Theses

The thesis will put forward a critique of domestication through a close reading of selected examples of Japanese housing since 1950 which tend towards a condition to be referred to here as non-typological. These examples emerged during periods of unprecedented socio-economic rupture; when contextualised, these examples might reveal knowledge and a set of strategies crucial to open alternative possibilities for architecture and life.

This thesis argues that flexibility, antithetically, operates as an architectural tool towards the transformation of spaces that become far from being ‘free’, and instead alienate and restrict their inhabitants. In a period during which production has become a totalizing condition and has spread into the entire city, flexibility translates into a contemporary disguise covering the rigidity and stiffness of the market.

This thesis studies the ritual of pilgrimage towards Jerusalem, from the city’s formation to today. It will unfold both chronologically but also thematically, exploring the fabrication of sacred landscapes, the importance of movement in ritual, the politics of heritage and preservation, and the formation of collective memory.

This research investigates buildings as evidence for the projection of power, authority, and influence.

The thesis puts forward an interpretation of the management of domestic space through the transformation of the concept of the private within the socio-economic regime known as neoliberalism, exposing housing privatization as a public-private partnership strategy that not only established new contractual relationships, but also a change of ethos and culture.

Brazil is the territory of the encounter with “another nature”, where a continuous negotiation between exploitation and the impossibility of a complete domination generates a tension that cannot be resolved thus constantly re-emerges in the cultural, social and politico-economical milieu.