Content area

Abstract

This thesis examines incompleteness as a method for engaging with urban complexity. It unfolds across three distinct yet connected sites: the Brooklyn Marine Terminal, a reimagined urban block, and the district surrounding Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. Each project uses design to hold space for change rather than closure. The aim is to work with temporal cycles, shifting programs, and collective occupation without resolving them into static form.

In each context, the design approach draws from embedded systems such as infrastructural networks, local hydrology, and historical land use to establish a scaffold for evolving urban life. At Brooklyn Marine Terminal, the project responds to flood zones and logistical rhythms by layering infrastructural and public systems. In the urban block study, spatial frameworks allow for both vertical density and communal gathering. The Estadio Azteca proposal hybridizes water memory, stadium events, and informal economies through modular towers and a connective spine.

Architectural decisions are structured around open-ended frameworks: dual-program towers, porous edges, adaptive envelopes, and solar-responsive geometries. These elements are designed to evolve with their surroundings over time, creating conditions for cohabitation, maintenance, and iteration.

The research also reflects on deeper questions about form and politics. Thinkers such as Cedric Price, Richard Sennett, and Keller Easterling inform a critical lens through which openness, boundary, and control are reconsidered. The thesis does not seek to dissolve structure entirely; it explores how partial forms, strategic constraints, and unfinished conditions might support more flexible, inclusive, and ecologically responsive urban environments. In this way, design becomes less about projecting certainty and more about sustaining the capacity for ongoing transformation.

Details

1010268
Business indexing term
Title
Incomplete by Design
Number of pages
43
Publication year
2025
Degree date
2025
School code
1384
Source
MAI 87/4(E), Masters Abstracts International
ISBN
9798297641754
University/institution
Pratt Institute
Department
Architecture and Urban Design
University location
United States -- New York
Degree
M.S.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
32239963
ProQuest document ID
3262047922
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/incomplete-design/docview/3262047922/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Database
ProQuest One Academic