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.

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.

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.

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.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has had a profound impact on the land, people, society, and daily life in Ukraine, particularly in the frontline areas where battlefields and defensive structures stretch across the north to the south. As the war continues, this strip of land bears the scars of conflict, featuring devastated landscapes, abandoned agricultural fields, and an environment that feels insecure, sorrowful, and hopeless. This project seeks to explore the reimagination of war-torn territories and the concept of a neutral landscape, interpreting battlefields to create a meaningful and reflective space for remembrance and peace.

Situated at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Asia, Ukraine has long been a crucial border area. The research field focuses on identifying the landscape characteristics of the borderscape, examining the fragmented and traumatized landscape resulting from conflicts and defensive structures, in search of potential pathways to healing.

Inspired by case studies and precedents, the design proposes a neutral zone that aims to create experiential spaces that narrate the “stories of this border area.” The military artifacts are subtly transitioned, providing memorial spaces while restoring the natural ecosystem and agricultural activities. An elevated pathway gently weaves through these experiential sites along the entire 3,000 km stretch of land.

This project contributes to the broader discourse on the transformation of war landscapes by incorporating the significance of borderscapes with the restoration of the landscape. It offers a sense of comfort to individuals and society dealing with war trauma, serving as a reflection and reminder for the future.

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.

Local conditions along the New Silk Road are often largely impacted by the global ones operating in their area—one of such being the Republic of Panama, ever since the build of the Panama Canal. The canal offered a shortcut and connected the World over water, but paradoxically introduced divisions in other directions, it divided continents, the country, and ecosystems, ... This project explores the dual and opposing nature of connecting elements. The dichotomy in the meaning they hold is ascribed to the ever-changing factors, narratives, directions, and perspectives towards them, while the elements themselves persist as the only constant, as a reference. Despite being perceived as linear, once approached carefully, thresholds become spaces, spaces consisting of all the areas they divide. Cinta Costera 3 viaduct surrounds the two impoverished neighborhoods and the old core of Panama City: Casco Viejo, while offering connection to the residential and work areas for the wealthy. This connecting element simultaneously divides Casco Viejo from the wealthy areas and from the ocean. A seemingly linear border, a threshold to pass in order to reach the open ocean. The design aim is to dissolve the city into a beach. The intertidal landscape between the city and the threshold becomes a beach and becomes the end-goal itself. The city is reaching out to pass the threshold and achieve freedom=bathing. In this attempt, it encounters zones, thresholds, connections, and divisions, and experiences the revealed sensations of bathing, and spending time in and around water, and by the time the threshold is traversed, the aim was already experienced within.

This research focuses on the transformation of the Groningen gas field region, which has transitioned from a symbol of national pride due to its vast natural gas reserves to a region grappling with the significant impacts of gas extraction. With the permanent closure of gas production, the region faces ongoing challenges such as land subsidence, earthquakes, and socio-economic shifts. This study aims to explore sustainable and commemorative landscape-based transformation strategies to address these issues and redefine the identity of Groningen.

The research identifies two primary areas of concern: the existing gas extraction sites and the broader landscape affected by environmental changes and social disruptions. By analyzing the current state and potential of these sites, the study proposes design interventions that integrate industrial heritage into public spaces and enhance regional resilience.

Three representative sites—Slochteren, Ten Post, and Noordbroek—are selected as case studies. Slochteren, the first gas extraction site, is considered for its potential to become an open-air museum, akin to the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park in Germany. Ten Post, located in the most seismically active and subsidence-prone area, and Noordbroek, one of the first sites undergoing cleanup, offer insights into how design can mitigate environmental impacts and foster a sense of place.

The theoretical framework incorporates principles of landscape architecture, the concept of guilty landscapes, and post-industrial landscape transformation. These theories provide a systematic approach to understanding and addressing the multifaceted issues associated with the Groningen gas field. The goal is to create a cohesive strategy that connects these sites to their surrounding landscapes and communities, turning them into meaningful public spaces that reflect the region's history and identity while promoting sustainability and resilience.

This research contributes to the broader discourse on post-industrial landscape transformation by demonstrating how integrated design approaches can address environmental, social, and historical challenges. The findings aim to offer a replicable model for other regions facing similar transitions from industrial heritage to sustainable future landscapes.

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 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.

Sounds always occur ‘somewhere’, endowed with specific material ‘qualities’ that also indicate courses of action. Spatio-temporal qualities of sound, the contexts they enmesh, together with the attentions they sustain and actions they enfold, collectively constitute dynamic systems termed ‘circuits’. This research investigates the circuits through which sounds manifest in diverse spatial-material-temporal configurations, and probes the manners in which those situated materializations are inextricably bound to contextual dynamics....

René Char's aphorism 'They installed us heirs without a will' as a cause for reflection locates the inability of the man of the 21st century to perceive what the past of the place has left behind. In general, it demonstrates the failure of our instant culture to understand the meaning of urban heritage and the dismissal of a consciousness of the past. This consciousness and its identification within the space of ruins is a prevalent theme in architecture ever since renaissance, and today it’s becoming even more pressing especially in the light of cultural provision along the New Silk Road. In the case of Istanbul, and more specifically the port of Haydarpaşa, this space is under scrutiny since the system of values that governs it is shifting drastically. Among ancient ruins and neglected industrial heritage, the city fluctuates through a process of change, in a constant state of in-between, struggling to tolerate the unresolved borders of different social, cultural, and historical layers, all of which are interwoven within the same urban narrative. How can we use architecture as a medium to bridge the gaps between the different layers of cultural and historical importance that contrast and intersect within the urban fabric? How to enable a ruin space pivotal to Istanbul’s modern and ancient history in order to become part of the landscape of a new coastal development that has been closed off to the city for decades? The design proposal aims to the prospective revisiting of the ruin space as a field of interpretation, revision and reconstruction that is reflective instead of restorative towards the potential future. It suggests a place existing so above as below the current site that reflects the contradictory forces of its very creation, the underground archeology of antiquity and the overground industrial heritage. The design phase includes the activation of the programmatic potentials informed by the intermediate (in-between) spaces identified within the site and reflects the meeting of different eras that happens on the ground level, the ‘in between’ space of the investigation.

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.

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.

The architectural design Associations and Assemblages-A Pattern-based
Housing Complex, are followed by research on existing housing patterns
in Istanbul. Three types of housing forms: Self-built, Street apartment and
Highrise. For individual housing units, they are different in scale/volume/facade
composition/land occupation. When grouped housing units land on the terrain
of Istanbul, they form different patterns in plan and elevation.The research
finding can be concluded as: By figure ground plan, self-built houses are more
dense in land occupation, but have less demolish on original topography than
street apartments and high-rises. The collision of three patterns in my site
Yenidoğan, the most over-populated area of Istanbul, guides me rethinking how
they can coexist in a more topo-friendly way and create possible new housing
patterns.

The research conducted at the beginning of the graduation year revolved around the indeterminate forces that shape the built environment, resulting in the formation of many ‘ephemeral’ cities along the new silk road. As such, the main outcomes from the research stage resided in the definition of the leftover spaces of intensive industrial exploitation: ‘dead’ landscapes are understood as the results – and eventual symptoms – of indeterminacy surrounding both the natural state of the site under study (an open-air coal mine), coupled with intensive anthropogenic exploitation of its resources. These dead landscapes dictate the conceptual approach adopted to deal with the territory both as a constructed industrial whole, in addition to many fragmented instances of indeterminacy.

The proposed graduation project takes inspiration from the Borders & Territories conceptual, practical, and theoretical frameworks as a base for research and design. The studio topic “Transient Liquidities along the New Silk Road” is heavily¬¬ in line with the proposed graduation topic, as it investigates conditions of formation of postindustrial landscapes in Turkey, a result of varying demands and rich natural resources along the new silk road. Turkey is then at the forefront of rapid transformations, made possible by its complex infrastructural landscape and abundance of natural resources.

The inhabitants of Assos live by ruins of temples, theatre and civic buildings inherent a humanistic value that transcends to present day. This is the hidden reality of many more cities on the Anatolian coast. This thesis proposes a system for
the revival of this unique type of ruin-city. The objective is to restore the organism of the city as a whole for its inhabitants and visitors. This is achieved by proposing a landscape intervention of a circular path reconnecting the inhabited village with the civic monuments to be restored. Along the path sites for new public buildings are proposed, laying the foundation for the expansion and rebirth of the city.

A maritime metropolis that acts as a gateway from which elements from all over the world can enter and mix, resulting in a repository of a large set of heterogeneous entities; Marseille is a knot of flows and fluxes intensifying and manifesting in an assemblage of entities that are products of continuous historical processes. It is a platform of Global trajectories that are resembled in local realities, a city of a hybrid character and a strong transitional status. A place of becomings and a field of latent potentiality and productive possibilities.
In Marseille, public spaces are the residue of rigid bordering processes conducted by different social constructs; Abolishing many possibilities for a new identity to emerge. However, rhizomatic threshold can be spotted on different scales. One that accommodates the co-presence of different parts. As observed, they are the spaces where multiple flows intersect. For example, the flows of people and commodities in the Noailles market.
What is still missing is the Medi-terrain that incorporates relations of exteriority between the components. Where within the encounters, interactions take place, capacities are employed and new properties emerge; A Spatio-temporal dynamic threshold -a field of intensities- where the exchange of commodities, information, and energy always happens: in other words, a place of the continuous act of territorialization, reterritorialization and deterritorialization.
The issue, therefore, is that well-determined, Fixed structures, control, and regulations in the urban space are not providing order anymore in the age of uncertainty and are not fostering the place for becoming (the presence of new possibilities). It is no longer efficient to solidify long-term urban plans, in the age of rapid change. The rigidity of the current urban environment made it very difficult to intervene and adapt to new needs and changing situations. That resulted in creating unpleasant in-conflict urban spaces. To transform the character of our modern urban environments, interventions should take into consideration the capacity of the public space to adapt to changeable conditions seeking more resilience and flexibility and allow for the physical manifestation of possibilities.

The end result is not a conventional architectural construct. it is also not a direct functional solution for a problem. The resulting intervention is a response to the contemporary urban condition and an attempt to create a plateau for dynamic network of dependency to encourage people to interact, catalyze the emergence of unplanned activities, inspire tolerance towards difference, and easily adapt to changing situations