During the second year of the Master in Advanced Architecture + Thesis Project (MAA02), students have the unique opportunity to work for a period of 1 year on an Individual Thesis Project, focused on the development of a research or pilot project based on the student’s interest, and the learnings of the first year. IAAC supports the student in selecting their Thesis Project topic in order to better orient them according to their future career interests and opportunities. Each student, according to their specific topic, is assigned one or more Thesis Advisors that follow the development of the work throughout the year.
In parallel to the development of the Individual Thesis Project, the second year of the MAA02 offers a series of seminars enhancing the theoretical, practical and computational skills of the students.
Bedrock
Prefabricated Slabs Embedding Structure and Finish Through Stress-Driven Geometry and Waste Aggregate Distribution This thesis challenges the conventional separation of structure and finish in floor systems, typically resolved through multilayer assemblies that increase thickness, material redundancy, and construction complexity. While such systems allow formal and technical flexibility, they externalize performance into discrete layers rather than … Read more
ruins reversed
a methodology integrating artificial intelligence, geometry, structure, material, and assembly
Non-Standard Circularity
A Digital Fabrication Pipeline for Upcycling Reclaimed Timber into Low Rise Vernacular housing The construction industry remains locked in a linear model of consumption that relies on virgin materials, often ignoring the structural potential of irregular reclaimed timber. “Non-standard circularity” challenges this rigidity by proposing a computational workflow that embraces material heterogeneity as a design … Read more
casting the in-between
Dynamic Casting of Functionally-Graded Geopolymers Using Urban Excavation Waste Thesis Abstract It is estimated that in the next 15 years, the world will generate over 3 billion tonnes of waste; in the European Union alone, 35% originates from the construction sector due to demolition, excavation, and dredging (“28 Incredible Statistics About Waste Generation,” 2021). These … Read more
Urban Dustprints
Urban Dustprints investigates how spontaneous vegetation reveals hidden ecological conditions within urban voids. Through field observation in La Verneda i La Pau (Barcelona), the research identifies recurring relationships between plant communities, moisture, shade, disturbance, and substrate conditions. These observations are translated into environmental filters, species profiles, and patch-based spatial rules. A computational workflow is developed … Read more
Policy to Algorithm 2.0
Between Ritual and River
Ecological Renewal of Ghats Website Link: https://aria-final.vercel.app/ Statement “While industrial and sewage pollution receive significant attention in river conservation efforts. Ritual pollution stemming from religious and cultural practices remains largely unaddressed due to its sensitive nature. But it contributes substantially to river degradation and requires culturally respectful solutions.” Sacred Sites Across every continent and culture, rivers … Read more
vo:id
atlas of vacant spaces Urban vacant land in dense, post-industrial cities remains spatially invisible: absent from open datasets despite its potential to address chronic green space deficits. This thesis “vo:id” is a pipeline detecting, classifying, and prioritizing urban voids using only globally covered open data. Combining OSM-based negative masking, vision-language model classification, and human-in-the-loop validation, … Read more
suro+
suro+ explores large-scale additive manufacturing with biomaterials by upcycling post-consumer cork stoppers into modular acoustic panels for temporary spatial applications. from post-consumer cork stoppers collected from restaurants in Barcelona, transforming a locally available waste. the stoppers are transformed and mixed with bio-based binders to form a printable composite used to fabricate modular acoustic panels through … Read more
