Thesis: Kimberly Shoemaker

Architecture of Counter Surveillance: Disorientation, Interventions, and Escape in a Filtered Reality

This thesis investigates the role of architecture in surveillance methods and surveillance’s impact on how people interact with their built environment. There is a new form of human agency resulting from constant surveillance that calls for a new architecture intervention. By working from existing conditions in an urban setting, this project aims to create a physical breach within the invisible network that has established a new standard of “eyes on the street” in this digital age. Providing a space of escape, the architecture program as a digital sanatorium creates tension with the iconicity and exposure of Hudson Yards, New York City. This new architecture emerges by focusing around dichotomies of manipulation/disorientation, candid/filtered, dumb/smart, and complicit/resistance. The main questions in focus manifest in the category of Filtered Realities: What layers of personal space are stripped away due to surveillance and control? And Candid Escapes: How can a new architecture intervention interrupt agency in a surveillance state?