Kristy Balliet +
Marcelyn Gow

Undergraduate Thesis is the culmination of the five-year B.Arch curriculum at SCI-Arc. Etymologically the word thesis is connected to the placing of an idea. Undergraduate Thesis at SCI-Arc leverages this act of placing knowledge through the design of highly resolved works of architecture, both technically and conceptually. The thesis manifests the cumulative knowledge students have acquired throughout their education and acts as a point of trajectory into their professional careers.

Undergraduate Thesis is a collective conversation, formed by multiple voices and a plurality of thoughts about what architecture can do in the world. It is characterized by architectural acts of creativity, empowering students to imagine the spaces and environments of tomorrow. This year’s Undergraduate Thesis projects invite us to consider: a coalescence between geological and architectural features to produce spaces of performance; precise acts of material reclamation that create new architectural identities; the role of multiple grounds and histories in defining spaces of community and gathering; and architectures that celebrate entanglements between the technological, the infrastructural, and the environmental.

We would like to thank the thesis students; Thesis Coordinator Maxi Spina; Design Advisors Mira Henry, Karel Klein, Peter Testa, and Russell Thomsen; and History + Theory advisor Erik Ghenoiu for contributing to the collective intelligence that is thesis. We would also like to thank Assistant Teacher Orin ToratiShelley Luo, and Teaching Assistants Matias Muñoz-Rodriguez and Nathaniel Smith Nehal Patel and Caroline Hayes for their generosity and continuous support for this year’s thesis class.

Returning to the idea of placing and the placing of ideas, each thesis project takes its place in the architectural conversation the moment it is shared with a community, so the presentation of the thesis is not a conclusion but rather a beginning toward designing our collective futures.