Fragile State(s): Lines, Walls and the Possibility of Interrupting Processes of Privatisation is an exploration into architecture as a practice of negotiation and disruption. Situated in the uncertain context of Brexit, the project is a critique of how architecture, a profession that often claims to mediate and resolve socio-political and economic issues through spatial intervention, is a vehicle that continuously drives marginalisation, embodied state violence and power. Buildings make visible conflict, control and prejudice and in the context of late-capitalism and Brexit, will continue to perform as a means through which income is produced for the wealthy. An architecture that can instead unfix, destabilise, blur lines and edges, as opposed to fix and define, acting at fragile moments uncovered within oppressive socio-political processes, is a relational practice through which collectivity and publicness can be maintained. This concerns an architecture that is not physical (static / fixed), that composes and aestheticises, but that is collectively negotiated, practiced, choreographed, enacted, evolving, adaptable, fragile (dynamic / unfixed). The thesis proposes a fragile network of infrastructural interventions that can facilitate the emergence, transformation and deterioration of social spaces, inhabiting the ongoing changing state of the quay walls of the River Clyde in Glasgow. The fragile state of the quay walls draws a parallel to the uncertain context of the Brexit vote, as a moment in which something else could happen. Emergent inhabitancies that temporarily maintain an illusion of regeneration or certainty, that fluctuate in relation to flows of water and the hydrological cycle, embrace Glasgow’s wet climate: a disruptive force that threatens privatisation. The project investigates a fragile architecture that can exploit destabilising processes as an opportunity to curate edges, choreograph surfaces and inhabit spaces within and from the wall, that in turn deter market speculation. The temporal inhabitance of the wall is a process whereby infrastructure is reactivated and extended, claiming back public land: as long as the city is kept as wet as possible, unstable edges and landscapes allow for processes of privatisation to be subverted.

With the first Five Year Plan of 1928 Stalin initiated a period of massive industrialisation of remote zones of Russia. This lead to the creation of several Monotowns, newly built industrial settlements based on one economical source or industry.
The project takes as a study case the town of Togliatti, the largest built in Soviet Union and still functioning. Constructed in the 60s as an industrial complex for FIAT car manufacturing. The plan of the city, designed by the Soviet architect Boris Rubanenko, was inspired by Ivan Leonidov’s project for Magnitogorsk, and was based on a grid of squares of one kilometer per side, each of which contained the fundamental facilities for living such as housing, commercial spaces, hospitals, schools and green areas. The fixed urban layout, together with the very regular organisation of infrastructure was planned in order to facilitate and accelerate citizen’s movements from one place to the other, minimising what was considered an unproductive time expenditure.
The city, with its very readable and concrete set of established routines, represents the fieldwork to study the creation of everyday life rituals and to understand their materialisation in architectural space. In particular, these established rituals have been unfolded in the research in order to uncover the eventual problematics that are representative of the critical condition of the city.
The current economic stagnation in Russia and the slowing down of the production, has lead the mono towns to a state of inactivity, generating lack of jobs and a general feeling of discontent in the population, proving the need of finding alternative productive sources.
Concurrently relating to the contemporary debate on the productive means of the capitalist system, the project deals with the current transformation of the concept of production, that is gradually shifting from production of goods to production of knowledge. In this scenario, the line separating life and work is blurred, and the city unfolds in an endlessly interlinked maze of spaces that don’t host any specific function and yet are able to host any.
The project investigates how architecture becomes an instrument of control, bending to the needs of the market and imposing hierarchical systems over everyday life. At the same time, the project experiments with alternative solutions that question the common way we perceive architecture, working places and educational institutions, highlighting the need of a transformation in the design processes and goals, considering architecture not as a problem solving practice or a profit maker tool but rather as a tool to investigate new ways of working and living.
More in detail, the project wants to question the possibility of liberating production from pre-imposed economical constraints, therefore challenging the necessity of accumulation and classification and most of all private property, considering knowledge as a common good instead. The criticality of this reflection acts specifically in relation to the economic system and the contemporary lack of attention that is currently experienced in the everyday life, simultaneously putting forward the necessity to improve social interaction and awareness, the processes of thinking and reflection, aiming to the creation of a consciousness that starting from the individual would eventually spread and influence the entire social body.
The intervention unfolds design concepts against classification, categorisation, compartmentalisation but also against material and immaterial accumulation. The scale of the project seeks to represent this vision and therefore surpasses the limits of what can or cannot be built to put forward an idea, an alternative that doesn’t want to be a solution but a starting point for a further reflection. In the same way, every aspect of the design is conceived to be able to be appropriated, re-interpreted and re-proposed in a different scale and condition therefore allowing the project to be not only a site specific intervention but a trigger for new ideas, questioning the way we design contemporary architecture.

Past to Present to Past is an architectural investigation responding to the growing need to address sea level rise in the built environment. The two sites of focus are Leysdown-on-Sea, UK and Red Sands Fort in the Thames Estuary.

The European climate and energy goals towards 2050 ask for drastic systematic
changes in the current European energy system to increase the share of
renewable energies and to reduce carbon emissions – from 1990 to 2050 by 90%.
The project Everything Remains Transformed intends to highlight how farreaching the transformative process from fossil energy sources, like crude oil
and gas coal, to renewable energies sources actually are. In the marine zone,
we will have to decommission platforms and pipelines at immense costs and
the coastline will eventually turn into a patchwork of abandoned harbours and
refineries. In the terrestrial zone, we will have to pull the plug from coal power
plants, while fossil-energy reliant businesses are running down, and citizens will
lose their current high-living standards.
The current energy system adds in this respect to the high ecological footprints of each country in the North Sea territory and requires drastic change in the light of resource management and estimated enormous population growth, according to Eurostat, among the nation states.
Everything Remains Transformed relies on parts of the remaining energy legacy
and the potential to transform its components. The project represents a new,
energetic system in the North Sea that aims to create one big territory with one
low footprint among all adjacent countries through collaboration. It demonstrates on the big scale, that a joint strategy will produce renewable energy to cover the territorial supply, reduces carbon efficiently and brings additional benefits beyond energy production.
A macro-regional strategy for the North Sea builds the overall framework for the
strategy. The aim of the European Union’s instrument is to jointly target common challenges with actors of various fields. On the small scale, in Aberdeen as a case study, I will showcase what influence big scale principles and spatial guidelines eventually have on the space and the societal and economic structure.

The geopolitical instability in Syria has led to an increased disturbance of the environmental, economic and social situation in its adjacent country Lebanon. A comprehensive approach is put forward, for safeguarding the environment and to address the economic and social disruptions the country is facing. This allows the phenomenon and implications of forced displacement to be understood in connection with and as part of the whole. A holistic reading of the landscape resulted in the re-connection of humans to its most basic life-sustaining relationship, namely that of agriculture. Wherein agricultural production is seen as the normality in an exceptional situation, deeply rooted in the culture and knowledge of all the inhabitants of the Bekaa Valley. The ecological design, therefore showcases the implementation of new and the improvement of existing agricultural production systems and their affiliated forms of living. In this way, rural livelihoods in Lebanon are protected or established, with and in respect to the natural landscape. Moreover, the initiated communal enclaves based on agricultural production, can safeguard threatened prime agricultural land by encouraging urban development towards a desired direction.

With the sustained impacts of climate change, and the corresponding effects of post-glacial rebounding, a persistent sea level change continues to affect the countries within the North Sea region. These changes could indicate new threats or opportunities to human society. According to the synthesised datas of historical and current mean sea level from satellite altimetry, and projected sea level in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), in the specific case of Norway, people may not worry too much about the influx of sea water to their community. For the vertical uplifting of Earth’s crust after the melting of continental glaciers released the loads is even more decisive than the rising rate of sea level. Although, the changes in projected relative sea level until 2100 are different, depending on different locations, the report also addressed that there are lots of uncertainties lie in the trends of sea level change, especially in such a long period. Take one of the many scenarios as a precondition, which would be the sea level along the coastline of Norway keeps on dropping until the next century, a long and narrow area of marshland which connects the sea and inland mountainous areas revealed. In the circumstance that most countries in the North Sea region are busy dealing with flooding from the sea, this spectrum of ‘new land’ seems more precious. It could be a new opportunity for human settlements, but in the mean time, it is definitely not just living space, or potential urbanisation field for humankind. The land which used to be washed and filled with sea waters was a habitat for maritime species, and good harbour for small fishing vessels of fishermen is now dominated by rocks, salty marsh vegetations, organisms, seabirds, and occasionally visited by human beings. Thus, I wish the city we live in could act like a crocodile, she should have the quality of the amphibious. In this case, the boundary of ‘land’ and ‘sea’ blurs in a harmonious scene of sharing the same space among all the species through time. Time would be the witness of this natural succession on this ‘fluid ground’.

The Atlantic Wall bunker ruins stand on the coast, abandoned and falling apart. There is a kind of beauty in this scene.

Contradiction between the rough concrete volumes defeated by asoft, ephemeral and seemingly delicate mass of water was the beginning of the research. Analysing the biggest territorial scale -the North Sea- the notion of “clashes” re-appeared. Historically, the North Sea was always an area of conflict. The constant fight between nature and the people trying to harness its power is it its very essence. In this context Atlantic wall seems to be the most contemporary example of the conflict on the area of the North Sea. Remains of Hitler’s plan stretch along the whole coast and in that sense are a direct translation of the territorial scale of the “war” into the architectural one- of a singular building- a bunker.

Yet, the conflict around the Atlantic war was in fact deemed to be a failure from the beginning. From the 15 000 bunkers planned only 6000 were realized by 1943. Then, suddenly, without any actual battle, the war ended. Observing the horizon was the only task of the soldiers until the war came to an end. The “absence” of the war is the essence of this narrative. Conditions of waiting, observing and experiencing the present moment surrounded by nature became a base for guidance and exploration.

Being part of theWadden Sea protected area, the location on the island of Terschelling emphasizes the contrast between the solid bunkers and dynamics of nature. Wadden Sea Islands are known for beautiful constantly changing dunes, inhabited by rich fauna and flora and influenced by regular tidal flows. One of many strong points on the island is the one located just next to the sea-shore, on top of the highest dune was chosen. It consisted of several buildings that were spread around that dune, serving primarily as an observation point.

Now, many years after the bunkers were placed there, some still remain. The passage of time and power of nature has however, changed them. They’ve became ruins. Some walls fell apart, some volumes tilted and moved, some were covered by the sand and overgrown by the grass. The “present ruinous state” of the remnants of the Atlantic Wall was understood here as the fundamental and relevant experience of the history itself and the starting point for the design. Instead of protecting against the forces, the project tries to use them as the main actors in the architectonic setting. The dominant, always present, unstoppable forces of nature are the base for design decisions. The way of
dealing with the knowledge was a strongly intuitive approach, mixing scientific knowledge with atmospheric perception of the nature. Inspiration for dealing with the composition, landscape and the ruins of the bunkers was taken from the archaeological excavation sites- the calculated geometric intervention against the vast masses of land in search of the “treasure” was to be used as the main concept in the design. The project relates to the landscape and experience of walking through the dunes. The wild nature is interpreted into rational concept. The different spaces and their architectonic qualities lead the visitor through subsequent spaces, constantly referring to the context.

The ritual experience begins by leaving the village or the parking area and entering through one of two gates. From a distance, only some of the bunker ruins and the skylights protruding through the sand are visible. Only when cutting through the ground and the building inside are the dimensions of the places revealed. The main buildings are almost all underground and are developed by taking from the architectural language of the bunkers.


The project tries to anticipate the flows of nature and takes the future time into consideration. Even though the building has a function to serve people at the beginning, it doesn’t have to be occupied all the time. It is a monument and its future role is to be there, in the constant condition of anticipation. Following the story of the bunkers that were left on sand to become ruins the concrete buildings are also going to stay and slowly deteriorate.

The cycle will close waiting for yet another chapter.

This project traces the role the North Sea has played in the history of the United Kingdom, with a particular focus on territorial control. In a post-Brexit scenario where supply chains between the island and the continent are interrupted, the contiguous zone just twelve nautical miles from the coast of the UK provides an ideal economic grey zone. A free-floating object in occupying this territory is not subject to the UK’s visa or customs regimes, nor is it at the mercy of the high seas. The project thus capitalizes on its position to subvert the exclusionary act of Brexit. Tapping into existing flows of secondary resources across the North Sea, the project manifests as a recycling plant which utilizes waste to produce recycled concrete made of bottom ash and plastic waste recovered from the sea. This new raw material is moulded into modular islands which are given birth to by the machine; thereby using unwanted matter generated in a terrestrial context to create a productive landscape in the middle of the sea. The project contests the exploitative nature of natural extraction within the North Sea and renders visible processes that are easy to forget by creating a physical structure that thrives at sea and exists independent of the land.

Among the several events that have shaped UK’s present , the British colonial empire could be one of the most significant ones. With the North Sea as Britains new passage to the world the British thalassocracy created one of the biggest colonial empires that lasted over three centuries. At its colonial peak, the imperial empire had occupied 24% of the Earth’s land area with 23% of the world’s population . Trade and exploitation of resources in the new colonies became the understructure of this empire. While UK’s proximity to the North Sea on the global scale facilitated the exchange of food and raw materials on the local scale it encouraged the growth of a complex system of internalised waterways and ports providing a lot of trade opportunities for the mercantile traders. During this time, food trade linked its colonies and the metropolis via complex bilateral and multilateral shipping routes of the North Sea, laying the foundation for the development of some of UK’s biggest cities today - London, Bristol,Manchester, Liverpool etc. Food therefore, was not just an adjunct to the British imperial might but fundamental to it .

At the core of the colonial expansion was the concept of land appropriation that encouraged new forms of landuses . This act of reappropriating land was happening simultaneously at two scales - the global scale, where land in the colonies was being utilised to produce food products and raw materials, and on the domestic scale where land was being reappropriated to introduce new forms of industrial typologies. Within the city privately owned land was progressively sold or rented out to speculative house builders and merchants to build small scale mills factories , while on the other hand the small scattered strips of agricultural land in the rural were being enclosed and privatised to introduce large scale manufacturing industries. Over the years this gradual appropriation of rural land has led to its depopulation and has facilitated the decline of the small farmers, leaving valuable arable land in the hands of private owners.

Today, the decline of the small farms and the progressive privatisation of rural land has led to a severe lack of occupational and living diversity and has also dispossessed the rural of its means of agricultural sustenance . Large number of privatised rural farms in UK have shifted to commercial or animal based farms forcing the outsourcing of its increasing food demands to its former colonies. Currently 43% of the total food consumed by UK is imported by 2050, with a population of 75 million this number is predicted to go up by another 20%.

This project therefore focuses on food production within the UK, using two main aspects - the North sea :as its territorial frame of reference and the British colonial empire :as its backdrop . Together both these factors were crucial in developing a design proposal that explores both, the possibility of food sufficiency in a post Brexit future and speculative strategies to reimagine the rural as the new productive territory . Since food is a natural derivative of productive land, land becomes a key element of the project narrative. By overlaying new systems of production, occupation and habitat the project tries to both, establish new relationships between natural and man-made systems and also eschew the traditional distinctions between the city and the rural. Using a systematic sprawl the design tries to highlight the flexibility of a decentralised city to be able to accommodate and respond to future uncertainties without compromising on the sustainable and efficient utilisation of land.

By establishing new forms of ownership and occupation the design also becomes a tool to decolonize the rural land of its industrial remnants to make way for new forms of infrastructure and logistics . In this new city, the land is no longer a commodity, it is a mode of sustenance that is equally accessible to every citizen living in it. By internalizing the systems of production and distribution within this city the project tries to contest North sea’s current role as a facilitator of an unequitable decentralised global trade. The end result does not claim to be a definitive solution to the impending food crisis, rather it is a test of whether the revival and appropriation of one of the most archaic systems of land ownership and profit will be able to diminish the perilous consequences of years of consumerism that was a direct result of colonial industrialisation.

Estuarine area, as a transition area between land and sea, is the most dynamic and complicated area, due to its unique location and diverse ecosystem, but yet it is also the most vulnerable and fragile area, as it may be plagued with flooding risk, erosion, subsidence and etc. As the diagram show below, estuary area is influenced by three systems: land. Sea and human activitities. With the rising awareness of climate change, the safety of estuarine area is becoming one of the most important concern and tough challenges for urban planners, as estuarine areas are commonly the most urbanized areas, where some metropolises are built on. How to balance the physical and socioeconomic needs of urbanized estuarine area with the risks from extreme weathers is a challenge today.