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As a remnant of developmental and defensive history of Budapest the wall of Pest has been covered by new buildings, which reused this existing feature as a load bearer. Changing it to a structural tool, where it was originalluy built to defend the city and its people and a tool of seperation, a barrier between what was inside and what was outside of these walls. Because multiple parts have been demolished by both the council of Budapest and private owners. Parts of the wall have disappeared over the course of it’s more than 600 years of existence. The addition of new buildings have altered it from a ‘thin’ linear structure to a changing mass in all directions. By making transects along its central axis, to better understand both the static presence of the wall where it is still present or where it might be absent, visible or invisible. As well as understanding the changeable aspects of the new developments that might be found along it. Showing that the linearity of the wall is maintained in the urban fabric. Although certain cuts have been made through this element to accommodate for utilities to be placed and new streets to be made for through fare. The majority of the wall in it’s current state is covered, but many parts are still visible or tangeable (where they are no longer visible) in private courtyards. Some parts can be found in public and semi-public parking lots. The wall now has a protected status, but its existence is however barely known to most citizens of Budapest. The goal is to bring back the memory of this element and reinstate it as a historic document which helped shape the city. By developing a strategy to bring back certain affects the wall has had during it’s lifetime which may now be gone or forgotten. Or by changing certain affects. Firstly by making interventions in two large public locations. Bringing the lost affect of the wall and it’s memory to a wide audience. Secondly small interventions can be made within the private courtyards to either elevate these locations or bring back a lost affect.

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Standing on the threshold of the past and the future, placeless places are existing in the liminal position of the present moment. Knowing that they recently lost their function and that their transformation is yet to come, these places are filled with waiting and anticipation. They are a gap in the urban fabric, in time, in one’s mind. Being out of the time and the context makes them a reflection of specific time and context. They are an integral part of the city yet estranged from its everyday use. Absence of function and definition in the space opens the possibility of discovering new experiential and spatial qualities – ones which are in constant flux and motion – flows and currents of time. If not looked for, these qualities stay invisible and unrecognized, while placeless places appear vacant and still. Architecture tends to ignore these forces and act as an imposing tool for controlling and rationalizing the space with definite forms, activities and limits. Transforming a void into a built, obsolete into efficient and neglected into cultivated, architecture remains standing in the same, distant position from its context and reality. In this thesis, architecture is used as a medium for understanding the space through uncovering and representing its invisible spatial features. It doesn’t aim at solving problems or offering solutions but rather at proposing a different perspective on wasteland spaces and architectural approach. Architecture that I wish to pursue - reveals tensions, contradictions and banalities, represents the reality and re-engages oneself with their surroundings. It understands its influence and constantly rethinks its actions and role within the society. It doesn’t reject but encompasses and sees the world as a unity to be explored, penetrating in between in order to reveal what is repressed. It raises questions, evokes attention and materializes problems. Architecture functions as an assumption, an exploration. In that sense – could we think of an architecture as an interdisciplinary medium for revealing the space? If we understand the space as a set of relations rather than only a physical manifestation, do we also accept it as a non-fixed entity and definite idea that we can’t fully control? Considering the invisible spatial features, space becomes a complex system of flows, rhythms and energies which passage of time and loss of limits establish*. Can we embrace time as a material that shapes space while conceptualizing space as a medium for the reflection of time? __________________________ * Ignasi de Sola-Morales, Terrain Vague, (Barcelona, em Territórios, Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1995), 9.

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ETERNAL HOLIDAY investigates human tendencies in referring to landscape and uses architecture as a medium to further experiment upon this relationship. The South Funen archipelago in Denmark is considered as a site of this exploration. Not only does it allow a discussion on themes such as isolation and touristification, but it also begins to engage a wider and more general phenomenon that concerns the way we consume and commodify nature and enables an existential analysis of our relationship with time and experience. Recognizing the superficial glimpse with which tourism relates to places has been the starting point of the analysis, with architecture being a tool to interrogate conditions in which our glimpse changes. The reflection paper can be seen as a repetitive trip to the islands: through the use of shorts narrations, the reader constantly changes their role and perspective towards the archipelago. The narrations mirror the development of the dissertation, as they reveal the continuous evolution of my glimpse and the serial transmutation of the roles I have been playing; at times the architect, the tourist, the travel agent or the islander. Through this artifice, the islands are constantly re-discovered, allowing the reader to tackle an aspect that until then has been ignored. In this way the islands are re-defined and thus categorized, becoming at time a place to consume, a place to evade from, a place which can never be understood or known, or a place which is not needed. This formulates the structure of the dissertation - designed as a tab - where each chapter links the narration with a reflection topic. By experiencing in first person those islands and contemplating the evolution of my emotions, I was able in fact to recognize characteristics which are implicitly present or could condition the way we look at the landscape, such as boredom, constraint or imagination. Each of these concepts is uncovered and included in the analysis, and eventually tested in a drawing, another narration or in an architectural intervention, which can be seen as the ultimate experimental manifestation of the reflection topic underlined. Each chapter ends with a walk through the intervention, which embodies the discussed questions and triggers a different way to think of tourism and of the role of the architect. The intervention in fact does not only responds to the program and function which is previously outlined, but also ends up raising more questions, undermining basic pillars of the architectural praxis. Every trip and each chapter can be read as an occasion to discuss and question the tools we have, not only in the understanding of the landscape, but also of architecture. In the final chapter, architectural conceptions of time, function, meaning and experience are questioned and re-elaborated, laying the ground for the idea of eternal holiday.

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When the approach started off as one based upon an observative eye, it eventually modified into a design through research. The city became the vessel of inspiration and the situation of the development the regulator of it all. A new urban project could not take everything into account and lead to leftover spaces. They had no contribution to Aarhus, yet. The three interventions can be found located along the river, although distant due to the urban development around it -missing one’s hold-. They are cut off by different borders varying from this blue corridor; such as highways, water barriers, train rails and even reed. Inspired by the Tibetan meaning of Khôra, the link between these three is seen as a circumambulation. Their representation gives them the aspect of modest monumentality, if not by size, than let it at least be by detail, offering a transformative beacon and a reason to dwell. The scaled-down <>, located in these hidden valleys, provide a public space where it is most certainly desirable to slow down and conceive the city and its immersive environments in a new perspective. They offer space for appreciation and highlight the authenticity of the river, while providing the user with a built public space. The involvement in the production of new sustainable materials adds this temporal dynamic character to the site. Just like the city, the intervention is always trying to reshape itself. Is the city on hold? Then the architecture also takes a break, while the interactions stay engaged. This master dissertation aims to propose new design techniques that provide people with a generous public space, while being part of the sustainable movement that is currently present. In terms of Aarhus, linking these leftover spaces back to the river, broadens its sequence in a perpendicular way. It is almost as its influence has expanded by these arms reaching out. The intervention is an element to discover the site and highlight the prominent qualities. Landmarks, you may say, that are designed in terms of direction, pace and duration. The river acts as a guide to these yet to be discovered lands. Or is it more them acting as a perceiver of the river, framing the sequence? The river has a new rival, so it seems.

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The capitalistic overkill in Bangkok creates an almost denigrating vision towards the locality of the slums in Khlong Toei. Although the sustainable self-organizing system of the community is an absolute treasure in my opinion, The Port Authorities of Thailand own property and want to commercialize the land by gentrification. However, re-using materials and searching for alternatives is what the entire world population should be doing right now. By providing the inhabitants opportunities to be free, they can create something more meaningful than their current temporary settlements. In Khlong Toei, your neighbors could become your peers, when a communal effort arises. By learning from the commons and implementing adaptive concepts in a sequence of self-sufficiency. The aim of this project is to achieve permanent ownership rights and a decentralized democracy, in order to become fully independent from the controlling authorities. This would allow circularity of knowledge, materials and services. Four selected sites each represent a different transportation network, where informal settlements seemed to occur. Designing by model-making carries the idea of enabling the community to educate themselves by experimentation, considering their experience in construction labour. The designs focus on functionality and materiality in relation to a specific location. Starting from the Protoship on the family scale, the design principles of an Earthship were combined with the Khlong Toei tradition to create a prototype of a house, that becomes a home trough building it yourself. The concept should be explored on site, with actual resources and residents. With small scale interventions on the human scale and bigger ones on the communities scale, they might provoke the PAT towards an awareness of their need to become more sustainable. Hopefully they can see the potential benefit in becoming peers to one another, looking ahead towards the future where they need to reduce their transportation emissions. An economy of sustainable interventions can be created. In an ideal world, the residents would register as a peer in the Citizens Committee in order to participate in Credit & Collect, where Khlong Toei Valuta will reward your efforts in the collective. Different designs ask for participation and job opportunities, for example a detention pond, algae raceway ponds for biofuel and food production, bamboo harvesting and overall recycling and repurposing that is open to the inspiration of the community. In order to achieve a finished practical design and construction, instead of a theoretical framework, sharing ideas with the residents is crucial. The tradition of informal settlements and incremental adaptions should continue in combination with education of recycling and constructing shelters and services with waste materials.