Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Emily Ezquerro
Second Advisor
Jacqueline Shaw
Abstract
Across buildings and cities, moisture is managed, concealed, and discharged through convoluted systems of containment. Still, water ultimately resists this framework. It reveals itself as leaks, puddles, condensation—moments typically understood as technical failure. Hidden Systems reframes these conditions as architectural knowledge, one that becomes evidence of water’s material capacity, limits of infrastructure, and a record of time.
NYC is constructed on, powered by, and profiting from water. Although it hosts a robust network, seepages disrupt control, allowing systems to be traced across scales. As pipes expand, contract, and freeze, the project unfolds seasonally, moving through water’s three states: solid, liquid, and gas.
What follows proposes architecture not as a perfectly sealed object, but as a medium of constant negotiation with its environment. The interventions within the city conceive water infrastructure as design opportunities, building legibility to necessities often disregarded. They are architectural responses that embrace water’s agency.
Recommended Citation
Choi, Samuel, "Hidden Systems" (2026). Masters Theses. 1656.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1656
Creative Commons License
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