Have you read Architecture of Fear, very intresting collection of articles pretaining to cultural fear. One article in particular sparked when i read your abstract:

“Housing for the homeless, by the homless, and for the homless” by Micheal dear and Jurgen von Mahs. You should check it out if you have not already. Very intriguing abstract.   

archresearch:

It has been quite some time since I’ve posted anything, tomorrow is my deadline (!).  Here’s the abstract of the report I’m submitting.  The full version will go up shortly.

With cities in developing countries unable to cope with increased density from urban migration, many urban migrants are taking it upon themselves to build shelter and create livelihoods in informal settlements. While the city presents many economic opportunities, these informal settlements, built without government support and without legal tenure, and at the fringes of the urban landscape, force the urban migrant into a precarious existence.  Allowing the urban migrant and his family to become vulnerable to disease, crumbling and deteriorating physical infrastructure, and for many, a long battle to find permanence and legitimacy in the city.

Dharavi, an informal settlement in Mumbai, India, is threatened by erasure because it fails to be recognized as a legitimate and equal part of the city.  By creating connections to the interdependent weave of networks and systems that is Mumbai, Dharavi can become recognized and permanent, keeping its autonomous internal identity, but shedding its exterior projection as an informal part of the formal city.

Through the investigation of the current state of urbanization and the conditions that create informal settlements, examination of historical schemes for redevelopment and analysis of techniques for understanding the complex systems of urbanity, a framework for challenging the illegitimacy of informal settlements will be provoked.  This will enable an intervention that deals with connections between the informal settlement and the city, but also reaffirm forgotten connections to the urban ecology that firmly places Dharavi in the history of Mumbai.

i wish i had some easy answers for you jackie, but i don’t.

Your thesis is the ultimate test of you, it is your tendancies, beliefs, personality traits, and anything else that makes up you. It is challenging, confusing, irratating and infuriating. constant compasions are made to thesis’s, but they are never encapsulating what you want your architecture stand for or its place in its context (often these comparisons are only superficial, making them all the more offputting) its always gut-wrentching to hear your thesis is not progressing in the eyes of others. We put up a tough front in the studio, but there were time when i just wanted to throw it all out and flip over the desks.

I had a major personal road block of my own last year, in the form of my first (and only long-term) girlfriend wanting to re-establish our relationship. I am currently single now, so as you can imagine it didnt work out the second time. The whole situation during thesis felt like the last thing i needed, and the notions of anxiety of course made its way into the thesis in one form or another.

No one has this architecture/design thing firgured out (espically me), i think people (architects) find a little niche of the population who like what they do, then they exploit it, eventually to a level where they can make money at it. Architects rarly step out of there comfort zone, and you should not feel comfortable with your thesis, it should be a challenge

My only advice for for your christams critique is have a vision for the whole idea. How do all the pieces connect, at this point it is okay not to all the pieces figured out, but a vision for where it will be is vital.  and make models, lots of models

jackiebeale:

So I’ve hit this really complicated roadblock that has held me back the last few days.

Allow me to explain. I feel dizzy and out of place and weird to the world, nothing I haven’t felt before. My anxiety grasps my every thought and doesn’t allow me to think without pairing it with this dizzy feeling. Please when I wake up tomorrow, let it be gone - so I can carry on.

The next roadblock, is that I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing. I think I’m too concerned with what’s going on around me to focus on my actual thesis, which is troublesome and debilitating. I keep thinking that my building looks like someone elses, I keep thinking about the future and whether this thesis will get me anywhere, I keep being so concerned with everything that it’s holding me back. I’m at the point where I have a reasonable plan for my building, but now what? This winter critique is weird because the finality of it doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t understand what I’m supposed to bring, do, show, quality, state, anything. I just hope that I can be convincing enough to pull me through to the next section of the year with stride and confidence.