Date of Award

Spring 6-1-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Architecture (MArch)

Department

Architecture

First Advisor

German Pallares Avitia

Second Advisor

Aaron Tobey

Abstract

An essential tension in everyday life is that we spend the majority of our time inside working while we fight our own secret battles. Grief is one of the most profound shared experiences among humans, and one for which we have nearly no space in public life. Our world has often pushed grief to the realm of the religious and the private, offering temporary reprieve. But where do we go when we’re at work at 2pm, struck with the unavoidable and irregular wave of grief, at our desks on the fourth floor?

This thesis seeks to understand spaces we know as places of exchange - their volumes, textures, relational positioning - as architectural units, and develop a typology of space dedicated to grief and human connection. A place where we can go to be alone, or with another, to experience spontaneous reprieve. Learning from existing forms of spaces for 2, this thesis offers a provocation for how we can reclaim space in the buildings where we learn, work, and pass the hours alone in proximity, for grief.

In its construction, this booth for two will resemble its relatives, and will find a home within the BEB. As an unprogrammed space, only loosely defined for two, the booth will be a platform to explore ideas of rituals we perform as we grieve, how the body responds to proximity with both architectural form and with other people, and will allow space to linger in our most human moments - to be vulnerable and find solace through the volume of connection.

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