GHASSAN ALSERAYHI
MSc. Arch, M. Arch, B. Arch, Assoc. SCE
ARCHITECT + EDUCATOR + RESEARCHER
This first-year design studio examined how postwar research-university models of architectural education are translated within a Saudi institutional context shaped by petro-funded expansion and digitally mediated design cultures. Rather than treating foundational training as neutral skill acquisition, the studio positioned pedagogy itself as an epistemic problem: what counts as architectural knowledge, and where does judgment occur?
The brief was structured through four trajectories—Memory Machine, The Craft Scaffold, Weaving the Commons, and Echoes of the Hand—each establishing a distinct register of inquiry. Memory Machine foregrounded temporality, allowing suspension, accumulation, and drift to generate decisions through duration and adjustment. The Craft Scaffold foregrounded procedural labor and material resistance, where fatigue, repair, and substitution reorganized authorship and judgment. Weaving the Commons foregrounded collectivity, framing alignment, tolerance, and calibration as shared epistemic conditions rather than individual tasks. Echoes of the Hand foregrounded embodiment, treating pressure, gesture, and deformation as sources of inspectable knowledge.
Across these trajectories, full-scale making functioned not as execution of prefigured designs, but as the primary site where architectural reasoning emerged through consequence—sagging, fracture, tension, residue, and use. The studio operated within inherited institutional structures while recalibrating where authority is located: shifting from procedural completion toward materially situated judgment.
The resulting body of work reveals both friction and possibility within translated pedagogical models, demonstrating how architectural education can remain institutionally legible while expanding what counts as rigor.
The Graduation Thesis Studio brought together eight final-year students to develop independent architectural projects grounded in research, context, and critical inquiry. The studio brief positioned architecture as both a spatial and cultural practice, requiring each student to define a clear problem before proposing formal solutions. Students began by identifying a social, environmental, or urban condition relevant to contemporary Saudi contexts. Site was treated as more than location—it was analyzed as a layered historical and spatial document. Program was framed not simply as a list of functions, but as a set of relationships shaped by users, institutions, and public life.
Over the semester, projects evolved through research documentation, conceptual diagrams, iterative modeling, and technical development. Emphasis was placed on coherence between narrative, spatial organization, structure, and representation. Each proposal demonstrates a distinct position, reflecting the student’s ability to synthesize research with architectural decision-making. The studio culminated in a comprehensive design presentation and public review, showcasing projects that engage architecture as both built form and critical proposition.