The thesis investigates the role of architectural practice in engaging with the systemic fragility and uncertain futures of the Cadore region in the Italian Alps. Initially guided by the question of architecture’s agency in the Alpine context, the research gradually evolved into a deeper interrogation: does the territory require architectural intervention at all? Through a multi-scalar and interdisciplinary methodology, The Cadore region is framed as a complex palimpsest - where ecological, infrastructural, and symbolic forces intersect and co-produce the landscape. Architecture is not positioned as a solution, but as a medium of observation, representation, and care. Central to this approach is the reactivation of the Ex-Cementificio Marchino, a former cement factory in Castellavazzo that once played a pivotal role in transforming the Alpine landscape into a resource-extraction machine during the era of the Great Acceleration. The factory’s current state as an industrial ruin offers a critical lens through which to examine the legacies of extraction and territorial violence, while also opening spatial and conceptual opportunities to reframe architecture’s role in a post-industrial Alpine context.

The design engages with the complexities of brownfield reuse in the mountainous landscape, reinterpreting the former cement factory not as a static object, but as a dynamic form in transformation. The factory, once instrumental in supplying materials for hydroelectric infrastructures, has been reimagined as a "landscape" from which to extract meaning and material rather than mere resources. The project is realised through a phased strategy of dismantling, re-scaling and recomposition. This process serves to reduce the alien monumentality of the industrial artefact, thereby initiating a process of contextual digestion. This process involves the demolition of parts of the structure and the reappropriation of their debris. Consequently, the factory becomes the quarry. The final phase of the transformation process involves the introduction of new architectural elements, constructed using the processed remnants of the original building. These interventions are designed to support a new programme, which involves the establishment of a basecamp for landscape observation, environmental monitoring, and community engagement. The site functions as both civic infrastructure and territorial lens, and is embedded within a broader network of observation points across the Caodre region.
The reconfigured ruin, articulated along a path that connects it to a newly designed inhabited wall, now acts as a spatial and symbolic filter between the former machine and its surrounding landscape. Through this mediation process, the site's context is progressively restored, healing the scars left by past extraction regimes and reorienting it towards novel perspectives and connections with the site itself. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

This thesis project, Synergies of Trade and Waste: The Engine & the Hive, reimagines the urban bazaar in the heart of Tbilisi, Georgia, by proposing a hybrid architectural space that integrates a waste sorting facility with a Georgian "bazaar" marketplace. Situated at the intersection of informal trade networks and negligible waste infrastructures, the project explores the dual roles of trade and waste as agents of urban change. Rooted in research conducted within the "Borders & Territories" studio of the MSc Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences program, the project responds to Tbilisi’s strategic position in global trade routes and its cultural reliance on informal marketplaces. Simultaneously, it addresses the urgent challenges posed by the city’s fragmented waste management practices.

The design is located on a brownfield site, formerly a railway repair depot, and leverages its infrastructural past to propose a new civic space. By examining material flows, urban rhythms, and social dynamics, the thesis constructs a spatial dialogue between the formal and informal, public and restricted, and human and machine. Through mapping, fieldwork, and experimental modeling, the project speculates on how architecture can bridge economic, environmental, and cultural systems—proposing not only a building, but a new way of seeing and situating infrastructure within the city. ... Read more

This project explores the entanglement between identity politics and spatial transformation in post-Soviet Georgia, using the district of Gldani in Tbilisi as a site of investigation. Against the backdrop of Georgia’s ongoing pursuit of European Union membership, the project questions how national aspirations manifest in the everyday built environment. In Gldani, the failure of top-down urban planning after the collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in widespread self-built “add-ons”—informal extensions protruding from apartment blocks. These architectural anomalies are both responses to socio-economic necessity and expressions of individual agency in a fragmented state.

Rather than erasing these conditions, the project adopts a palimpsestic design approach that builds upon them. At the center of the proposal is the Wall-Stage Building, a 180-meter-long linear spine that reactivates a dormant 2.5 km Soviet-era axis. The building integrates modular public programs—such as libraries, sports spaces, and rehearsal rooms—into a hybrid structural system of precast concrete and prefabricated steel. These volumes interlock with the spine like reciprocal extensions, reversing the logic of the original add-ons. Through this, the project proposes a new architectural model for urban regeneration—one that does not overwrite informal identity, but weaves it into the city’s future. ... Read more

The project deals with the production and its impact on the landscape in an ever-accelerating environment. At its core, it creates spatial imaginaries for synthetic or cultured meat production, offering possibilities for reduced land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water use. Even though the building has barely any reference to human dimensions, its function is still very human-centric, as it draws on previous discourse on the role of technology and automation within society, offering a scenario where humans do not have to participate in the killing of other animals. The sculpting of the landscape is perceived as inevitable, regarding the need to satisfy the increasing size of the population, especially if we want to achieve equal distribution of goods. Such a view gives way to a new type of architectural form that additionally challenges the existing approaches of how structures of similar size interact with nature. ... Read more

Tbilisi, located at the heart of the Silk Road connecting Asia to Europe, has historically served as a vital meeting point for diverse cultures and ethnicities, shaping the city’s unique character. However, the Soviet domination of the country led to significant homophonyn, erasing many distinct architectures associated with various communities and promoting uniform master plans that expanded the city.

This project examines how the architectural typology of cemeteries can reflect the city's complex history. It explores the interaction between different graveyards representing specific religious groups, highlighting their individualities as well as their potential for meeting contrapuntally. ... Read more

Towards New Feeding Grounds investigates the peri-urban countryside of Chongqing as a contested frontier shaped by megacity expansion, infrastructural transformation, and emerging forms of automated production. Situated within territories destabilized by large-scale water, energy, and digital infrastructures, the project responds to landscapes suspended between agricultural memory and urban speculation.

The proposal introduces a hybrid food infrastructure that combines an automated greenhouse core with open, ground-based agricultural fields, markets, and communal spaces. Through this dual system, the project negotiates between efficiency and collectivity, automation and manual labour, positioning food production as a civic and spatial practice rather than a sealed industrial process.

By weaving territorial research, technological systems, and architectural form, the project proposes a new techno-agrarian typology that redefines agriculture as visible, accessible, and infrastructural within the megacity. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on urbanization, food sovereignty, and the future relationship between city, countryside, and automation.
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By analysing the spatial dynamics of power and resistance in Tbilisi—a city characterised by conflict, transition, and collective struggle—this thesis investigates how architecture can both represent society and serve as a catalyst for change. It explores how civic agency and acts of control are woven into the urban fabric through critical mapping and design experimentation, as well as how architectural interventions can establish new spaces for expression and participation. By embracing transience, adaptability, and performativity as tools for reimagining public space, the project functions as a dialogue between research and design. Architecture is positioned as an open framework that facilitates collective action and social transformation, challenging traditional notions of permanence and order by redefining the architect as a choreographer of spatial conditions rather than a producer of fixed forms. Although it is based in Tbilisi, its techniques and observations are applicable to other disputed urban settings, providing a critical perspective on how architecture can promote inclusivity, resilience, and democratic participation in the face of shifting power dynamics. ... Read more

Architecture of Accumulation is a manifestation of the infrastructure of global capitalism, an attempt to find a form for the mass of objects and operations required to sustain global trade and logistics. Architecture of Accumulation materializes in Panama, a key point of international logistics. Architecture of Accumulation sublimates and crystalizes the unresolved tension between global operations and local landscapes. Architecture of Accumulation reimagines the organization of the industrial landscape by imposing a vertical density instead of horizontal expansion. It goes beyond the scale of traditional architectural gesture and becomes the territory itself. Architecture of Accumulation is an exploration of programmatic complexity and density. Architecture of Accumulation is adjusted to the scale of a container rather than a human body. Spaces for homo sapiens are carefully designated and limited. Architecture of Accumulation is a mass of symbiotic and conflicting fragments. Architecture of Accumulation remains in a state of unfinishedness. By the time the last beam is produced, the first one will already rust. The structure, like a modern-day Ship of Theseus, remains in constant change. Architecture of Accumulation resists simple categorization. It is technocratic to the most radical extent, where paradoxically it transcends mere practicality and becomes and architectural landmark. Architecture of Accumulation illuminates the condition of contemporary infrastructure, and utilitarian landscapes, which evoke a feeling of sublime, almost forgotten within the architectural field.
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Becoming the Ouroboros investigates the spatial values of Boca La Caja (BLC), an informal settlement in Panama City. Often cast in a negative light due to challenges like the difficulty of law enforcement, the common lack of fundamental services, and low structural resiliency, informal urban landscapes provide a low barrier entry to the vast opportunities of cities. Further the production of space is governed by hyper local social agreements and overlapping networks of connection. The urban landscape grows sequentially with the community, as structures densify, so too do relationships and cultural expressions one step at a time. As the site has reached its geographic limit, Becoming the Ouroboros proposes the mobilisation of this process of intertwined spatial and social improvement, within a closed system. To continue evolving the community must like the Ouroboros consume itself. To achieve this, I propose the implementation of a ‘Tinker Station’ designed to turn the professions of the built environment into a public service that can be leveraged by the community to improve BLC. This is located in an aging vegetable oil factory on the site, which is consumed akin to a mining operation and used to better the suburb. The existing community can therefore leverage the expertise, spaces and tools provided by the Tinker Station, along with existing material on the site to improve infrastructure, housing stock, and urban spaces within the existing cycles of informal development. This process is just a beginning, once the factory is completely transfigured, the resources needed to better the community are pulled from their own structures and houses, materials are transformed, and the site continues to incrementally better itself through its self-cannibalism. Becoming the ouroboros. ... Read more

This project experiments in representing the spatial complexity of a research area and reintroduces it to an adjacent site in the language of architecture. A heavy industrial district for ship building and maintenance is centered on and taken as a field with its dense configuration of artifacts (cranes, workshops, cargoes) and invisible force activated by movement of these objects. For a group of people – workers who work and live inside everyday in positions of insecure employment, safety and long work hours, a collective place is proposed for leisure and cultural activities. ... Read more

This project embarks on an alternative reality that is imagined to rethink our relationship with nature. If the representation of the climate crisis heavily relies on data that intrinsically does not entail a visual agency, it is also a crisis of representation. This project seeks to transcend the abstraction and complexity of the discourse revolving around the earth´s future by creating a narrative that grounds itself in the imaginary. Speculative fictions are experiments to think the consequences of emerging environmental and technological conditions. As such, the following pages offer a glimpse into a detailed scenario that does not attempt to clairvoyant the future, but contemplate and address urgent concerns in the way we care and design our planet.

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Today, Istanbul’s urban spatial structure has been dominated by three phenomena: informal housing, uncoordinated and uncontrolled urban intensification, and mass housing projects. It stands out particularly in the case of Kayabaşı neighborhood located on Istanbul’s Western periphery. Rigid, orthogonal layout of each group of blocks gives a dose of abstraction to the spaces in between them. Disregarded, considered boring and unsightly, generic buildings of this type are now proliferating the whole country, taking on residential, industrial and commercial functions, trying to keep up with the fast pace of economic growth. The feature that links them, muteness, is defined by me as ‘a state of being unable or not willing to speak, express or represent in a particular context’ (does not equal emptiness).
Project investigates the alternative scenarios of the peripheral spaces of Istanbul and potentials of erasing visual pleasure and lack of communication between the building and an observer, through theoretical approach and in-depth analysis of the subjective observations.
The research conducted during my graduation along with the project resulting from it aims to challenge existing aesthetic categories and shed light on a topic which is neglected by contemporary architectural practice. Hopefully, it will contribute to appreciation or at least stronger focus on the mute and introverted built objects , as they are already very present not only in Turkey and start to cover more and more land areas.
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According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, the notion of “space” can be read in several ways, of what is the five general understandings of it would be: outside earth’s atmosphere, empty area, period, freedom, and lastly, where things exist/move. With the speed, amount of information, and technology we are currently facing in the 21st century., it is no surprise that the idea of “space” is often correlated with the “space race,” “space tech,” even in the realm of architecture1. Given its vast and generic nature, it is essential, especially for this architectural research paper, to make a clear position on “space” or, to be more specific, something “spatial.” Architecture is indeed something of “spatial,” introduced by E. Moursund that a form of “spatial expression” that develops opportunities for humans to navigate, measure, anticipate, project, and construct perceptions; dictated by what architectural practitioner so-called “the language of space,” which consisted numerous spatial manipulative method and tool that help to shape our physical environment (Kasparowitz, 2017). Some great examples of “method” could be Architectural theory, education, or personal experience; as vague as it seems in comparison to “tools,” it could be almost anything creative and inspiring (or the other way); “tool” is more of a tangible object in our daily life that prevents or encourages a type of human behaviour, and as simple as it seems, some of the notable examples would be your bathroom door, living room windows, or partition walls that separate different functions; to demonstrate our knowledge and skill in both the “method” and “tool,” we draw, and to realize. Therefore, we build. The charm, speed, and impact of our panoptical creations encourage our egotistical profession to think that “space” stops where the site boundary of the plot of land ends. Fortunately (also, unfortunately), the domain of “space” does not end here; it also exists in what our optic and haptic sensibility cannot perceive; it is something else and, indeed, something more.
A truly cross-dimensional [Physical] research that explores and recognizes “space” that exists in another realm outside architecture. This realm of “space” and “spatial” would be the starting point of this research, asking the generic yet essential question of how people perceive the notion of “space”? Meanwhile, with the ambitious attempt to answer it by investigating the elements that compose “space” and something “spatial.” Next, the topic of “sensation” would also be discussed as a reaction and first tier of consequences generated by the composition of “space.” The third chapter of this research is the “Power of Architecture”; it could be seen as an attempt to show the inevitable influential power of our physical space and environment while simultaneously demonstrating the limitation of its “space.” The departure point of this research could be seen as another attempt to seek a common understanding from the audience that to create what we so-called the ideal “space,” we must first understand, study, and consider “space” from other realms cause only then “space” can be as meaningful, as functional, and pragmatic like they are all first intended to be. ... Read more

The Earth has been used as a shelter in ancient times as one of humankind’s first inhabitation methods, as these natural cavities are known for their safety and climate stability. Today, beneath the modern cities, under the buildings and streets, a complex network of spaces, pipes, tunnels, and pillars hold the cities together while keeping them alive. While our modern cities above the ground keep evolving, the underground cities become more complex and denser. Unfortunately, the underground spaces belonging to the first and second world wars, like bunkers and air-raid shelters, are mostly neglected and forgotten from further development, which excludes the underground cities and spaces in particular out of the perception and thus the memory of the inhabitants. This paper will first create a general understanding of perception and create an individual memory in the underground spaces. Then it will investigate the collective memory as a fundamental part of the underground structures. Finally, a theoretical framework will be developed and discussed to establish a new collective memory by creating a counter-memory through spatial architectural experience. ... Read more

This thesis is to be regarded as a reflection on the interplay between a recent ongoing personal experience, the accidents and encounters that it entailed, and underlying theoretical concerns.

I have been living in Tbilisi for the past few months.
During this time, I focused my attention on a case of architectural abandonment in the context of Tbilisi; Laguna Vere, a late Soviet aquatic complex that is today privatized and in disrepair.

In a moment of research and reflection on the tendency of conceiving reality through totalities and opposing concepts such as “inside- outside, me-other, subject-object, matter-form, local-global, east-west, state-market, private- public etc.” I happened to enter the building and experience its current condition firsthand.
Laguna Vere’s state could be analyzed and problematized in such terms; often, architectural objects or public spaces oversaturated by historic-political- symbolic-propagandistic signification tend to fall into polarized dialectics that affect and limit their perception, thus, their becomings. Opposing concepts to be regarded as forms of reductionism, implemented by power structures as control tools, that create, at a first level, a sense of nostalgia (or else, condemn), while producing, at at deeper level, public apathy, political pessimism and nihilism due to the experience of violence, impotency and passivity that the conflict causes. This manifests in a general unproductive approach towards existing (valuable) architectural objects, trapped in their being but filled with potential for new forms of appropriation and re-activation, new forms of becoming.

Laguna Vere has been framed as a symbol of the Soviet era, of International competitiveness. Laguna Vere was also a vibrant public space in the city center. It was open, green, and crowded. One could learn how to swim, how to hang out, and build networks there. It was a displace of bikinis and bare bodies, a cinema, a theatre.
Its status has deteriorated over time to one of physical abandonment and mental forgetfulness, which has been exacerbated by the city’s most recent privatization processes. Within its transformation dynamics and life cycle, the architectural object currently appears static, inaccessible, impermeable to external influences, and devoid of any link with the (public) context.

Nonetheless, no single moment in Laguna Vere’s evolution should be regarded as prominent, as either one thing or another; rather, it should be considered as a continual flux, an assemblage of singularities resulting in multiplicity.
All of the above-mentioned moments in time and space may be found as traces in Laguna Vere’s current state, and as a result, the current state also bears suggestions about the future, about what it could be but is not (yet).

In this thesis I am looking for traces; where /when to search for them and how to keep tracing?
How could bodily experience, as a tool for perception and analysis, be used to problematize the state of an abandoned space and foresee a possible future? Thereafter, in design terms, how could this space be rehabilitated and how could collective benefit be produced? ... Read more

The city of Trieste has been filled with ageing urban fabrics and abandoned industrial buildings due to obsolescence. Witnessing the decay of the city excusably provoked the pessimism of the locals as it made them conscious of the fact that their life and pride are degrading. The negative labels associated with decay inevitably seized the general definition and cognition. However, deterioration can only be understood as one of the superficial readings of the phenomenon of decay. As depicted in many arts and literature, decay does have its only poetics, aesthetics and intrinsic values that embellish and complement the urban environment and memories. Meanwhile, the degeneration of architecture with symbolic values, be it an intentional or inadvertent incident, would implicate significant political messages and ideas to the society. In the case of Trieste, the meanings of this natural (and occasionally artificial) process are still to be explored and discussed. Is there a possibility that decay could be considered a constructive phenomenon that can sublime as a form of regeneration for the ageing city? The project would then be an experiment that attempts to embrace the material processes, aesthetics and the spatial and programmatic potentials informed by the phenomenon of decay. It searches for alternative answers to the preestablished architectural typologies, meanings and purposes through rethinking on the current preservation approaches and alternative possibilities in dealing with ruins and abandoned buildings in Trieste. As a result of the quick and efficiency-oriented manufacture in the industrial past, architectural obsolescence brought in new artificial materiality and ways of decomposition to the discourse of decay, which are unprecedented in the pre-industrial time. The expansion of the definition of decay implies the misfit of conventional treatments on modern ruins in the post-industrial era. Delving into the phenomenon of decay may introduce a different set of aesthetic/tectonic languages and spatial qualities to the decaying waterfront of Trieste. ... Read more