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Projects


Dissident Designers




In the complex narrative of our urban landscapes, the challenges we face often resemble a fictional battle, but here the antagonists are not characters but deeply ingrained systemic issues. Our cities are grappling with sophisticated constructs that, under the guise of progress and development, contribute to urban disparity and favor profits for a select few. These constructs manifest in various forms - intricate architectures, convoluted policies, and exclusive spaces, often operating stealthily through a web of opaque dealings and protracted legal frameworks.

The thesis is interested in novel ways architects can participate in social change, spatial policies and legal loopholes, quasi-legal built formats and re-appropriation of the contemporary city to bring “public-ness’ back to the neoliberal city. It steps away from the common linear process of participating in architecture to rethink a dynamic format of reimagining our spaces to break out of the further propagation of neoliberal spaces.
The thesis sets up a para-fiction, utilizing Manhattan as a vehicle to explore these techniques in a way to use sites such as The Vessel, The high Line and 432nd Park avenue as prototypes and metaphors for phenomena taking place in all globalized cities around the world due to privatization of space. It leverages ideas of piracy from the 1970’s, symbiotic relationships in built environments, hacking techniques, guerilla activism to be able to participate on these sites.














Projects


Dissident Designers




In the complex narrative of our urban landscapes, the challenges we face often resemble a fictional battle, but here the antagonists are not characters but deeply ingrained systemic issues. Our cities are grappling with sophisticated constructs that, under the guise of progress and development, contribute to urban disparity and favor profits for a select few. These constructs manifest in various forms - intricate architectures, convoluted policies, and exclusive spaces, often operating stealthily through a web of opaque dealings and protracted legal frameworks.

The thesis is interested in novel ways architects can participate in social change, spatial policies and legal loopholes, quasi-legal built formats and re-appropriation of the contemporary city to bring “public-ness’ back to the neoliberal city. It steps away from the common linear process of participating in architecture to rethink a dynamic format of reimagining our spaces to break out of the further propagation of neoliberal spaces.
The thesis sets up a para-fiction, utilizing Manhattan as a vehicle to explore these techniques in a way to use sites such as The Vessel, The high Line and 432nd Park avenue as prototypes and metaphors for phenomena taking place in all globalized cities around the world due to privatization of space. It leverages ideas of piracy from the 1970’s, symbiotic relationships in built environments, hacking techniques, guerilla activism to be able to participate on these sites.