Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Michael Kubo
Second Advisor
Stephanie Lloyd
Abstract
What happens to architecture after it is no longer a building? In the drifting fragments of demolished courtyards, abandoned film sets, and forgotten timber joints, I trace the lingering pulse of history. Can they be stitched together to form a living encyclopedia? I began by looking at traditional Chinese architecture as living cultural archives, where ancient beliefs, living styles, religions, landscapes, typologies, and forms are represented in physical spaces. Through the principles of borrowed scenery, framed views, and sequential unfolding, natural and constructed elements turn into narrative devices. Today, these worlds scatter across construction sites and studio back-lots. In places like Hengdian, entire dynasties are built for a single camera angle, only to dissolve into heaps of temporary ruin. This project listens to those fragments. Through the lens of Spolia, I imagine them not as debris, but as syllables in a language that can still be spoken. By collecting, cataloging, and recombining these remnants, I want to construct spaces where memory reassembles. The Afterlife of Architecture asks how the past might inhabit the present in new forms, and how fragments can write a future that still know where they came from.
Recommended Citation
Fan, Shuchang, "Museum of Fragments" (2026). Masters Theses. 1657.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1657
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.