Kasama College of Education

Items

• LA LUCHA CONTINUA: CONFLICTING CONSTITUTIONALISM AND TERRITORIALITIES OF COMPETING SOVEREIGNTIES IN THE CARIBBEAN
  Today, academic frameworks regarding classical notions of sovereignty are being challenged by empirical perspectives emerging from different parts across America. Ongoing debates are currently focusing on illiberal forms of hybrid governance arrangements assuming that sovereignty is not a claim which is exclusively expressed by state actors alone, but rather involves diverse arrangements with non-state actors, suggesting a questioning of the legitimacy of the state’s claim to represent citizens’ rights. My contribution to this conversation is to add new understandings of the notion of Sovereignty by focusing on the socio-political relationship of Puerto Rico-United States. Searching locations for naval training range bases during the 1940s, the U.S. Navy expropriated lands in Vieques-Culebra. After uprisings against bombing target practice in the 90s, military operations ended in 2001, with the Navy completely leaving the area in 2003. Eighteen years later, the aftermath of that occupation is still present. The territory that was owned by the Navy was ceded to the National Fish and Wildlife Reserve System, setting a precedent for competing sovereignties over contested land in the United States territories. My thesis is looking at the role of urban development patterns of the federal occupation in Vieques-Culebra because there’s an ongoing exertion towards land in the sense of how is being preserved, bought, sold, and exploited through regulations that benefit the more advantaged demographic, in order to make visible resistance efforts by non-state actors that currently exist against the tensions over land sovereignty, the inefficiency of the state and its social infrastructure.
• Early Phase Performance Driven Design Assistance Using Generative Models
  Form-finding in the current performance-driven design methodology of architectural design is typically formulated as a design optimization problem. Although effective in engineering or late-stage design problems, optimization is not suitable for the exploratory design phase due to the time intensity and cognitive load associated with the processes involved in the formulation and solution of optimization problems. The iterative, diverging nature of early-phase design is incompatible with the i) cognitive load of parametric modeling and its limited affordances for conceptual changes, ii) time and resource intensity of simulations, iii) interpretability of optimization results. This thesis suggests a framework for generating optimal performance geometries within an intuitive and interactive modeling environment in real-time. The framework includes the preparation of a synthetic dataset, modeling its probability distribution using generative models, and sampling the learned distribution under given constraints. The several components are elaborated through a case study of building form optimization for passive solar gain in Boston, MA, for a wide range of plot shapes and surroundings. Apart from the overall framework, this thesis contributes a series of methods that enable its implementation. A geometric system of orientable cuboids is introduced as a generalizable, granular modeling vocabulary. A method for efficient boundary condition sampling is suggested for the dataset preparation. A Variational Autoencoder (VAE) is extended for performance-aware geometry generation using performance-related loss functions. A series of techniques inspired by the data-imputation literature is introduced to generate optimal geometries under constraints. Last, a prototype is presented that demonstrates the abilities of a system based on the suggested framework.
• Hudson Phloem | Shoreline Xylem
  This thesis zooms in microscopically to expose the moral distancing between the construction and material metamorphosis of concrete shorelines. As Calvert Vaux’s prevailing Riverside Park in New York City extended the Hudson River Valley southward, this thesis extends Hudson water ecologies inward and upward. Concrete constantly undergoes processes that consume sulfates and carbon, which leach out into surrounding soils and attached larvae. Pinpointing areas of increased compound leaching, a series of capillary gardens carve into the concrete of Riverside Park to create an emerging network of cracks and abrupt ecotones at the West Side’s doorstep. The garden network splinters the abiotic to help healthier biotic shoreline communities reemerge from beneath, creating a precedent for future shorelines to consider the microscopic before seeking concrete as an ecological solution. Furthermore, the design dismantles the distinction between park as the pleasurable picturesque, and park as an instrument that enhances emotional adaptability to rising seas.
• Fringe: Negotiating the Ground beyond Conservation in Hong Kong
  This thesis challenges the boundary condition of the broad and diverse canon of nature conservation that emphasizes the binaries between human and nature. Situated in Hong Kong, a highly populated yet forest enveloped city, the situation is amplified as the boundaries of its ‘Country Park’ conservation areas are continuously challenged by expanding urbanization and aggressive capitalism. Hence, this design research reconsiders the boundary, not as linear edge, but a fringe, that has thickness, in terms of geography, culture, economics, and politics, to develop its own resiliency. In response to this enquiry, the design proposal consists of a series of ‘Nursery Parks’, that begin and expand beyond the deteriorating boundaries. Through the production of trees, the design prepares the ground for the occupation of its citizens through temporal events. In the act of production of trees and place, these fringe spaces are engendered with value, not only ecological but also through its cultural identity to the city.
• The Third Typology: Architecture on the Bank of the Bengawan Solo
  Indonesia has a wide range of vernacular architectural styles known as rumah adat. However, the passage of time and colonialism has caused a decline in the traditional rumah adat. The architectural landscape of the post-1940s embraced the international style. Although these designs are pragmatically efficient and relatively simpler to construct, they are ill-suited for Indonesia's tropical climate. The rumah adat, on the other hand, can integrate seamlessly with the Indonesian climate. Nonetheless, it faces challenges of scalability and constructability. While the international style addresses these issues, it often fails to harmonize with the local climate. This situation prompts a pivotal question: How can architectural solutions be climatically appropriate, contextual, and scalable? This thesis explores the 'third typology,' bridging the gap between the vernacular and contemporary architectural typologies. Embracing Indonesia's cultural regionalism, the work leverages principles of sublimeness, intricate plays of light and shadow, climatic responsiveness, and contextual design.
• THE FARM IN THE FOREST: Recoding Agrosilvoecological Practices in Coffee Production in El Salvador
  Coffee plays an essential part in shaping the economy, landscape, and culture of El Salvador. Over the past 100 years, social and economic shifts across the country have profoundly altered the maintenance and production of coffee. For this legacy to be updated to the 21st century, there is a need to design landscapes that are constantly adapting to environmental and socioeconomic volatility. Buena Vista, a 155-hectare coffee farm situated between the edge of the Apaneca-Ilamatepec Biosphere Reserve and a chain of towns, serves as a testing ground for a new design of an agroecological coffee landscape. The two primary interventions include the development of a matrix of planting strategies with different maintenance levels and the creation of a visitor route through the farm that illustrates the ecological, the productive and the social importance of coffee. By connecting and diversifying the vegetation and the economic activities at the site, the overall landscape becomes more robust and resilient to economic, environmental, and cultural changes now and into the future.
• Metropolitan Governance in the Argentinian Context: The case of the CEAMSE
  The Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires is the largest metropolitan area of Argentina and one of the biggest in the world. In this urban setting, the Coordinación Ecológica Área Metropolitana Sociedad del Estado (CEAMSE) provides services of final waste disposal at a regional scale, emerging as one of the few examples of metropolitan governance in the AMBA. Nevertheless, although this public company is consolidated, it has experienced periods of conflict and crisis, affecting its current capability to expand its operations. This article aims to review and analyze the issue of Solid Waste Management (SWM) in the AMBA and analyze CEAMSE's history and challenges in order to understand its current situation better and identify lessons that could contribute to enhancing the company’s model of waste management.
• Orange Trees & Oil Wells: Imagining a Decarbonized California
  California is the most valuable state in the United States, with its real estate valued at more than $10 trillion or 20% of the US real estate market. Supporting this real estate market California has become the largest exporter of agriculture in the nation, valued at $55.8 million. California is also the third largest oil refiner in the country, refining 1.8 million barrels per day. California today is facing extreme climate stress expecting a 40% decline in crop yields by 2050. Industrialized agriculture relies on fossil fuels to support the world’s food supply. Starting in 2030 demand for oil is expected to drop from 93 million barrels to 25 million barrels a day by 2050. Based on these predictions oil prices are going to rise drastically creating global food instability. In addition to the phased decommissioning of 629 oil refineries by 2050. California’s AB1757 leads the nation as the most aggressive climate policy. This phased decarbonization strategy will transform the worlds 4th largest economy into a carbon free economy. The city affected the most by these policies is Los Angeles, a city defined by its infrastructure. LA has used these tools for the past century to extract resources and bring value to the barren Los Angeles Basin. What happens when the price of carbon is no longer the determining factor for development but instead development is guided by the impact of carbon on the environment? Los Angeles currently has five refineries within the county limits. Current pressure at the state and local level has banned oil extraction and is making it increasingly difficult to refine oil in the city, with Chevron the states largest refiner withdrawing future investment in the state. The Chevron El Segundo refinery is 1,200 acres of prime coastal property that productes 40% of the jet fuel and 20% of the gasoline in Southern California. The withdrawal of the oil industry is inevitable, but can we imagine a new use for these sites that assist in our transition to a more sustainable future? As the world is facing this trifecta of a climate crisis, energy crisis, and food crisis solutions need to be looking at their capacity to create change. the adaptation of oil refineries provides an opportunity in the midst of a crisis to rethink the value of heavy industrial land use types as a way to provide more resilience and stability to urban centers.
• A New Interoperability Framework for Data-Driven Building Performance Simulation
  Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) have become more prominent in the building, architecture, and construction industries. One area ideally suited to exploit this powerful new technology is building performance simulation (BPS) for sustainable building design. Physics-based models have traditionally been used to estimate the energy flow, air movement, and heat balance of buildings. The algorithms behind physics-based models, however, involve solving complex differential equations that require many assumptions, significant computational power, and a considerable amount of time to output predictions. With the advent of DL, which can handle large amounts of computation in a short period of time, data-driven models for predicting the physical properties of buildings are becoming increasingly popular due to their simplicity and efficiency. As such, artificial neural networks (ANNs) with measured or simulated data for environmental analysis are likely to be a more feasible option for designers during the early design phase. To train ANN models, 3D data is an asset to computer vision because they provide rich information about the geometry and the related environment. Depending on the 3D data representation considered, different challenges may emerge when using trained ANN models. Hence, an interoperability framework is required for converting building geometries and environment-related information into relevant 3D matrices for model training and utilization. However, to date there has been no research on this topic in the BPS field; thus, this research proposes a new data interoperability framework for ANN models with 3D buildings serving as inputs. The framework has been subjected to a trial investigation using several ANN modeling studies on radiation and airflow simulation. The result is a comprehensive process map that includes the BPS requirement for ANN modeling, related subprocesses (i.e., building geometry and environmental levels), specific rules and methods for modeling, and processing of input and output data. To accomplish this, data exchangers for the ANN models, geometry representation tool (GRT), and BIM specification tool (BST) were introduced and developed as computational tools. The comprehensive framework has been validated using the developed case studies, demonstrating its applicability for different Computer-aided design tools (i.e., Rhinoceros and Revit) and ANN models (i.e., radiation and airflow) and illustrating the future capacity of integrated ANNs to serve as a tool for use in BPS and early-stage modeling.
• Japan Post World War II Development Turning Point
  World War II defeat was one of many calamities that affected Japan’s economic and spatial development. Japan had to rebuild from this calamity to move forward. It implemented various economic and spatial policies that made it one of the largest global economies and influenced its current spatial framework. The question I ask for my thesis is: How was the post-World War II era a turning point in Japan’s economic and spatial development? I investigated various practices (events, policies, concepts) and post-World War II urban development projects in Japan, focusing on the period of high economic growth but also recent developments. I drew the following conclusion: while entities in Japan implemented economic and spatial development policies that they felt would make it modern, often following Western or nationalistic “one size fits all” spatial approaches, other entities tended to reflect back toward Japan’s typical and indigenous spatial directions in community, spontaneity, and image. This framework can be applied to other contexts of the world.
• Formerly a Stranger's House: Reflections on Shophouse Typology
  This thesis brings forth the Southeast Asian vernacular shophouse as a resilient type loaded with memory, and reads its variations over time alongside local socio-political histories as fodder to question future possibilities of an otherwise abject typology. As its name suggests, the shophouse traditionally consists of a commercial program on the ground level open to the street, and a domestic residence above. Highly sensitive to the urban life that surrounds it, in the Indonesian context it has lived multiple lives, shifting in attitudes of negotiation between the public and private. Once serving as homes as well as open points of exchange, their subjection to modernization and a series of turbulent events has transformed them into either purely commodified spaces for storage and consumption, or closed but empty containers devoid of spirit. While the shophouse has a fate which is overwhelmingly driven by its public perceptions and outside forces, the thesis, with some naivete, takes on the position of rejecting this tendency of the urban context to overpower inhabitations of the interior. As a project it proposes the possibility of reviving dead instances of the shophouse through strategic reinsertions of elements which might embody its essence as a means to generate new forms of a lost domesticity, and perhaps form reconfigurations of memory.
• Care Agency: a 10-year choreography of architectural repair
  “El mundo que queremos es uno donde quepan muchos mundos.” / “The world we want is one where many worlds fit.” -Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional “What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities.” -Ruth Wilson Gilmore Our thesis is a dispatch from a possible future. A worldwide moratorium on resource extraction sets the scene for the establishment of a Care Agency, a state-administered public platform that provides free and networked care services in Mexico City. Included in those services is the repair of the built environment.The public solicits care services through Requests For Care (RFCs), a vehicle for the expansion of authorship in spatial design. Here, ‘repair’ does not seek to restore past conditions, but adapts to future ones. It is a transformative act of care. In this future, architects are care workers, part of a team of public servants in the Care Agency. This agency recognizes ‘waste’ as an unstable and contrived category as well as a fertile resource, and through the creative labor of collaborators, seeks to re-distribute and work with the abundance present in the urban context. In our imagined roles as design fellows within the Care Agency, we develop “patchwork architecture,” a framework and methodology wherein all design is care, repair, maintenance and reuse. We share this methodology through three case study sites, each of which had been deemed ‘waste’ by a different value system and thus invite different modes of spatial care: an aging and unprofitable stadium, a topography-defying mansion spaceframe, and a sinking vacant low-rise building. Our dispatch takes form as a series of narratives weaving across time and voices, from sistered beams that share loads, to sistered networks of mutual support with indigenous roots, telling a story of collective care interventions that undo that waste.
• Extensive Welcome: Three-way Threshold at Chinatown’s Gate
  Benevolent Associations have helped Chinese immigrants settle in America for more than a century. Not only do they harness Chinese American collectivity for a voice in local governments, but they also offer classes and social services to new arrivals. Yet unlike missionaries intent on conversion, Benevolent Associations operate without the need to shed existing identities and beliefs. These Associations service immigrants' liminal state and teeter to fulfill Chinese and American expectations. In other words, Benevolent Associations see thresholds as hospitable conditions unto themselves. This thesis considers a new space for Boston's Benevolent Association through thresholds under urban, programmatic, and tectonic conditions. Straddling Chinatown's border, the structure frames and reinforces the iconic Chinatown gate. Meanwhile, by moving what is typically at the center of Chinatown to its periphery, the Association opens itself up for a reciprocal relationship between insiders and outsiders. Just as new immigrants learn English to venture beyond Chinatown, others can learn Chinese for opportunities in Chinatown. The softened border manifests as parallel walls with spaces in between. Meandering circulation punctures these walls to produce spatial depth in the oblique, which concludes at a roof garden vis-à-vis the Greenway. Conceived as CLT blanks, cross-stacked, the structure accommodates varying bays that house the Association's diverse programming. The resulting spaces push back on the open plan's promise of a melting pot - that belonging is best produced by smoothing over difference - to retain and contrast each space's character through a staccato of thresholds.
• A Cultural Approach to Conserving Water: A Case Study on the Azraq Oasis
  My dissertation aims to design a proposed solution by studying and better understanding the specific cultural related issues of water conservation. Water, a valuable element of life, has had and continues to have a significant impact on communities; culturally, socially, ecologically, politically, and on places globally. Conserving water is today’s imperative need, and can more likely be implemented with a more specific culturally thoughtful policy design to help change the societal behavior, attitude, feeling, and awareness toward the water crisis. Specifically, for this dissertation, I use the Azraq Oasis in Jordan as a case study. I define and investigate the cultural component of water scarcity and its role in implementing effective water conservation practices using Laureano’s four cultural dimensions – cognitive (knowledge), attitude, active (behavior) and effective (feeling) parameters. I accomplished this by observing daily practices of the five sub cultural groups, the Druze, Chechens, Refugees, Minority, and Bedouins residing in Azraq. These parameters were collected through surveys, quantified and statistical models were created in order to help design a better resolution for this specific population. The results indicated that the knowledge and behavior models are more significant than the attitude and feeling models. Survey results for daily practices for conserving water had variations in terms of awareness (knowledge) of water conservation. All of the five sub cultural groups display positive behavior and attitudes towards willingness to conserve water. However, the one disparity is that the refugees, as much as they agreed that water conservation is needed, disagree that it is their responsibility to conserve water, but indicated that they save water wherever they can. In sum, all five cultural groups share similar feelings about water shortage and water quality seems to be their primary concern. This dissertation makes a contribution in the water use and conservation literature and provides quantifiable data of the role of the culture on water conservation for policy designers. The policy designers can then potentially implement or learn from this dissertation in their own country to design culturally sensitive policies that would potentially help eradicate water scarcity.
• Industrious Neighborhood: A Model for Equitable Growth in the Age of Industrial Evolution
  In rapidly densifying cities with evolving economies, housing instability and labor market mismatch are fundamental socioeconomic challenges. Contemporary urban growth needs to increase housing affordability and create new means to activate the under-skilled workforce. At the confluence of these issues lie dormant lands full of potential. Light-industrial zones, serviced by robust infrastructure, have the capacity to harness emerging industries and forge new synergies for mixed-income housing and middle-skill job training. Rejuvenating derelict industrial buildings into adaptable urban models can stimulate economic growth and create a new precedent for upward mobility. By zooming in on the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, a rapidly gentrifying community surrounded by light-industrial land across the Los Angeles River and downtown L.A., this thesis challenges market-driven development through strategic urban design intervention. This proposal for the Industrious Neighborhood gives new agency to forgotten lands and offers policymakers an actionable pathway for socioeconomic growth and equitable development on prime land.
• How the West Was (Really) Won: Water and the Emergence of Los Angeles
  The outsized role of infrastructure in shaping urban landscapes is ever-present in American cities, most exaggerated in a place like Los Angeles. Desert, floodplain, dry scrublands, and mountains—LA’s menu of inhospitable terrains, once seemingly tamed by the infrastructures of the past, have undone our best efforts to control them. Southern California, currently experiencing yet another multiyear drought, is completely reliant on aging infrastructures to support the region’s unsustainable land use patterns. In Los Angeles, the development of water infrastructure and urbanization are inextricably linked. Understanding one requires an understanding of the other. Completely dependent on distant sources, Los Angeles must reimagine its relationship to water as it increasingly becomes a scarce resource. Through a critical analysis of the aridification crippling the city today, this thesis develops design strategies for new urban infrastructures which sustainably provide for local water resource management, relinquishing the city’s extractive reliance on its hinterlands.
• Building a Digital Gallery
  This project works toward building a technology platform, community, and database for designers and design enthusiasts. The subject matter is furniture, both innovative (new) designer works and iconic (vintage) classics of 20th century design. The platform seeks to engage 3D scanning, videography, and high-resolu- tion photography to challenge the current standards for viewing furniture and designed objects online today. Creating an immersive digital gallery experi- ence is a notable objective. To initiate this, a collection of iconic furniture was 3D-scanned and hosted digitally, allowing for an intimate experience of the object’s details and imperfections. To build community and trust, the project engages an editorial voice and robust historical dialogue. This includes short essays on important designers and iconic furniture pieces. It also intertwines opinion pieces and critical viewpoints within the online experience. Curation and the subject of authenticity both play crucial roles. Curation requires explicit knowledge of the relationships between varying design pieces in their date of production, material, and design ethos. Showcasing the criteria for authenticity and verifying them builds trust and value for users. Lastly, the project places considerable emphasis on researching the state-of- the-art in e-commerce, web development, advertising, visualization technol- ogies, online surveying, and 3D scanning hardware. These fields and their complex networks become interdependent for this buildout of a digital platform intended for community-use. The project works alongside the thesis trajectory of Jeremy Bilotti, SMArchS Computation & MS in Computer Science candidate, MIT. Jeremy has been a collaborator in producing much of the work contained in this dissertation.
• Atlantic: the space between two coasts
  This thesis creates a portal that connects two coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, expressed through the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Luanda. The Atlantic Ocean is both the bridge and the barrier that marries both sites, once geologically connected. The portal emerges as two paths that move from mountain to sea in a ritual that proposes gazing into the horizon and seeing the missing piece on the other side. Or rather, feeling it through longing and separation. Angola and Brazil, both former Portuguese colonies, are tied by more than a common language and colonial heritage. As two of the largest slavery ports in the 19th century, about three million people were shipped from Luanda to Rio de Janeiro. This transatlantic connection is Diasporic and immeasurable, present in their cultural weaving and their capacity of being recognized as a synecdoche for the space between two coasts.
• TEOTWAWKI: A Designer's Guide to Prepping
  Preparing, colloquially known as “prepping,” is a political act that can be read through the medium of landscape, extending from the colonization of the United States to the present. While mainstream media portrays preppers as eccentrics living in hardened architectures on the fringes of society, fully one percent of the American population identifies as preppers, and they increasingly shape our shared built environment. Preppers perform acts of landscape-making in anticipation of their particular visions of TEOTWAWKI, or "the end of the world as we know it.” In this way, prepping challenges societal reliance on just-in-time production and market security by rejecting ornamental garden culture and decorative landscape consumption in favor of productive practices of self-reliance, and future-looking present action. This thesis is delivered in two parts: first, a long-form essay that interrogates the myth of the American prepper and investigates the futures we are preparing for; and second, an illustrated guide to three prototypical prepping landscapes, or prepperscapes, sited in the northeast. These prepperscapes are works of speculative fiction that draw on canonical projects and texts across landscape architecture, survivalist blogs and other media. Through these reference materials and provocations, this thesis situates prepping in the American landscape across time and the political spectrum, and casts the designed elements of preparedness campaigns as social artifacts with a historical provenance beyond the movement’s present conservative ideological affiliation. TEOTWAWKI argues that prepping activities fall along a broader spectrum of beliefs and practices than conventionally assumed, and these activities can expand our idea of an adaptive landscape.
• Monuments of Context: New Tube for London
  Deep in the heart of Zone 4 North London, “Monuments of Context: New Tube for London” proposes a new train line for the London Underground, the Cosmopolitan line, which is comprised of three new stations: the Three Hammers, Arrandene, and Apex Corner. These three new stations radically reflect the multicultural suburban context in which they are embedded, honoring immediate local context undoing centuries of typical British imperialism and their architectural demonstrations of state power. By experimentally incrementing a popular pub, a raving roundabout, and a public park, the critical distinction between station and place is phenomenally blurred, letting Londoners alight at a sensationalized crescendo of the borough beyond the barriers. The inherent nationalistic design lineage that flows within the bloodline of the city’s existing station portfolio is dismantled in this thesis to create a new design language that appropriately reflects the city's progressive DNA.
• Making Mobility: Shifting the Urban Milieu of Oklahoma City
  Bus rapid transit is a key component of many of the world’s largest municipalities, and is at the limit of what smaller cities like Oklahoma City can realistically achieve. OKC’s development as a thriving urban center is full of unique and complex challenges which separate it from any other city in the country, and make the addition of a bus rapid transit system especially difficult. This project takes that method of public transportation, well known internationally but facing little domestic interest, due to our continued devotion to the automobile, and uses it to reshape the future urban development of Oklahoma’s capital. BRT at a system level is explored and reimagined, then used to redefine specific points of future importance for the city – sites that suggest a polycentric network of vibrant spaces.
• Labored Form: Domestic Fold
  Las Vegas is a city of duplicates; it appears at first only complicated. Buildings on The Strip duplicate neighboring buildings, implicate antecedent versions of themselves, and replicate other cities. The multiplication of duplicate forms can be explicated (unfolded) to reveal apparently similar but separately applied interests. This thesis posits the plication (the fold) as a device capable of uniting near duplicates such as the new high speed rail and existing low speed rail, the city of Las Vegas proper and unincorporated Clark County (the Strip), the service worker and the tourist, modes of transportation for the tourist and those for the resident, and high density housing with a civic building. The history of plication can be traced as both a product of domestic labor and a subject of intellectual inquiry. The lineage of the fold includes its appearance in Jacques Ozanam’s Récréations mathématiques et physiques (1694) employed as a teaching device, as a method of decorating tables with folded napkins in early contemporary cookbooks such as Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), as a topic of study disseminated through the history of home economics, and as a theoretical framework in Deleuze’s The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1988). The Las Vegas Transportation Center is a multi-plied form which employs the continuous nature of the fold to bring together the tourist and the work force, and the train station with housing, and speculates on the possibility of the discontinuous fold to choreograph their division.
• “¡Azúcar!”: Fragments from a Land of Sugar
  The sugarcane-processing factory, or central, has long played a pivotal role in Cuba’s history. For the Cuban people, the production of sugar is more than just an export commodity. Sugar, and by proxy the central—its spatial manifestation—are multifaceted cultural artifacts. Through a series of anecdotes, I tell a story from a land of sugar. I piece together this narrative from visual, textual, and oral archives. These seemingly disjointed, scattered, asynchronous, and erroneously nostalgic voices construct a manifold view of Cuba from its colonization to the present. As such, this project is an interpolation, or an oscillation of fragments of a story that remains incomplete and littered with gaps. This is a story about territory, race and ultimately catastrophe—reflecting a world that continues to be plunged into crisis. A crisis that is, as Eva Horn describes in Future as Catastrophe, “no longer an event, but a prolonged present.” But this project is also a tale of resilience, illustrating how in more ways than one, our personal geographies are inherently linked to the legacies of colonial-economic processes.
• Islands of Elegy: Dispersing the Urban Cemetery
  Islands of Elegy proposes a new kind of cemetery, one that brings death closer to us and resists the stagnation of memory. This new cemetery—the “microcemetery”— manifests as several small sanctuary spaces embedded in highly urban environments: on street corners, in plazas, etc. These spaces have the capacity to build upward rather than outward, resisting the spatial imposition of the contemporary cemetery. The dispersal of these microcemeteries across Boston creates a landscape that reflects the true metabolism of grief, a process which may never come to completion, which may linger or be lost to time, and which often permeates the everyday.
• Collected Memory
  This is a project of the present, projecting the past. Cities grow, adapt, die and resurge. Over the course of their evolution, they become possessors of juxtaposing narratives — those stemming from privileged voices against other, softer, less audible tales. What have we forgotten in the years — decades, centuries — of inhabiting these cities? Where are the sites of near-forgotten narratives or of memories willfully repressed? My thesis seeks to present the totality of a city through its paradoxical and contested histories. This project dedicates a space to remember and memorialize those subjugated narratives that linger imperceptibly along the periphery of our collective memory.