This thesis investigates landscape transformation at Tbilisi's urban edges, where geological erosion, ecological degradation, and socio-political fragmentation converge. Focusing on the Lake Lisi area, the research examines how post-Soviet investor urbanism has accelerated instability through speculative development that destabilizes slopes and fragments communities. The study asks: How can architecture make visible and mediate the systemic relationship between these forces at landscape edges?
The methodology combines field documentation, satellite data analysis, and design speculation. Satellite imagery spanning twenty years maps vegetation cover and subsurface moisture levels, revealing three stages of transformation. The analysis identifies two critical parameters: a vegetation axis stabilizing soil through water absorption, and an erosion channel where destabilized soil accelerates downward movement. Findings demonstrate that surface sealing from development concentrates water in vulnerable zones, creating feedback loops where equilibrium between vegetation and water flow collapses into collision. Geological profiling establishes stable bedrock at 2.5 meters depth, defining the threshold between permanent and transforming strata.
The research reveals that landscape erosion is socially produced through zoning changes and development practices. Comparative analysis of maps from 1987 and 2016 documents the reclassification of green zones as development sites, demonstrating how investor urbanism seeks edges, creates edges through fragmentation, and accelerates physical transformation.
The design proposal, "Auditorium for the Hill," responds through architectural commentary positioned at the junction where stability meets erosion. The intervention employs three structural strategies: a retention wall following a continuous horizon to frame transformation; post-tensioned anchoring in stable bedrock establishing permanent foundation; and a cantilevered steel structure suspended over eroding ground dramatizing the tension between stability and collapse. Rather than technical stabilization, the project creates collective public space for observation and reflection, proposing architecture as instrument that witnesses transformation and creates grounds for communities to engage with forces shaping their terrain.

This graduation project explores how architecture can metabolise unresolved collective trauma through the transformation of Soviet-era spolia in Tbilisi, Georgia. Situated in a sloped urban park near Liberty Square, the project acts both as a public infrastructure and a space for mourning. It engages with the material and symbolic residues of the Soviet past — fragments of monuments, mosaics, and architectural elements — and reworks them through five consecutive architectural spaces. Each space stages a different phase of material transformation and emotional reckoning, moving from recognisable fragments to dust and digital trace. The project operates on both macro and micro scales: as a depository for contested heritage and as a cemetery for personal objects. Rather than preserving or erasing the past, the architecture processes it — through rituals of walking, deposition, and gradual material dissolution. The result is a spatial narrative of mourning that is not linear but layered, resisting closure and embracing ambiguity.

A project about the loss of Georgia's bathing culture in the shift from East to West. Resulting in a new typology for a underground bathhouse in the mountain region near Tbilisi; using stone and metal.

China and Chinese society have developed incredibly rapidly over the past 50 years, and in that time, cities have grown very, very, very quickly. This rapid urbanisation involves a transformation of rural land into urban land. The transition from rural to urban is not a homogeneous process. Plots right next to each other can develop in very different ways. This creates a patchwork urbanism, with contemporary border conditions that have surprising characteristics. Further fuelled by the mountainous terrain, the patchwork urbanism creates some issues as well, this has to do primarily with the presence of pleasant urban space, and connections between different patches of land. This project investigates the possibility to design something that improves connections, and that adds a new kind of space non existent in the present landscape. The student wishes to be additive, so without taking away from the existing landscape.

this project explores a post-human-centered transformation of an abandoned flour milling plant in Tbilisi through the lenses of rewilding and temporality, aiming to redefine the identity of this vast and formerly obsolete industrial facility. Through a series of interventions, the former brownfield has evolved into a living lab—a dynamic, evergrowing site of a novel ecosystem undergoing continuous ecological succession.

In Tbilisi’s suburbs, the spread of informal architecture traces back to the city’s turbulent socio-political journey. Soviet planning once dictated uniformity, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and the challenges that followed allowed informal construction to proliferate. The design proposition takes the form of a series of observational structures placed along a route. Each structure offers a unique vantage point, either decontextualizing or increasing accessibility to the surrounding environment. The intention is to deepen the way one engages with this distinctive built landscape, allowing for new perspectives and a more intimate connection with the space.

The Office for Digital Oblivion is a project that aims to re-ground discourse on information technologies and the realm of the digital through engagement with its immediate material conditions and operations. It has grown to become a full-fledged hybrid, blurring boundaries of what we consider natural or cultural, ecological or anthropocentric. It aims to to challenge perceived banalities around information infrastructures, tracing systems through scales, aiming to spatialise and thus problematise operational complexities which due to their scale remain largely illegible. With that, it puts forward new approaches to conceive of infrastructural systems, transgressing purely technocratic dogmas and new ways of thinking, worlding and becoming-together in the Anthropocene.

Our endless pursuit of precision in measures both geographical and temporal has destroyed the ability to get lost, to be curious of what is beyond the horizon, to sight monsters and live to tell the tale! Modern society is not without its own mythos however: By making real the coordinate grid, the project generates modern monsters, and a sense of wonder for the drunken variousness, incorrigible plurality, and sudden beauty of the world that cannot be measured. This paper as an experiment on the form of the essay itself seeks to circumnavigate its own content. Always regarding the dangers of the measure and precision from the outskirts, without risking collision by claiming to execute such precision itself. In its structure, pages of the essay may fall into place like leaves of a tree in autumn, to be read as it has been written: fragmentary, leaping from one page to the next, getting lost in its content, in order to find one’s self again. The project that has emerged from this research positions 97 follies in the Pacific Ocean of Panama in order to subvert and question the measure, and embrace the unfathomable nature of the surface.

This project explores the dynamic interplay between space, time, and body in the Darién Gap in Panama, a dangerous transit territory for migrants journeying to North America. As a significant departure from everyday landscapes, here, migrants' interactions with the territory are intensified, where many face death before reaching their destination. In 2023 alone, 141 known deaths were reported, a figure that likely underrepresents the true toll due to the significant challenges in recovering bodies.

Addressing the need for a dignified end, the project proposes a living memorial through three stages: homemaking, housekeeping, and memorialization. Homemaking involves migrants performing burial rituals—collecting, washing, digging, burying, and marking—as a comforting farewell to the deceased, creating a permanent resting "home" in the territory. Housekeeping entails border patrols documenting and maintaining these sites, using a rope system to track burial sequences, tree growth, and body decomposition. Memorialization integrates the deceased and their grave markers into the territory's natural cycle, forming a living tribute that evolves over time.

Through the accumulation of countless journeys, the memorial illustrates the profound impact of migrants as agents of change in the built environment. It serves as a model for architectural responses to shared tragedies, offering relevance extending beyond Panama.

This project explores the concept of 'The Ground' as a multifaceted entity, examining its physical, cultural, and political dimensions. It begins with an etymological foundation, linking the word "human" to "humus," emphasising humanity's intrinsic connection to the earth. The project expands this understanding by investigating the layers, properties, and significance of the ground as both a physical surface and a conceptual space, encompassing themes of territory, governance, and planetary interdependence.
A central theme is Bruno Latour's notion of 'The Terrestrial,' which redefines the earth as a political actor in a reciprocal relationship with humanity. This paradigm shift necessitates a reevaluation of humanity's approach to the ground, from one of ownership and control to one of coexistence and diplomacy. The Isthmus of Panama serves as a case study, illustrating the profound interaction between human engineering and geological processes through the construction and operation of the Panama Canal.
The project proposes an 'Embassy of the Ground' as a gesture of diplomacy to foster a diplomatic relationship between humans and the ground. This embassy, situated near the Post-Panamax locks of the canal, is designed as an enclosed space with the precise dimensions of a lock chamber, granting the ground within it diplomatic immunity. Surrounding the enclosure, three departments—Communications, Legal Affairs, and Informal Diplomacy—facilitate interactions with the ground.
Ultimately, the embassy serves as a bridge between human and geological timescales, promoting an ethic of mutual respect for the ground. By redefining the relationship between the human and the earth, the project challenges static conceptions of space and encourages a dynamic, time-sensitive perspective on architecture and territory.

This project investigates the relationship between transgression, the human body, and the built environment through the case study of El Chorrillo, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Panama City. Originally developed in the early 20th century for migrant workers, El Chorrillo was severely affected by the 1989 U.S. invasion and remains underinvested. The research process involved immersive mapping through recorded walks, capturing the district’s deteriorating infrastructure while juxtaposing it with the vibrancy of its street life. This method, influenced by Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the “body without organs,” framed El Chorrillo as a space of rupture and disorder.

Building on this analysis, the project explores the concept of the ‘carnivalesque’ as a form of transgressive urban space. It proposes festival infrastructure that not only responds to themes of bodily functions and societal excess but also provides an alternative to the neighborhood’s failing public amenities. While festivals are often seen as spaces of liberation, they remain deeply intertwined with capitalist cycles of consumption. This paradox is addressed by designing a self-sufficient and bottom-up system where the byproducts of excess feed back into the community. The architecture is conceived as an assemblage of facilities centered around the symbolic role of the dish, integrating spatial and material strategies that cater to festival-goers while enhancing local resilience.

The project aligns with architectural discourse by addressing urban and human-scale spatialities, innovating in materiality and circularity. The research-driven design process, guided by video studies, physical models, and narrative-driven analysis, provides insight into how transgressive spaces can be reimagined as tools for community empowerment. By questioning the role of festivals in public space and their environmental and social implications, the project proposes a model that could be adapted to other urban contexts, challenging conventional approaches to temporary infrastructure.

Filtering and differentiation at borders shape the composition and multiplicity of living labor, as well as the formation of often exploitative labor regimes. The relation between migration and the garments and textile Industry in the area of Istanbul, the center of textile and garments production and simultaneously a destination and hub for migration is exemplary of this condition. Transnational economic, labor and migration policies are reflected in the spatial manifestation of the textile and garments sector in the area of Istanbul. This leads to a heterogeneity of practices in the organization of the production system with main suppliers, subcontractors, retailers, home based worker’s networks and logistics, creating dense industry clusters extending deep into residential areas converting them into assembly lines, turning neighborhoods into machines. While technology is advancing rapidly labor conditions have remained problematic and outdated production models account for overproduction and waste.
Architecture can address these socio political and economic issues and these in turn shape architecture therefore it is worth it to make an experiment and let the systems networks and methods of garment production contaminate architecture: How is architecture transformed by using and reshuffling networks and production processes of the garment industry? What does a hybridization of these production processes and systems uncover about them? Which parameters can be manipulated for architecture to act as an agent in improving labor conditions and production processes?
This context sets the frame for discussing issues such as transitions in labor and production models, genericness, mass customization, flexibility, high-tech versus low-tech sparking a debate on how we fabricate architecture.

Once, the Haydarpasa Railyard in Istanbul was a key link for railway traffic between Europe and Asia and a gate to the Turkish hinterland and Middle East. After the opening of the Bosphorus-crossing Marmaray Tunnel, it has lost its function and became abandoned.

Taking into account the various historical layers as well as the place of the site in the public memory, the design project proposes transforming the site into a park. This park is defined by the loop, a walkway on the path of a former sidetrack that defines the perimeter of the park and connects its different zones.

Along the loop, several interventions related to the different historical layers of the site and the inherent nostalgia are introduced. One of them is the ensemble of a panorama on top of an old turning disc as well as an existing ruinous locomotive shed, together forming a catalyst of nostalgia at the entrance of the new park. Now, after the train-traveling has stopped, this new Eastern gate to the park enables travels in time.

Integrating shipyards with the surrounding context and unveiling the strong relation between this historic industry and Istanbul. As mentioned in the problematization section, the industry shapes leftover spaces which are not currently used. The project will aim to utilize these spaces in the shipyards by creating a series of interventions without interfering with the industry’s processes while trying to invite people outside of this context. The result will be a number of different structures, varying in uses and functions, referred to as magnets. The organization of the structures and their program will be carefully structured. Each point will have a carefully selected purpose, acting both as an individual mechanism but also as an integral part of the holistic experience of the route that is created from linking all the different points. The route will transition from land to water to carefully frame and portray all the different perspectives the shipyard can be viewed from.

The purpose of those structures is going to address the technical aspect of the yards (architecture as a machine) where the ships become a source of materials that can be treated with different strategies to result to a variety of potential outcomes. Repurposing part of them while hosting new program or even fully disassembling them to create a material library for the construction of the new built fabric. The project will act as a demonstration of the endless possibilities of reusing and recycling parts and materials from retired ships.

The programmatic use of the interventions will aim to frame the shipyard, so that the visitor can understand the complex operations of the industry. Multiple viewing points are integrated to allow this to happen but also resting areas and temporary housing accommodations allow the visitor to slowly approach the complex spatial conditions that are present on site.
1. Reception and Changing rooms
2. Temporary Houses
3. Resting Space / Cafe
4. Observatory

'Transitional territories: architecture of (post)-extraction in the Ağaçlı coal fields, Istanbul' revolves around the interaction between soil, extraction and architecture. The project addresses the ephemerality of extractive landscapes, imagining new ways of relating to the earth. Seeing soil not as a static being, but as a dynamic vehicle of becoming, a medium constantly in transition.
Throughout the history of Istanbul, the city has used different forms of energy supply for heating and electricity. The Ağaçli coal fields have been extracted for coal to supply the energy to Istanbul during a large part of the twentieth century. Although the rate and volume of extraction have since then reduced, the landscape is still a a testimony to the changing grounds. The history
of extraction still remains clearly visible in the topography, which is formed by different types of extraction sites. The project considers architectural modes of extraction, changing the logic to incorporate and legitimate the soil in a way that constructs new spatial relations and forms. The project questions the standard reclamation narrative by positioning itself on the frontiers of cultivated and wild land, between past and present.