"I've been on a diet for a few months, controlling the calories intake, and walking up and down the stairs. I try to workout regularly and I get tired and get lazy"
- Congyu Dong, A postdoc at CSAIL
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Amanda Adaku Ugorji - MArch ‘24
“The architecture police in our head are the perceived and real manifestations of the capitalist, heteronormative patriarchy that lives inside of us. The architecture police in my head value certain things, and regulate you before the police come.
Some signals we can use to recognize when they are on patrol are when we are feeling a sense of unwarranted urgency, a need to create quantity over quality, or discount the work we do that doesn’t immediately lead to concrete products.
The architecture police in our head feel threatened by: self-reflection, thinking without producing, slowing down, resting intersectionality, co-authorship, accepting many right answers, a lack of interest in maintaining authority, deprioritizing work, old ideas, and challenging the power structures that govern our daily lives.”
Amanda’s Instagram: @amandaugorji
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Gabriel Ildefonso Andrade - MArch ‘25
“I am a 6’2” Ecuadorian man. I weigh 225 pounds. I got my hair and beard done from Vasquez. I still listen to Bad Bunny, but I would no longer die for him. I would like to be a designer in architecture and interior because design feels like an actual engagement of making things a little better.
I make very good ceviche. If you want some very good ceviche from me, I will cook for you. My mind is made up of all the fragments of people around me and they make me happy. 🤙”
Gabriel’s Instagram: @g.ildefonso.ca
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Zoey (Ziyuan) Zhu - SMArchS ‘22
“Since I moved to San Francisco after graduating from MIT, I have made a lot of friends and colleagues in the design, music, and engineering industries. I find people here to be very friendly and welcoming in general. I have also been involved in many more outdoor activities around the Bay Area, such as hiking and taking a ferry to explore other neighborhoods.
I enjoy working as part of a team in a corporate setting since, in a team project, everybody shares the same goal and brings out the best in themselves.
Part of my experience at MIT involved dealing with the COVID shutdown. However, even in the midst of that isolating time, I met many friends who shared the ups and downs with me. I used to go for a run along the Charles River quite often, which is something I miss about Boston.
The reason why my hair color is always changing is that I am just trying to find the right color for me. I have been bleaching it until I find a favorite color, but I haven’t found one yet.”
Zoey’s Instagram: @zhu.ziyuan
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Ray Wang - SMArchS ‘25
“I used to draw a lot when I was in the military in Taiwan. We couldn’t bring any cell phones in the military camp but only pocket notebooks. Most people wrote diaries. I drew everything in my small sketchbook–from the dormitory room, phone booths where people would call their girlfriends, during training sessions, the night watch, and the shower room, to people sharing rain ponchos on a rainy day. My colleagues were really into my drawings. In the end, I published the drawings and sold around 300 copies.”
Ray’s website: /
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Emily Liu - BSAD ‘24
“Being an undergraduate student at the MIT architecture department feels special. Oftentimes, I find the people around me to be supportive as we are going through the same things and can relate to each other. Unlike other communities I have seen at MIT, here, I am exposed to a variety of methods of seeing and communicating through design which is what I have learned the most.
Recently, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of time and space, and how each person operates in their own unique time, space, and pace. I want to challenge the linear notion of time where we’re always rushing to the next meeting or task. Instead, we should have an agency on what we do, we are going for.”
Emily’s Instagram: @lyjemilyia
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S M Kaikobad - SMArchS ‘25
“We need to know how much we should balance. People at MIT are generally ambitious and hardworking and not good at balancing things out. It doesn’t have to be only about pushing.
Currently, I have an assistant professorship and run a design firm in my home country Bangladesh. After graduating, I would like to dedicate my practice working for underrepresented groups and things, like making schools and opening a center for material circularity. Buildings should talk about context, when designing, we design walls, we design the space but often missing the context behind. Design should be in synchronism with the people, the place, and the culture associated with them.”
Kaiko’s Instagram: shoho.sthapon
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Dila Ozberkman - BSAD & BSP ‘25
“I live in a frat building near the Charles River, and people in my frat have started bringing puzzle sets and everyone contributes to it. Right now, I am solving puzzle pieces and taking a break from the lab. I enjoy doing trivial things like this that wouldn’t require much brain power. Like I am just solving these pieces by the similarity of colors and matching them together.
I am from Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and I am Turkish. You might think that I would be good at swimming, but we just float around. I like the beach, the sand, but necessarily the water. As undergrads, we are supposed to pass the swimming test to graduate, but I just didn’t do it.
How did I end up studying architecture? I used to draw and paint a lot, and also enjoyed doing technical things. Cyprus has a lot of interesting architecture, so I grew up surrounded by a lot of good architecture.”
Dila’s Instagram: @cypriot_art
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Shah Paul - MIT Archshops Project Technician / All around nice guy
“I started working at the Archshops (RPL) in 2017. When I am not around RPL, I enjoy spending my time on knife sharpening and fixing my bike.
My love for and how bikes function goes back to my childhood when lack of money led to me needing to figure out how to keep things going on my own. I think now, it’s relaxing for me, like bringing me back to a time in my life where the stresses of the world weren’t really a thing yet and the most important concern of mine was to figure out how to fix whatever problem was wrong with my bike. I think we could all help ourselves out a lot by finding ways to step away from whatever is going on and to just remember when the simplest of problems seemed insurmountable, there was still a solution and you just need to find it.
I got into knife sharpening from straight razor honing. Rubbing a piece of sharpened steel against your face can really reveal a lot about different abrasives and their interactions with the steel. Every natural stone leaves a different imprint on the steel. I love playing with different steels and different stones and seeing what ways they’ll interact with each other.”
Shah’s Instagram: @mynameisshah
Archshops website: https://archshops.mit.edu/
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Demi Fang - SMBT ’20, SM CSE ’24, PhD BT ‘24
“My mom was a violin teacher, so I started playing the violin when I was very young even before I started talking. I remember when I started first grade, I came back home one day so surprised and told my mom “Mom! Did you know? Not everyone plays two instruments!” I thought it was something people normally did everyday: eat, sleep, and play violin and piano.
The music training I had throughout my life made me think a lot about the distinction and relationship between technique and expressivity. Growing up, my older brother (who also played the violin) was always a little bit better in technique, and I was always a little better with expressivity. Of course, both are very important, and are closely related. To me this relationship is very analogous to engineering and architectural design; I think my music experience helped me particularly appreciate this interdisciplinarity, since the relationship between the two is integral to successful outcomes in design.”
Demi’s Instagram: @demi.fang
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Ous Abou Ras - MArch ‘23
“Thesis was definitely the highlight of my MArch experience. You never truly finish it. It is the time to explore what you want, read the papers you were scared to read before, and make a position of, for instance, how a specific thing should be designed. In my case, it was an exploration of solar architecture and repurposing solar technology as architectural elements in the urban environment instead of hiding it away.
I also explored this concept through the ‘Harness the Heat’ project with my friends Latifa, Jules, and Angela at DesignX. It was about designing cooled or heated benches in the outdoor spaces using wasted energy such as sunlight hitting the asphalt streets or steam leaks in NYC that can go up to 200 Celsius. Right now, people just place the cones around leaks to block and hide them away. But there is a potential to bring forth these hidden elements. We wanted to see what happens if we capture that energy and transfer the temperature for heating or cooling certain surface areas outdoors through the seatings that are also like art installations, essentially to improve the outdoor thermal comfort.”
Ous’ Instagram: @aws_some
Harness the Heat website: /
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Boshra Moossavi - SMArchS AKPIA ‘23
“I like how the seasons are distinctive in Boston, how summer is very hot, and winter is cold and snowy, as it should be. The four seasons here remind me of Tehran. Warmer summer days in Boston now match the temperature of summers in Iran, bringing me back to my childhood. The transitions between the seasons gave me something to always look forward to as a child.
Starting this Fall, I will be moving to California and starting my PhD in Architecture (History, Theory, and Society) at University of California Berkeley.”
Boshra’s Instagram: @boshramsv
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