Thesis Studio 04
Contested States

& the Architecture of the in-between

Studio Leaders: Heather Mitcheltree and Mitchell Ransome

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This studio serves as an exploratory testing ground through which to reframe sites of contestation, thresholds and boundaries. Focusing primarily on the UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus, students will explore how architecture might be utilised to frame the politics of boundary conditions, spatial manifestations of memory, and socio-political narratives of identity, conflict, and the in-between.

Through the design of a museum, students will explore how contested spaces serve as a symbolic locus in which individual and collective memory, trauma, place and temporality coalesce. Within this studio, students will be encouraged to re-envisage the process of creative production – utilising uncertainty, disruption, realignment and conflict as mechanisms through which to transgress boundaries and explore identities of difference.

Architecture 2020_summer