D O [ N A T I O N ]


In collaboration with Isabella Calidonio Stechmann

Course // B.ARCH Thesis
Advisors // Greg Corso, Daniele Profeta, Kyle Miller
Year // Fall 2019 & Spring 2020

DO[NATION] speculates the future of cities and architecture by critiquing the exasperating rate of overconsumption and overproduction of everyday objects in the world. It imagines the start of a community that counteracts the single-use of objects and their frivolous discard once they have been exhausted of their utility value. The thesis explores a new form of engagement with domestic waste through the lens of communal living, collaborative conservation, and conscious (deliberative) consumption and resue.

Excess, Collection, Reuse and Intentional Communities are themes that this project utilizes in making donated domestic waste seem desirable for usage again. Investigating the donation center model through these lenses, the results culminated in viewing the donation center as an intentional community based on a system of logistics that deals with excess through collections and encourages the reuse of donated goods.

This project begins with donated domestic goods entering a speculative system of logistics that performs defined domestic cleaning practices such as laundry, stitching, polishing etc. This determined set of logistics aims at the optimal improvement of the donated domestic objects. It sorts the domestic objects into three categories: Usable, Reparable and Irreparable.

The logistics of flows and networks act as the literal and figurative infrastructures of the community. It is physically embodied by a machine. The machine works as a function, it inputs donated objects that can come from the centers or the same community, and outputs domestic spaces.

This project was awarded a Citation in Excellence in Thesis Design in 2020

You may also read about it at Archinect Magazine and Suckerpunch