MASKING FUTURES

THESIS
MASKING FUTURES: Architectures
of Hypervisbility and Invisibility in the
Chinese Diaspora examines how architecture
participates in systems of slow violence though
bureaucracy, visibility and spatial control,
while proposing new forms of collective
care rooted in community support and
cultural continuity. Grounded in research
surrounding Rob Nixon’s theory of slow
violence, the project investigates how the built
environment gradually distributes harm
through institutional neglect, surveillance
infrastructures, and systems of bureaucratic
processing tied to China’s One-Child Policy
and transnational adoption. Orphanages,
immigration offices, suburban domestic
spaces, and adoption infrastructures are
understood not as neutral environments, but
as architectures which regulate movement,
visibility and identity over time.
In understanding the constant reminder
of “othering” which the Chinese adopted
girl lives through, the project asks how
architecture might instead support her, and
the broader immigrant community, through
networks of care, exchange and visibility on
their own terms. Deriving from a site known as
an immigrant hub in Providence, the proposal
creates a layered community infrastructure,
integrating legal advocacy spaces, cultural
gathering areas, cafes and libraries to create
a collective support environment. The project
reframes architecture not as a system for
classification and processing, but as a spatial framework for connection, interdependence,
and mutual support.
The project understands the impact of
white suburbia on the standardization of what
the “American” girl should be. It draws from the
contrast of postwar suburban architectures of
domestic control and Chinese systems layered
thresholds and collective gathering. Rather
than organizing space through rigid linear
circulation, the plan fragments the building
into interconnected volumes which bend,
rotate and unfold across the site, creating
moments of pause, overlap and exchange.
This spatial language becomes a critique
of institutional systems which prioritize
efficiency, surveillance and immediate
legibility. Instead, the project proposes
environments where identity is allowed to
exist in states of multiplicity, opacity and
continual transformation.
By shifting architecture away from
systems of bureaucratic processing and
towards collective occupation, the project
imagines the immigrant community as an
interdependent social network sustained
through shared resources, cultural memory
and mutual visibility. Spaces of food, language
exchange, childcare, education and legal
advocacy become forms of resistance against
the slow violence of displacement, assimilation
and institutional neglect. Ultimately, the project
proposes architecture as a living support
structure: one which does not demand legibility
or assimilation in order to belong, but instead
creates space for immigrant communities
to gather, preserve cultural continuity and
construct new forms of belonging together.