Thesis: Danny Ortega

This thesis explores how new platforms for imaging redefine architecture’s role in achieving alternative modes of critical thinking. Through recent history, architecture’s role has historically been defined through the act of drawing. But with recent advancements with real-time digital technologies, we must take time to consider architecture that expands upon and makes use of simulation, animation, automation, synchronization, and other visualization technologies. By considering new acts of critical thinking through these technologies, designers must investigate their agency regarding autonomy, commodification, and audience within their respective medium, much like drawing has been used in the past.

In this instance, this thesis explores the avenue of creating software. This software then aims to be a decentralized and community funded platform that acts as a generative tool for users to create and collaborate architectural experiences within Philadelphia’s Callowhill/Chinatown community all while using mixed reality and one’s phone. Through simple steps guided through one’s device, one can easily engage in the conversation set in place in their respective neighborhood and experience a new form of architectural exhibition that is no longer centered around a white-room gallery.

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