Wrinkles

Artefacts and Film; M.Arch thesis at MIT, 2022
Drawing acquired by MIT Museum as permanent collection

This is a multimedia research about the aging of architecture. A building is never a static object but a living being that grows and ages - a building exchanges care. Rooted in a standard residential building in the center of Mexico City - one with 70 years of history being born, lived, earthquake-destructed, abandoned, repaired, and cared for - this project investigates the correlation between the life cycle of a building and its inhabitants. Working closely with the local community, this project borrows the camera as a spatial tool to experiment with 3D scanning, filmmaking, data processing and robotic printing. From matters to actions, between destruction and survival, an alternative literacy is composed that breaks the binary of before/after in architecture design. Disentangling gender and labor structure, it foregrounds maintenance not as an afterthought, but as a generative, political force in the life cycle of architecture.

“This building is not just composed of 16 floor slabs and 40 walls. But rather, 160,000 broom strokes, 24,000 wipes, 1,000 hammering, 20 pipe replacements.”

view the film here

Special thanks to dear Lila from Mexico City; my advisor William O’Brien Jr. and my readers, Jeffrey Landman, Rosalyne Shieh, and Anne Whiston Spirn