Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Emily Wissemann Ezquerro
Second Advisor
Debbie Chen
Abstract
The Impossibility of Existing challenges the prevailing cycle of demolition and new construction in the building industry, which contributes to an alarming 40% of total global solid waste, about 90% of which comes from demolition alone. This waste is due to perceived irrelevance of architectural style and spatial utility, rather than material degradation. In other words, buildings are often destroyed not because they fail functionally, but because they no longer conform to current aesthetic or cultural norms. For example, natural stone is useful and stable for one hundred years or more, but the speed of modern kitchen trends sees homeowners changing their countertops roughly every ten to fifteen years. The Impossibility of Existing suggests an alternative approach to existing conditions, rethinking the lifecycle of architecture through a process of spatial recomposition. Rather than erasing the past, this practice embraces it by salvaging and repurposing materials from existing structures. Central to this concept is the development of a new type of prefabricated panel system made from chunks of existing buildings. These panels hold the possibility of limitless reconfigurations, producing architecture that can truly be a generational design practice. By integrating fragments into new configurations, this methodology offers a sustainable and culturally sensitive alternative to demolition, reimagining space not as an endpoint but as a continuum of layered histories. The Impossibility of Existing ultimately advocates for an architecture that resists obsolescence, not by denying change, but by absorbing and reshaping it through the material legacies of the built environment.
Recommended Citation
Hesse, Emily, "The (Im)possibility of Existing (Conditions)" (2025). Masters Theses. 1450.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1450
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