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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

A fascination with obsolescence as an inherent landscape condition lies at the core of a project that thematically focuses on fundamental scientific inquiry in reference to the Big Science. It stems from the preconceived tensions between the notions of progress versus obsolescence and progress versus accident.

The former is a result of the latent dependency of economic progress on the perpetual obsolescence of space, as is argued in the theory paper entitled Territories in Obsolescence. And the latter is a controversion that scientific progress and technocentric accident are two sides of the same coin, as the philosopher Paul Virilio argued in his University of Disaster. The theory provides a critical understanding of the scientific experiment and introduces the counter notions of accident and disaster.

The project is centred on the need to contain scientific progress architecturally inside micro-regions of concentrated knowledge production and satisfy the territorial concerns of the Big Science that—more often than not—take on an infrastructural scale. It addresses these themes in Trieste—a territory of contested history and sovereignty once envisioned as the city of science and knowledge.

The project concerns the conception and the design of Anatoli Bugorski Independent Research Institute for Scientific Failures which inhabits a post-industrial landscape of the former cement quarries that allow for sustaining such an institution. That is both materially and conceptually by providing the underground territory for experimentation and the primary structural material. The project speculates reversing re-naturalisation processes and excavating the underground spaces by employing the room and pillar dogmatic mining method superimposed upon the critically unstable conditions of the Karstic terrain. Here, the notions of accident and disaster materialise within the post-industrial landscape.

This project focuses on the hinterland of Trieste, the Classic Karst plateau. It tries to rethink landscape maintenance approaches, seeking alternatives to aforestation that appreciate the three millennia long landscape identity of the karst as consisting of semi-natural dry grasslands. With advanced technological developments traditional techniques are revisited and improved, to alter and revitalise the territory, resulting in a more sustainable karst environment.

The world around us is developing constantly. In terms of architecture and urban development, China is unprecedented. In a way, the sheer speed and volume of construction is a phenomenon, becoming characteristic for Chinese developments. Like all matter, this in itself is neither necessarily positive of negative. However, such dialogue becomes relevant when interest of parties differ. Arguments can be made for it being a necessity economically, socially, politically. At the same time, it can be perceived as destructive. This becomes especially apparent in the face of the heterogeneity of border conditions.
An exploration of exactly this juxtaposition is the base of the thesis, wherein architecture plays a particular role. Architecture is not merely a collection of built production within context of the urban environment, it is also intrinsically interwoven with the individual and how it is perceived in value. In such way, architecture as its object, while its widely recognized in form as a building, is a mediator in defining life in its cultural-historical, socio-economical, political values. In perceiving architecture not merely as an object, we can explore and understand the values of the existing urban fabric. This understanding is essential for future developments. Proceeding the urban expansion, in this sense, can also mean the continuity of history. It is all a matter of perspectives.
To write about this juxtaposition, the scope has to be defined. Topics such as the heterogeneity of border conditions, the political influence, destructive urbanism and the cultural-historical context are far too large to address in the thesis. As such, the focal point of the thesis is not about the tension of politcal dissonance around border conditions, rather it is about the issues or chances of rapid and overwhelming planned urban developments, mainly the aforementioned phenomenon in regards of the existing urban fabric. However, the notion of politics is inevitable and should be touched upon, as it is an aspect playing an important role and evidently can not be taken out of the dialogue. This aspect is viewed not to create friction, but as an actor that is providing the urban context. Furthermore, it is about understanding and defining the border conditions on the specifically chosen site. The project is situated on the border of China and Hong Kong, therefore is in need for emphasis and understanding on the socio-cultural aspect. The context will be divided in themes of past, present and future perspectives. Additionally, it is not merely looking to what is, but rather, what can
become. When a region is threatend to become absorbed by the larger development surrounding it, what are the values of such place? What are the necessities of maintaining these? These are the themes that play an imminent role as the border condition of China and Hong Kong.
The border is endowed in a duality. It is, in times, non-physical, yet present. It reflects exclusiveness, yet is universal. It is between inside and outside. In this way, the thesis will take the phenomenon of the Chinese development as an inevitable and take the position in favour of co-existence, rather than restrictiveness. In a way, it is easier to resist something that cannot be grasped, yet having an open approach is encouraged for the sake of new perspectives, activities and understanding. The thesis therefore, is not trying to be a ‘toolbox’ for urban developments or architectural design.
The thesis, as a base, and the design intervention try to explore and transcend the political aspect of development and uncover the values of a region that is prone to losing its identity and characteristic. A step further, in the relation of Hong Kong and China, the border conditions where the two regions collide, create an intricate dynamic in which co-existence is the norm and an integral part of the area. Frankly, this dynamic is not one politically, rather it is socio-economic and cultural-historical. This dynamic itself is ultimately a notion that transcends the border itself. It is one that creates the communal and one that is embraced.

This project is grounded in notions of fragmentation, camouflaging, invisibility, idiosyncracies, and oddities in infrastructures.

Understanding infrastructures as one of a number and reproducible elsewhere in the territory gives way to understanding my project as an addition to the distributed, dispersed, and fragmented characterization of the so-called „unrealized infrastructures“ in the FVG region in Italy.

With this project, i would like not only to emphasize the importance of the current Hydrogen economy in the Solkan area but especially, to show a possibility of implementation in an architectural context.

The research and project evolved from the analysis of nomadic patterns of mobile groups original to the Almaty region of Kazakhstan prior to Soviet rule, which was then led to an investigation of nomadic metaphysics. The conclusion of this analysis suggests that aspects of mobility such as ephemerality and informality – long deemed as pathological threats to modern society– now need reconsideration and reinsertion within the sedentarist organization of our society and its physical spaces. In doing so, the needs of marginal mobile groups are acknowledged. This awareness guides the development of the project into the production of nomadic spaces up to the level of building design, guided by Deleuze’s theory of folds, proposing the replacement of alienating experiences of separate spaces by one where new spatial and social organizations introduce deeper levels of relation and interchange.

Barakholka, one of the largest bazaars in Central Asia, is
in the collision between tradition and modernity. Guided by actor-network theory, the project's research reveals the heterogeneity of activity networks in bazaars and the importance of logistics networks and infrastructure for trade activities. The project is about designing an inclusive space, a space of negotiation where heterogeneous entities and activity networks can coexist.

Our contemporary world is filled with sensors, from weather stations to infrasound facilities and seismic monitoring stations. These sensors constitute a specific spatial and architectural reality in the Critical Zone and introduce the idea of the territory as a sensing device. The Critical Zone is a thin layer of several hundred meters thick above and below the surface of our planet in which human activity has a significant impact on earth’s geology and ecosystems. This generates the program of the project; A Critical Zone Sensor. The project aims to integrate the multiple disciplines of Critical Zone Science such as geology, hydrology and ecology and distribute its sensing devices in one project to understand the critical zone as one heterogeneous and complex system. The chosen site is Almaty’s most Critical Zone. The site is characterized by natural hazards such as earthquakes, landslides and mudflows. The project aims to have little implication on the Critical Zone, responds to the natural hazards with its flexible legs and suspend its sensing devices in the canyon. With its energy intensive program, the project aims to be self sufficient and work with a performative shell inspired by biomimicry. This shell is developed through several philosophical concepts such as Duchamp’s Bachelor Machines, Deleuze & Guattari’s Desiring machines and the Body without Organs. This results in a folded shell with encapsulated humans which are connected to the environment through sensing spikes. The project speculates on an intimate relationship between the human body and technology where what is sensed on the outside is perceived in a bodily experience on the inside. The project is made for the sensor and treats the human as a guest resulting in a continuous spatial complexity and a intimate habitation of squeezing, folding and crawling. The shell is 3D printed with a magnesium based composite and together with the cavities on the shell, the porous and highly corrosive material generates a symbiosis between the project and the Critical Zone.