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). ... Read more

This thesis explores the potential of the production space in the countryside as an architecture of economic activity and logic, and as an architecture of social encounters. The project proposes a mid-sized distillery that downsizes and deconstructs, and where the production of whiskey is broken down into seven stages and spaces. The distancing, of one stage of production from the next, simultaneously acts to maintain flexibility in the number of participating landowners, and the size of production. It creates moments of serendipitous encounter between the visitors, the commuting workers and the locals where it crosses the fields, the paths and the roads, and forms spaces of seating or shared facility for distillery by-products. The central space of the distillery navigates between the realms of production and domesticity. Different stage of production, requiring distinct temperatures, materials and tools, create unique experiences in the encounters. The possibility of the new distillery working as a co-operative consolidation of parts, and the potential to form a wider local, and regional network of shared logistics and flow of people in macro scale, present a different form of development for the Irish countryside as opposed to the mono-centric development of the east of Ireland. Rethinking the architecture of production in countryside opens an array of possibilities. Distillery, while acting as an economic anchor to re-establish the connection to the place in the dying countryside, also hold the potential to become a physical, social platform of exchange between people of different backgrounds. Architecture consolidates the countryside sparsity and provides spaces for the encounters of the people. This is not blindsiding the economic logics of the production, since this very nature of fostering meaningful interaction impart to the value of the final product, as displayed by the effort put in by existing distilleries to bring visitors to experience the process in person. In post-capitalism society of today, architecture of production holds a new spectrum of functions to explore as means of extreme efficiency to mobilizer of people. ... Read more