THESIS WORK features the work emerging from the Thesis Research & Design studios and seminars. Over the course of the TRD1 & TRD2 studios, graduate students develop their individual research topics in preparation for their thesis. The intention is to establish a theoretical, historical, and intellectual framework through a diversity of representational modes such as mapping, diagramming, photo essays, writing.
This Changes Everything: ‘Designing-with” a More-Than-Human World | Matters of Concern
Instructor: Jane Hutton
Project Description:
The agenda of the first project is to gather the myriad threads of your interest and to organize them on a table together. By probing and indexing all of the seemingly divergent realms of your interest in one place, it is possible to perform a rigorous and iterative thought experiment: How do these pieces relate, connect, and generate unexpected ideas in their adjacency and overlapping? The assignment will involve library, field, and archival research (depending on your interests), assembling a preliminary bibliography and resource base, and testing various configurations of the material towards defining and refining your thesis’ matters of concern.
Composition, Non Composition
The Russian Avant Garde art movement, Suprematism facilitates a sense of curiosity for the architect. There are a series of spatial opportunities held within the movement’s floating forms and composition. Building floor plans, sections and concept diagrams were collected to draw relation between the spatial compositions found in suprematist paintings and how they could potentially manifest within architecture.
—Siobhan Allman
—Sameerah Aumjaud
Manila: External Forces within a Shifting Climate
In Manila, politics, primarily as colonialism, has informed many of the city’s development patterns. This timeline traces urban development, government responses, public opinions, and natural disasters through the city’s history in attempt to understand people’s relationships with their environment.
—Michelle Bullough
How would you like to live? In a rooftop shack 8 storeys above the street, a windowless 120 square foot room for your whole family, or a 6’x2’ bed in a cage? For many of us, we are privileged to have a choice of where and how we live. For those living below the poverty line in Hong Kong, their choices may be limited or non-existent. They have a place live, but do they have a place to call home?
—Tak Yi Leung
—Rain Mäki
Arctic Archipelago: Shifting Landscapes in a Changing Climate
An exploration of Canada’s Arctic islands at a range of scales and levels. From global relationships across the circumpolar Arctic to the scale of Northern communities, the manifestations of climate change are directly affecting ecology and culture across the Canadian Arctic islands.
—Jason McMillan
An exploration into how the preparation and consumption of bread has shaped the design of cities across time, regions, and cultures, and the ways in which architecture can address issues of sustainable agriculture and a sense of community centered around bread.
—Michelle Piotrowski
waste[d]water
Vietnam’s wastewater cycle has entered the industrial era with the introduction of heavy metal pollution and contaminants. As a result, traditional rural wastewater cycles, previously capable of functioning independently, are now irreparable and becoming obsolete with environmental degradation.
—Teresa Tran
Michelle is a MArch ('20) and HBAS ('16) graduate from Waterloo's School of Architecture. She was an author & editor with BRIDGE from 2013-2019.
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