Seleria (Niloufar)

These images do not document ruin. They linger inside it. Ana’s memoryscapes of rupture are neither photographs nor drawings alone, but haunted surfaces where destruction becomes sedimented into memory itself. Streets collapse into dust, beams drift like forgotten sentences, and architecture appears as something trembling between disappearance and remembrance. There is a strange tenderness in the way these fragments are assembled. The torn edges, the faded textures, the ghosted layers of text and image all suggest that memory is never whole; it survives in pieces, in stains, in partial returns. What was once lived becomes blurred, reassembled through emotion, imagination, and loss. Prints on Vellum. @anafurtado150 beautiful thesis work. She graduated today with her B.Arch degree from Carnegie Mellon University. It was an honor to be her thesis advisor. @cmusoa

After two intense weeks of rigorous work, our thesis exhibition at our new Penn Ave facility became possible. Many thanks to Jeremy Ficca @jeremy_ficca , Associate Head of Fundamental Design, and my colleague Jonathan Kline for their immense support, generosity, and tireless help in bringing this exhibition to life. This year, we hosted 35 thesis projects across our B.Arch, M.Arch, MUD, and MAAD programs. It was an enormous undertaking building 19-8'x8' pin-up boards, moving them into their location, and making the marketing material, but through collective effort, care, and dedication, it came together beautifully. Many thanks as well to our guest critics: Lior Galili @ligalstuff , Peter Olshavsky @polshavsky ,Tsz Yan Ng @concretelabor and McKenzie Stupica @kenzie__stupica for their thoughtful insights, generous conversations, and engagement with the students’ work. And thank you to the many Carnegie Mellon Architecture faculty members who showed up in support of our students throughout the reviews. @cmusoa Most importantly, thank you to our students for filling the space with imagination, inquiry, rigor, and beautiful work. The exhibition would not exist without your commitment. The installation will remain up through May 9th. If you are in Pittsburgh, please stop by and experience the work. P.S. The good photographs are by @qzzz_space

Memoryscapes of Rupture: Spatializing Trauma in Post-Disaster Landscapes Through Magical Realism Beautiful thesis work by my student Ana Oliveira Furtado @anafurtado150 B.Arch '26 @cmusoa Books hold memories of rupture, as words contain space.

Terra Nova: Placemaking in the Korean Demilitarized Zone "This thesis explores the thickness between the visible surface and the invisible realm of memory in the Korean Demilitarized Zone." A fantastic thesis by my student Darin Kim @8darin3 B.Arch '26 @cmusoa I am a proud educator today.

A [Re]work in the abyss: The angel stands toward the accumulating wreckage of time. In her hands, the memory theatre of Camillo. Perched quietly at her shoulder, the owl does not look back. It stares ahead into a future already hollowed by repetition, where forgetting is a system. Between them, we stand under the shadows of a good life, while the gears of this machine world keep pushing us forward. If history is a pile of ruins, then memory is the last fragile structure resisting collapse. . . . #WalterBenjamin #GiulioCamillo #drawing #architecture #storytelling

Reworking a few of my old collages in PS and CAD. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat is a haunting novel about a man unraveling under the weight of memory, obsession, and isolation. He recounts fragmented, dreamlike experiences, especially his fixation on a mysterious woman, while drifting between reality and hallucination. The story circles around death, desire, repetition, and the feeling that life is both meaningless and inescapable. . . . #drawing #Representation ##architecture #storytelling

May 15, 2026 3:00 pm EST Join us to hear me talk about representation and narrative building and how it expands the space of imagination for critical thinking. @eaad.tec @archepisteme @cmusoa

What happened to Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall?

I’m deeply honored to be speaking as part of Archipiélagos de Alegorías, alongside thinkers and makers whose work has shaped the way I see, draw, and understand architecture. These are people I have long respected, learned from, and returned to in moments of uncertainty. What feels especially meaningful is not only the invitation but the circle it creates. In a time when architectural discourse can feel scattered, pulled toward speed, efficiency, and technological spectacle, it matters to find those who still insist on depth, on narrative, on the slow and deliberate act of drawing as a way of thinking. We need these constellations. We need to build circles of affinity, where ideas are sharpened through proximity, where we challenge and sustain one another, where imagination is taken seriously again. I’m grateful to be included in such a space. Many thanks to Lucas Hoops @conscientiousobserver ,Assistant Professor of Architecture at Tecnológico de Monterrey @eaad.tec , for organizing this timely and necessary lecture series. And my most sincere thanks to my mentor from across the waters, Daniel K. Brown @danielkbrownarchitecture , whose generosity exceeds anything I can properly name. He has shaped not only my thinking but also that of my students. It is a form of mentorship that feels increasingly rare today. Looking forward to the conversations ahead. @archepisteme @danielkbrownarchitecture @neilspiller0 @bcantl3y @bgommartin @cndsd @annigl

Dissolving Margaret Morrison into 0 and 1s. Because we are all spiraling inside a cartesian vortex in there.

Fall 2026 Elective @cmusoa Intermundium is not a conventional seminar. It is an invitation to draw as a way of thinking, to write as a way of building, and to construct worlds that have not yet emerged. In this course, we will work through fragments, fictions, and artefacts. We will begin with lectures from fabulous thinkers who use representation as a mode of critical storytelling. Then, we will craft narratives and translate them to machines of revealing that uncover hidden histories, suppressed voices, and alternative futures. Cabinets of curiosities, viewing devices, reading and writing machines, speculative theatres; each project becomes a tool to question what architecture is and what it might still become. This is a space for those willing to remain in uncertainty long enough to give it form. No templates, no formulas. Only the slow, deliberate work of imagination. Fall 2026 | Elective For students interested in drawing, storytelling, and architecture/art as a critical and poetic act.

A book is opened to be inhabited. Its pages, once inert, are prepared like a chamber. An invisible solution, like breath on cold glass, poured over fleeting words. They surrender their authority to another language; the mineral patience of time. /NA/ . . . #art #architecture #bookaholic #bookart #poemoftheday