New entry added to GSD category! My Graduate School thesis titled, “Inside-Out: An Investigation of the Assembly as an Equitable Mediator in the Wake of Climate Change Disruption.” The full entry can be accessed here, while the abstract is included below:
This thesis seeks to explore the Assembly as a viable implementor, educator and generator of adaptive climate-change strategies. Through inverting the perimeter wall model of western diplomatic architecture, introducing time as a medium of design, and questioning the antagonistic relationship of water to the built environment, this thesis proposes an approach where siloization gives way to international cooperation. These mechanisms can inform a less obscured form of diplomatic action that can be recontextualized within a global framework of mitigative action.
In a country with limited support and dwindling resources, can a building seek to leverage a country’s soft power as cultural, political and foreign capital to a complex issue? Can a platform for engagement be established with the government to institutionalize sweeping change? Will establishing an educational framework help to craft a more resilient model in the wake of an uncertain future?
In low-lying countries like Bangladesh drought, flooding, frequent cyclonic activity, and the escalating influx of people (often considered climate refugees’ ) toward larger cities like Dhaka, are becoming certain realities. Within the capital of Bangladesh, new models of public assembly can serve as exemplars in rethinking the dialectic between colonial imperial approaches, or local reactionary maladaptive practices.
Situated near the seat of Democracy in developing Bangladesh, on Louis Kahn’s National Parliament campus in Dhaka, the proposal will draw upon reciprocal motivations to establish a new model. Inside-out serves as the proving ground to consider how an architecture that is more open to the public and the environment might arm developing countries with models to address the long-term effects of climate change.