en zou uiteindelijk de bijl leggen aan de wortels van het discours van de moderne architectuur. De vraag is, welke rol het Italiaanse neo-rationalisme, dat bekend is geworden onder de naam La Tendenza, in dit proces van ontbinding heeft gespeeld. Daar gaat deze studie met name over. Centraal staat ‘het wetenschappelijk en didactisch project’ waar La Tendenza aanvankelijk voor stond. Alleen vanuit dit gezichtspunt is volgens de auteur te begrijpen dat La Tendenza tegelijkertijd de moderne architectuur onder vuur nam én zich opwierp als haar ware erfgenaam. Een dergelijke manoeuvre was niet uniek. La Tendenza deelde die met de jongste lichting onder de leden van het Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), bekend geworden als Team 10, die zich na de opheffing van deze organisatie in 1959 over de geest van het avant-gardisme had ontfermd.@en

The Establishment imagines a tailor shop that provides a range of certified made-to-measure suits, jackets, trousers, overcoats, shirts, and accessories - sited in Rotterdam’s new fashion district inside an old trade office and portside warehouse – accommodating a slower-paced fashion industry, in which use of the daily workers suit is restored.

Three buildings accommodate the re-popularized sartorial significance of the suit: A tailor shop, an employment agency, and a more discrete Longshoreman’s business club. Reigniting interest in the craft of tailoring, formal wear and long-lasting garments and reconvening the collective bargaining power of people in an ever more fragmented world of work.

With the growing cumulation of textile waste, the fashion industry needs to introduce an alternative practice to improve the lifespan of their clothing. This contribution addresses the environmental pressure of overconsumption by upcycling textiles and redistributing them back into the German economy. Out of the Fabric creates a space for local designers to purchase the upcycled textiles from the storage facility and exhibit to the public. The new depot shifts the fashion industry’s perception of the value in excessive consumption towards a trend in secondary use and longevity of textiles. The depot rehabilitates its surrounding neighborhood of Friedrichshain by improving the condition of existing warehouses, encouraging the growth of Berlin designers, and introducing fashion textiles as an economic source for the community. The network of supply based throughout the city will ensure that recyclable materials can be always available.

Ready to Rent envisions a fashion rental hub that provides the rental, delivery, and maintenance of a wide range of clothing options. It supports a model of usership in fashion consumption by offering clothing as a service rather than a purchasable product.

The fully automated processing facilities handle used garments used garments for user-to-user transfer in a vertical assembly line, ensuring Good as New certification guaranteeing the same quality standards than the shop floor. Collection and drop-off lockers located throughout the city facilitate the transfer of rental garments and empower unboxing, packaging, and fitting at home, challenging traditional retail settings.

Ready to Rent, located in Rotterdam’s innovative M4H district, offers a unique solution for fashion consumption and supports it as a means of aspirational self-expression.

Crafted with Care imagines a small-batch bean-to-bar artisanal chocolaterie producing luxury craft chocolate, sited within a space of 1000 square meters on a sloped terrain in the medieval town of Gruyères in Switzerland, located at the top of an 82 meter-high hill overlooking the Saane valley. The rural town of Gruyères specializing in milk production and cattle breeding remains a popular tourist destination for the traditional precision craftsmanship of the infamous cheese and chocolate production. The existing family-owned chocolaterie, Chocolaterie de Gruyères, producing artisanal craft chocolate is integrated with the existing fortification at the entrance of Gruyères with proximity to regional products—such as double cream, Friborg milk, Morello cherries, Swiss kirsch, and Swiss cane beets—for their dark or milk "bean to bar" chocolate products. However, the new engagement of the chocolaterie with Hermès, a family-owned French house recognized for its luxury crafted goods, to preserve the craft of chocolate-making from its forthcoming extinction requires a new development of Chocolaterie de Gruyères to express the luxury and craft of chocolate-making and is thus sited in an exclusive heritage monument of the fort tower, offering a parallel exclusivity that compliments the product identity. The chocolaterie—committed to the tenets of traceability—is redesigned to additionally function as a gallery, educating the visitors on the transparency of chocolate processing and the value of craft production through the implicit connection with the maker. Through the disintegration of chocolate production into its layers of programmatic elements, the chocolaterie tends to highlight the precision at each level of chocolate-making, while providing different transitional routes for the varying consumer flux. The integration of the new intervention with the existing fortifications creates visual and transitional vistas overlooking the chocolate production, thus connecting the preservation of the building with the preservation of the craft of the inherently luxurious chocolates.
The site in the car-free village has proximity to parking areas, is located at a distance of 800 meters from the railway station, and at a distance of 90 meters from the bus stop with excellent connectivity for the transport of these chocolates into the major Swiss trade routes in Europe. A resultant modified supply chain will allow Swiss local experts to introduce a new distribution network of real chocolate across the Blue Banana, under a premium brand, eventually customizing the consumer experience in Albert in Delft through a branded shop-in-a-shop to reach a target demography with its artisanal opulence.

Fresh Forward is the contribution for the collective project on the food industry in the Netherland and beyond, reflating on the notion of automation and its spatial implication.

This contribution proposed a design for a new kind of restaurant that utilizes contemporary technology to achieve a fully automated process, from production space to sales floor; while, at the same time,– adopting modernist cooking techniques to provide a new dining experience to the customer.

Located in a hectare of land in the Hundewiese of Frankfurt. This contribution reconstructs the conventional restaurant layout, provides an aesthetic experience—from the uniformity and repetition provided by the automated machine to the contrasting organic beauty of nature—to the customer.

Inside its production facility, Fresh Forward collaborates with chefs and culinary artists to innovate on new recipes - through the adaptation of the modernist cooking techniques - to serve freshly made, sustainable, and tasty meals that highlight the uniqueness of each raw ingredient’s flavors.

Moreover, automat can extend the reach of its service by distributing pre-cook ingredients and seasonings to supermarkets or automat points throughout the Blue Banana network.

By 2050, when the world’s population is expected to increase by two billion people, “scarce” crops—from the massively consumed Arabica coffee bean to the popular avocado—will be genetically modified in laboratories to endure market pressure and environmental challenges to provide solutions to the impending food scarcity crisis in a post-pandemic society. The Lab Oratory envisions a highly curated agricultural landscape that converges the unviable industrial and the exclusive organic production of crops into a reconstructed future of farming. This novel “modus operandi” endeavors to reintroduce the building type of the laboratory in regards to the food industry and thus the boundaries of natural and artificial by creating a space of multidisciplinary experimentation that brings together growers and scientists.
Sited in the Netherlands, in the Wageningen, is co-located with the Food Valley NL, cooperation that attempts to offer food security and enhances the existing food innovation network that expands beyond the limits of Europe. At the same time, the Lab Oratory is located in the Rhine river’s floodplain, offering the possibility to discover solutions in regards to the flooding risks that the Netherlands is facing due to climate change.
The dike that surrounds the plot detaches it from the city by creating a 7-meter height difference. The laboratory’s functions are condensed across a half kilometer infrastructural line that connects the city with the river and generates different multileveled routes. Bookended by public spaces, an amphitheater and library respectively, and elevated as a pier, the infrastructural line is open to the public offering views into the experimental landscape, highlighting the transparency of different uses, to re-establish public trust in lab experimentation. The biosafety laboratories, the tissue culture rooms, the open labs, the microscopy, the botanical garden, the controlled growth facilities, the offices and meeting rooms, the grower’s spaces and finally the greenhouses are placed accordingly to allow the efficient function of the spaces. Following the Köppen Climate classification, the greenhouses are divided into five main volumes that mimic different climate groups; temperate, polar, dry, continental, and tropical climates.
From the lab to the land, multiple multidisciplinary experiments take place. An experiment on three different methods of farming; monoculture, strip cropping, and pixel farming based on a collection of data in regards to crop yield, pest control, biodiversity, pollination, nutrient cycling, water regulation, and soil fertility and an experiment on flood-tolerant crops that mimic the traits of rice consist the main occupation of the land.
The expertise is exported across the world, while crops of the patented seeds arrive daily in the supermarket. As an essential service, the supermarket’s design incorporates integrated agriculture strategies, accentuating the new civic presence within the supermarket in an attempt to rethink the controversial subject of GMOs in aid of combating food scarcity.

Sited in the Liège city center, this contribution proposes an urban winery that blends terroir fragments across the Blue Banana, exploring protection regulations that can build upon the knowledge, tradition, and novel techniques of winemaking.

Closely related to the idea of protectionism, and dictated by various regulation policies, wine production and its associated terroir are currently tied to the soil, and, therefore, to a greater rural territory. This contribution posits that due to climate change and technological advancement, the political notion of the “terroir”—as a spatial and conceptual entity that has shaped viticulture—will be revisited in the near future, introducing a new set of qualities and architectural ideas related to wine production.

A belief in the winery’s urban potential drives an attempt to go beyond protectionism by bringing wine production within the architecture of the city, at a moment when Europe—the birthplace of the Old World Wine—must reimagine the future of viticulture.

The “Shop Til You Drop” aims to create a new experience in the old town of Gibraltar, seeking to engage visitors by luring them in with the world of shopping. By designing a unique space that combines the architectural character of the heritage city with that of the modern aspiration of commercialization, it seeks to rebuild the characteristic of the street to bring in economic revenue and urban growth

This project deals with the industrial heritage of Gibraltar and its future prospects in the context of the global economy and the local culture. More particularly, it is about an upgrade of a ship repair yard known as Gibdock. It is aiming to counterbalance the issue between the ecological and Gibraltar’s economy, improving a better quality of the local environment to Gibraltar, and while providing efficiency and convenience as if a pit stop, to make a profit on the global stage of the maritime industry.It is strategically located in the western Mediterranean but cannot accommodate the majority of current container ships due to its limited size of dry-docks. Historically, Gibraltar has been fortified for many centuries, and human activities happened both on land and on ocean—Gibdock used to be a British naval dock (S, M and L size) for repairing and docking battleships, and has dominated Gibraltar’s economy with the naval dockyard providing the bulk of economic activity until 1984— this, however, has changed after then, and these undersized docks impeded Gibdock to catch up on new demands in ship repairs and refits currently.The upgrade strategy critically considers new international marine regulations, anticipating standard sizes, operations quantity, type of repairs for the next decades. It finalizes what kind of refits to ships need to complete, in order to comply to new rules. This anticipation of design is based on a wide range of sizes in relation to container ships, machine operations, spare parts, and considers how this design can turn the side effect of heavy industry in positive way. As a consequence, a new piece of infrastructure modernizes these S, M, and L docks while a new wet-dock in front of the existing docks enables Gibdock to modify XL boats. The service Gibdock provides is part of a larger marine business strategy called the ‘’one-stop-shop”. By offering all the services in one place —Gibraltar can gain a competitive advantage over Ports which only offer one or two of these services. This modification of ships at Gibdock is another service alongside those that Gibraltar already provides: refueling& underwater cleaning (at North mole), loading & unloading (at container berth), crewing & de-crewing, mooring (at Quayside), repairing and refitting (at Gibdock).

This project looks at both the role of Gibraltar within the global ecology and the dynamics of the local ecology on the peninsula. It describes how Gibraltar’s geomorphology—a mountain surrounded by water, located between two water bodies and two continents—has resulted a unique local ecology that is vital for the global ecosystem. Carried by the winds, migratory birds soar across the Strait; ocean currents and water temperatures determine the spawning locations of marine life migrating through the Strait; human migrants settle on their way to cross the Mediterranean; tourists travel to the peninsula to observe its unique and dynamic biodiversity. The Rock and its morphology produce local winds and precipitation, which have shaped the Rock into two distinct sides: an urban and cultivated west side, a steep and uncultivated east side, and a Nature Reserve on the Upper Rock. In turn, these sides have framed settlement patterns, from early military settlements between walls and on the Rock, to reclamations and Marinas on the verge of the surrounding waters. Levante clouds and limestone formations provide humidity and alkaline soils for endemic plants; the seeds of which are taken by the wind, insects, birds and Barbary macaques that reside on the Rock; whose residence in turn attracts troops of tourists and their accompanying taxi drivers. The project explores how both the global and local ecologies affect and are affected by human settlement and design. As humans are part of the same ecosystem as all other species, they shape it, and are shaped by it. Birdwatchers travel to coastal areas to see the journey of the flocks; cruise ships and dolphin tours interact with migrating marine life; urban settlements expand into the sea and onto macaque-territory; Mediterranean woodlands are cultivated and become Maquis-vegetation; behavioural patterns of Barbary macaques are influenced by the tourists coming to see and feed them and the architecture that provides for them; as well as vice versa. In a context of climate change and population growth, two paintings and a series of models anticipate changes in global and local migratory and settlement patterns and explore the role of design within these ecosystems. As sea-level rise, droughts, changing temperatures, and extreme weather conditions reshape global and regional migration and settlements areas of all species, the projected intervention in Gibraltar is an examination of the role of design in the balancing act of the global ecosystem.

"Culinary Cultures" understands the dietary story of Gibraltar, as well as the way in which it incorporates relevant change. A new food culture is developed from production to consumption across the peninsula and over time, gradually alleviating Gibraltar’s culinary life. "Culinary Cultures" introduces a change in the familiar setting of the Public Market, highlighting particularities that it already offers, aiming to smoothly imbue the shift in the local culture. Making people aware becomes then a strategy to shrink the current ratio of obesity and overweight residents that affects three out of five Gibraltarians. The purge of the current “effortless” street food culture should be an invitation for participation, resulting in an understanding of what we should consume and how. Gibraltar’s expected population doubles by 2050 and becomes even more diverse in terms of the nationalities living in the territory. As a result, its survival depends on the maintenance of its differences, and even its further differentiation. Incorporating new dietary habits and dining settings of people from northern Africa and east Asia becomes the new challenge. Within the scenario of the local food production around this infertile land, architecture in relation to food has the chance to alter its current consequential condition. Food and dining should not take place in generic spaces that happen to be there, but in spaces created to host them and enhance a coherent food culture across the territory. The ritual of eating in "A Gibraltar in the Making" is an integral part of the coastline and even the sea, materializing in a multilayered scenario from production to consumption. The “Vessel Food” becomes a symbolic place to dine with friends, where the production and preparation of food takes place in a performative manner in front of consumers. In a contemporary urbanized society like Gibraltar, cooking provides one chance most people have of taking some control over what they eat. Cooking is not just about what goes on in the kitchen, it is a pivotal point in the food chain—the one that arguably affects everything else in it. Cooking, like talking and writing, requires education— and like these essential skills, it comes easily once you know how.

Healthcare has been often described as the most complex human organization ever devised.
The life of hospitals has been supplanted many times by an aseptic compliance with norms, regulations, procedures, protocols, and hyper technologies. Hence, there is no longer any trace of the old sacred enclosures, the Greek temples, the Roman valetudinaria, hospices, of the home of the sick, or cathedrals and abbeys equipped to host people in need. The hospital as an inflexible monument of civic pride was to remain until the second half of the twentieth century.
We often perceive the hospital as a place adorned with hard light, bare corridors, with no personal or interesting features. As Mukherjee wrote in The Emperor of All Maladies, “Science begins with counting. To understand a phenomenon, a scientist must first describe it; to describe it objectively, he must first measure it.” Hence, to describe the future of healthcare is necessary to understand the forces shaping it.
Aging and growing populations, greater prevalence of chronic diseases, and exponential advances in innovative—but costly—digital technologies are the developments that continue to increase demand and expenditure. The future of healthcare is also much less centered around institutions; it is rapidly becoming decentralized, dematerialized, demonetized, and, ultimately, democratized. As healthcare becomes more data-driven, it is also becoming more personalized.
This is the story of families moving to Gibraltar. This is the story of a new hospital—the ultimate housing for births, souls, hopes, and dignity. This project proposes Gibraltar as a healthcare destination. In the tradition of Swiss mountain open-air sanatoria, it has a strategic location, boasting effective local healthcare legislation, economic incentives, and continued infrastructural development between southern Europe and youthful north Africa. It is isolated from chaotic cities, with a positive climate (300 days of sunshine a year), green slopes, sea views, fresh air, and quieter streets.
Gibraltar is the perfect set because of the current and forecasted importance of healthcare in its economy. Based on Gibraltar's budget between 2017 and 2019, a forecast envisions a growing expenditure in the healthcare field. The forecast demographic increase suggests almost 30% of the new population will be composed of children under 18.
In the peaceful ambience of the mighty Rock, only a short walking distance from the Royal Naval Hospital, a block of sheltered housing with primary health facilities (emergency, occupational therapy, and imaging departments) aspires to renovate, making the transition from home to hospital imperceptible. By all measures, in fact, the home is the future of healthcare.
Specifically, the proposal focuses on the design of a long-term residential paediatric centre, targeting young patients and families who normally travel far from their homes to specialized hospitals. Hence, the design for Gibraltar's 2050 hospital envisions the city-state as a place for treatment, healing, and recovery, strengthening the economy by serving the population expansion and strengthening Gibraltar’s position as an attractive and pleasant place to live.
Architecturally, the bottom-up complex provides an experiential journey from medical processes and foyers, common spaces, and a public healing garden (the Rock itself), to rest, healing, and independence. The new social and architectural melting-pot attempts to combine the notions of domesticity and hospitality in a secluded area on the Rock.
In summation, this social-architectural project aims to reach a point of privacy and dignity, especially through its small, human scale. Families and residents of all ages and origins can enjoy much-needed breathing space, and carry on their normal and dignified lives.

This project deals with the past, present, and future theatricality of the Bay of Gibraltar, in relation to the settlements around its edge – Gibraltar, La Linea, Algeciras – and across the strait to Morocco. These landscapes are read as both backdrop and auditorium; the ports are re-contextualised as the wings and aisles, and the Bay is the stage. The project first establishes comparisons between historical events that have occurred in the Bay alongside other theatrical experiments by artists, architects, and landscapes designers, based on visual and structural similarities. These include both grand events - military sieges, ostentatious construction contributions, as well as the everyday theatricality of fishing-trips, dolphin-tours, migrant patrols, and global trade. It compares the legislation that dictates movement across the Bay to the laws which dictate movement around a stage. The theatrical reading elevates these events as somehow equivalent and worthy of attention, disturbs pre-existing understandings, and recognizes the Bay as a unique theatrical setting. Three sub categories – staging, scripting, viewing – demonstrate precise modes of comparison, each corresponding to a set of spatial conditions, architectural operations, and design objectives. They also coincide to a range of materials, introducing comparisons between drawings and cartographies, scripts and instructions, photography and etchings. By definition the designer of a stage does not limit the acts that can or should take place on it, thus, this contribution is not about designing a play but rather defining the stage. Going beyond the conventional theater space, this contribution introduces a new scale and form of theatrical setting-the global. Theatrum Mundi, or the world as a stage, and in particular, the Bay as a Stage. The theatrical reading is undertaken in order to literally and figuratively draw attention away from the contentious Rock, relegating it to the status of backdrop, and move focus towards the neutral and shared Bay, elevating it to the status of stage. Historically the Rock has been the focus of the theater, in emotional, political, and scenographical terms, with a vocabulary that emphasizes its separation, security, and isolation. Discourse within Gibraltar tends likewise towards isolation and introversion, typified by their antagonistic relationship to the water and their preoccupation with the Rock. By shifting the focus from the Rock towards the Bay, and by providing a new vocabulary for how we speak about the shared Bay the contribution invites regional scale collaborations and initiatives by clarifying and reinforcing the theatricality of the Bay itself.

The aim of this thesis is twofold. First, it offers a ‘theoretical reading’ of a historically important architectural entity – namely the bazaar – in order to propose a synthetic understanding of its complexity and to explore the multiplicity of forces and regimes involved in the bazaar’s [historical] formation. Second, by conceptualizing the architecture of the bazaar, this thesis explores the relation between architecture and territory, inhabitation and infrastructure in the context of the Iranian Plateau. In doing so, this thesis contributes to the production of an architectural knowledge which encourages a contextual studying of complex spatial regimes and mechanisms as their prime forces for intervention. The notion of the bazaar is complex. Not only does it have implications in diverse disciplines, but it also carries various definitions. Depending on the context in which it is used, the bazaar can be depicted as a place, a form of economy, a social class or a way of life, and thus it can embody the notion of a city, a territory or even it can be expanded to the region known as the Middle East or the Islamic world. Within this wide spectrum of possible meanings, the bazaar has been the topic of discourse in architecture and urban history, as well as anthropology, sociology, economics and political science. The inherent complexity of the notion of the bazaar is attributable to its intermediate position, i.e. its relation to the territory and various ways of life, its spatial complexity, i.e. a space of movement and a place of public and the collective, and the superposition of different scales between architecture and the city. This implies that research on the bazaar needs to deviate from purely typological or urban morphological studies. Rather it needs to devote simultaneous attention to people as well as the numerous spatial interrelations involved in its formation. This means that an architecture is possible which gives form to the accumulation of complex cultural, social, economic and administrative relations. While it enables connection and integration, it provides scope for confrontation and encounter. The first chapter provides an overview of various conceptions, definitions and perceptions of the bazaar. This chapter will demonstrate that a proper discursive framework that allows us to grasp the spatial complexity of the bazaar is, in fact, missing. While architecture and urban studies have focused mainly on describing and classifying the bazaar’s structural and morphological presence, other disciplines have hardly recognized its physical importance in the process of forming various interrelations. This chapter concludes that the bazaar is not simply an architectural object, rather it is an entity which is territorial. This means that the bazaar’s formation has been closely related to the ways in which the territory has been managed and inhabited. Subsequently, this research conceptualizes the architecture of the bazaar by revisiting its ‘whereness’ and ‘whatness’, using the ‘territory’ as a theoretical framework. While ‘whereness’ addresses the characteristics of ‘where’ the bazaar is historically located, ‘whatness’ is concerned with what the bazaar is and what it does. In this process, it is important to note that ‘whereness’ and ‘whatness’ are closely linked to each other, and they are both simultaneously a precondition and product. The second part of the thesis – which includes chapters three and four – presents an understanding of the ‘whereness’. This part seeks means and lenses to open a discussion on territory both as a precondition and product. These two chapters discuss the geographical condition – and what I call the geopolitics of the in-between, through which two kinds of territorialities take form: i.e. the extensive territoriality of the nomadic spatialized through distribution and movement and the intensive territoriality of the sedentary spatialized through managerial knowledge of dehqan to inhabit a land. The coexistence, encounter and assimilation of these territorialities has had an impact on the state-form and the social and economic system on the Iranian Plateau in general and the spatial formation of the bazaar as an intermediate. The third part of this thesis focuses on the issue of ‘whatness’. This part – chapters five and six – re-examines the established knowledge on the bazaar as a physical and spatial entity by experimenting within two kinds of territorialities proposed in the previous chapters. In other words, the bazaar is seen as an assemblage of various territorial regimes rooted in the extensive nomadic territoriality and intensive sedentary territoriality. This not only pertains to the relation between movement and inhabitation, space and place in the bazaar’s physical structure, but also in its social and legal organization, topology and logistical system. Thus, the bazaar goes beyond the mere circulation space; rather it is perceived as an infra+structure which is situated within the city and operated as the city’s main [public] place. The present thesis examines the possibility of constructing a discursive platform for studying the bazaar as a complex architectural entity. It posits a critical reading of the bazaar’s primary spatial idea, suggesting that a territorial reading of the bazaar can provide a valuable alternative lens for looking beyond mere preservation concerns or the purely formal imitations that are normally applied when examining the current condition of the bazaar in Iranian cities. It can help to redefine the intermediate position of the bazaar as a way of discovering new orders and hierarchies within and without the city.@en

Context is a crucial concept in architecture, despite the frequent ambiguity around its use. It is present in many architectural thoughts and discussions, while a critical discursive reflection is absent from contemporary architectural theory and practice. Situated within this schizophrenic condition in which the notion is both absent and present, this study aims at creating a historical and theoretical basis for a contemporary discussion on context. Discussions on context or alike notions had always existed in the field of architecture but the debate intensified and developed as a multi-layered body of knowledge in the 1950s, when various architects, theorists and teachers cultivated several perspectives on context as to address some of the ill effects of modern architectural orthodoxy and the destructive effects of post- war reconstructions. Despite being a topic of layered and productive debate in the post-war years, context lost popularity in the critical architectural discourse of the 1980s when it was absorbed by postmodern historicism and eclecticism, co-opted by traditionalists and conservationists, and consequentially attacked by the neo-avant-gardes for its blinkered understanding. This research presents a critical archaeology of the context debate, aiming to reclaim the notion by uncovering its erased, forgotten and abandoned dimensions. To do so, it challenges the governing paradigm of 1980s postmodern architecture by making inquiries into the history and genealogy of its particular trajectories with a criticism from within. Taking 1980 as a starting point, coinciding with the First Venice Architecture Biennale, the research traces the debate on context back to the 1950s through an in-depth study and interpretation of the ideas and works of Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and Colin Rowe. This reverse chronology reveals that in the works of these protagonists the understanding of context has shifted from “place to memory”, from “spatial to iconographic” and from “layers to object”, where the former categories still hold the capacity to recover the notion as a critical concept that is intrinsic to the architectural design process. In brief, by drawing upon the vast resources available in different media, such as exhibitions, archival materials, student projects, publications, buildings, etc., the study constructs an outline of “the context thinking” as it was articulated in architectural culture in the period between 1950s and 1980s.@en