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Architecture Studio II: Damage Control
Damage and damage control are the terms and tools through which Design Studio II encountered and analyzed our buildings, cities, environments, and the state of our world. The eight design studios approached and explicated damage in its multiple and many forms. Together, we considered environmental damage, political damage, technical damage, reputational damage, cultural damage, informational damage, and more.
Derived from the maritime military term for emergency measures taken to avoid sinking, in its media spin version damage control describes the effort taken to stay afloat in the turbulent waters of public opinion. Fittingly, media documents, public narratives, news events, and political tensions populated and animated much of the work this semester. Yet our understanding and use of damage control substantially departed from its sly and opportunistic public relations formulation. Rather than disguise or minimize damage, our work attempted to understand, articulate, expose, and critically intervene in the myriad spaces and multiple sites of damage. We did not engage damage control as a cover up but as the opposite. Together, we researched, thought, and designed damage control as an uncovering, intervening, architectural transformation.
Our research revealed that the conditions we identified through and as damage are not alien to architecture. Nor are they alien to our environment, to our political apparatuses, to our cities, or to our museums and cultural institutions. Indeed, damage might be the most common currency and condition of our time. To set about controlling damage is to acknowledge that damage is not an aberration or an exception—it is the persistent companion to our architectural histories, futures, and imaginaries. Damage is imminent to modernity, not the accident that befalls it.
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Reactive Sober Walls
Reactive Sober Walls address the pressing issue of drug addiction within communities like Delr...
Shots Fired: Exposing the Commercialization of School Safety
In response to the alarming prevalence of school shootings, my architectural intervention serv...
For better and for worse
A two-pronged approach for affected female victims of the Unification Church’s 1982 Mass Bless...
Water Station on the Border
The build-up of surveillance technologies planted at the border has increased significantly in...
The Loop
To mitigate the environmental concerns associated with the Calrsbad Bud Lewis plant’s in...
Protect Thacker Pass
Today, there is a global lithium mining boom driven by the development of autonomous vehicles....
Dear Antoine
For three years, Antoine Yates lived with a pet tiger in his NYCHA-run Harlem apartment. After...
Garment Factory in LA Fashion District
My architectural intervention seeks to prioritize garment workers in the LA fashion district ...
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Slice of Celebration
Welcome to “Slice of Celebration” – a new attraction at Disney World that brings America’s mac...
A Building as a Digestive System
The Nevada Nuclear Test site is scarred and poisoned by decades of atomic bomb tests. ‘Useful’...
Granite mountain pageant
This proposal critiques the Mormon church’s control over epistemological authority by using a ...
Charles Manson Auction House
My proposition is an auction house that rewires the media apparatus that propagates the fandom...
The National Shrine of Catherin Cesnik
The project reimagines the Co-cathedral of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, known as B...
The Ferrari Crash Strip
The Ferrari Crash Strip is Ferrari’s new exclusive Formula 1 Testing Facility, where a series ...
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Beyond the Gate
“Beyond the Gate” questions and reimagines the stereotypical and exoticized portra...
Technocratic Empire
“The project amplifies and critiques Amazon’s monopolistic control of advanced bui...
Tensions In Stone
‘Tensions in Stone’ is a proposal situated at Columbus Circle that draws inspirati...
Kigiqtaq Indigenous Heritage Center
Situated off Alaska’s northwestern coast, the Shishmaref island community faces signific...
Shadows on Wasteland: Contemplations of Redemption and Ruin
This project began as an inquiry into addressing Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and seeking ju...
Mindscape reintegrates psychedelics into mainstream consciousness as a means of healing mental...
Establishing a Bank of New York
Public money should work for the public good, not private gain. The City of New York routinely...
Bury A Tree
With megadroughts and rising temperatures aggravated by climate change, the number of wildfire...
Playtime: A Universal Daycare for Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy’s rigid structure lends itself to a sterile, inefficient, and confusing procedure ...
Nubian Community Gardens
Nubian Community Gardens seeks to address the issue of low access to fresh produce and whole f...
Build No Trace
What once began as a gathering of twenty people on a beach in Northern California, Burning Man...
Lahaina Community Housing
In early August 2023, during Hurricane Dore and Hawaii’s hottest month a wildfire started nort...
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The Bubblegum Project
The Bubble represents a nuanced form of protest, blending elements of activism with an engagin...
Welcome to Stuytown - Tenant Welcome Package
Welcome to Stuytown! A neighbourhood with a rich history of protest: anti-segregation, anti-ev...
Digging Into Memories – Seneca Village Excavation
Seneca Village is a high decorated, working-class African American village before Central Park...
Brooklyn Rising
The Atlantic Barclays Center project, a core element of the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards develo...
Museum
The design intent is to translate the site plan of Seneca Village into a three-dimensional int...
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Landscape of extraction, Soil Remediation Project for Midway Sunset Cogeneration Facility
THE INTERVENTION ADDRESSES ECONOMIC DAMAGE THROUGH THE CREATION OF LABOR AND TRAINING AND ENVI...
SP(ECTACLE)-216
If the congressional hearing room is meant to be a spectacle, then make it a spectacle…...
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Rebuilding a Lost Community
In the 1960s, an urban renewal project used eminent domain to demolish the neighborhood of Uni...
Formalizing the In-Between
The factory compound that used to be located in Newark, New Jersey suffered an extreme fire in...
Trash Detour: Revitalizing Newark’s Pause
Newark is a crucial transportation hub with highways, the largest container port, EWR airport,...
The Port Newark Hotel
Sprawling over 3000 acres, the Port of Newark serves as one of the busiest ports in the Northe...
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Automating Commodity Culture
Automating Commodity Culture embodies the fantasy of commodity culture and the mechanism of ca...
Attica Cannabis Compensation Center
The Attica Prison Riot was a significant event in American history and prompted reflection on ...
Resilience Run - Redesigning the Boston Marathon Route
This project seeks to redesign the route of the Boston Marathon to include critical locations ...
