Thesis Review is a collection of conversations, statements and inquiries into the current state of thesis in academia. Thesis projects give a glimpse into the current state of the academic arena while painting a picture for the future of practice. 

Each feature will present a contemporary thesis project through the voice of those that constructed it. This week, we talk with Tony Gonzalez about his thesis, ANXIOUS HORIZON.

What is the thesis?

ANXIOUS HORIZON is a thesis which proposes a fictional Los Angeles headquarters for the technology company FACEBOOK. In doing so, the thesis investigates the relationship between the political organization of a company the office in which the company works.

Something critical about the business model of FACEBOOK is that it is, in actuality, a media company which does not produce the media that it distributes. FACEBOOK produces income by selling the attention of its users to advertisers. Another critical aspect of FACEBOOK’s monetization strategy is that it collects tremendous amounts of data about its users. This data is used to target hyper-specific demographics of people, making the advertisements that it serves especially valuable. Moreover, content on FACEBOOK is presented in a seemingly flat way: a status update from your problematic aunt can be published directly before an article in the New York Times. In actuality, a sophisticated algorithm curates the content delivered to FACEBOOK users, but the exact nature of it’s operation is copyrighted proprietary technology and therefore unknown to the public. That being the case, the political organization of the company is famous for being radically ‘flat’. That is, staff at all levels are said to be able to propose new ideas and are given equal platform for influence. It almost goes without saying that this, like the corporate cultures of so many Silicon-Valley companies, is an example of ‘Idealistic Bullshit’ which has little to do with the actual operations of the institution.

Tectonically, the thesis is an infinite landscape of identical platforms built at various scales. The platforms are in a state of either ruination or incomplete construction, it is not entirely clear.  They are in constant flux, and their amalgamation doesn’t seem to have an edge or a center. The form and material qualities are identical to that of the ‘Lack Table’, designed, manufactured, and distributed by the Swedish furniture retailer IKEA. At different scales, the tables appear to be desk-toys, chairs, tables, furniture objects, mezzanines, platforms, aedicula, buildings, or objects in an urban landscape. In addition to Lack Tables, the formal language of the thesis includes a series of ‘unstable podia’. Podia, like tables, are usually used to indicate the sacred-ness of art objects, lifting them off of the ground and, in doing so, reminding us how important they are. Some buildings are placed on podia in order to make them feel more important. That being the case, the political organization of FACEBOOK requires importnant-ness to be distributed in unstable and shifting ways. Rather than place objects on-top-of podia, ANXIOUS HORIZON features podia that poke through, straddle, and sometimes ride other platforms and objects.

What was your inspiration for the thesis?

I was trying to do with Architecture what Artie Vierkant does with sculpture and photography. Rather than propose a singular object with static qualities, Vierkant occupies the representations of his work in order to creating shifting and nested notions of reality. To me, the notion of nested and unstable notions of realities, like the nested realities of social media, is a very contemporary situation, and one that seemed important to incorporate into my own work.

How did it change over the course of the process?

In the beginning, this project was a pure investigation of architectural form and formal arrangements that felt, for lack of a better term, ‘zeitgeisty’. During the development of the project, however, Donald Trump was elected president, and the involvement of media became a larger question about how truth is constructed and disseminated by private entities. At that point, it felt silly to pursue a project that was only interested in form when the political landscape was being violently upended by the same digital media that facilitate architectural discourse. This project only scratches the surface of the relationship between Architectural form and the construction of truth, but for me it points at a possibility for further research.

What are other angles that you want to continue working on?

At this point in time, it feels like the most interesting moments in this project involve the relationship between architectural form and the socio-political forces that facilitate it’s construction. With ANXIOUS HORIZON, I studied the ways these forces play out with relation to a place of work and a singular institution. Since completing my thesis, I’ve relocated to Los Angeles, which, like every major city in California, is experiencing a hideous humanitarian crisis which has left a huge population without housing, and another population tremendously wealthy due to the inflation of the value of their homes.  

How does your thesis fit within the discipline?

ANXIOUS HORIZON fits in the discipline of Architecture by carving out space in-between the social project of architecture and the formal project of architecture. In this way, the project moves to investigate the socio-political ramifications of form, and the formal ramifications of socio-political forces. In school, I spent most of my time as an unabashed formalist, concerned only with shapes, colors, and disciplinary references that seemed interesting. Recently, though, I feel an increasingly pressing need to work on a level which engages a larger question of how power and resources are distributed to communities and what relationships those distribution have to built form.

What did you discover during the process that you did not foresee?

One unforeseen thing that I discovered during this process was the power of a physical model. Initially, the project borrowed only the geometric form of the Lack Table, as a way to make some kind of ironic nod to the dorm-room furniture that adorned the Harvard Dorm in which FACEBOOK was founded. When constructing a physical model of the project, I bought 5 Lack Tables and found that they are manufactured from Masonite that has been laminated with the graphic pattern of a wood texture. What this means is that they exist simultaneously as furniture and as representations of furniture, like some kind of unironic Artschwager piece. They are at once tables made of Masonite and representations of tables made of birch plywood. This flickering between two opposed readings was really interesting to me, and seemed to resonate with the way FACEBOOK flickers between a media company and a technology company.

Recently, though, I feel an increasingly pressing need to work on a level which engages a larger question of how power and resources are distributed to communities and what relationships those distribution have to built form.

How do you see this thesis progressing into your career?

Largely thanks to guidance from my advisor, Cyrus Penarroyo, my thesis set the groundwork for future investigation and academic study. Because of this, I’ve been able to take the research questions that I formulated by working with Cyrus and investigate them in different ways. Right now, I’m working as a designer at a large corporate firm in DTLA, and our clients are digitally-invested institutions that are working in the same space that my thesis was investigating. Because of this, I have been lucky enough to explore the way these relationships play out in practice, and I’m finding that in reality, large tech firms operate in a stranger way than I had originally thought.

What were the key moments within your thesis?

The development of the thesis can be divided into two phases.

During the initial research phase, a broad range of digital representational techniques were gathered and categorized. This phase involved the production of strange renderings of architectural models with animated components, and an attempt to produce an architectural language which had a shifting relationship with reality.

The second phase involved translating these techniques into an architectural environment. This was a much more difficult phase, and involved the search for a program and client that would allow me to investigate the types of formal questions in which I was interested. Ultimately, I looked to current events and began to see clear parallels between the operations of FACEBOOK, and my earlier formal studies.

What do you wish you would have known before thesis?

The execution of the thesis ran parallel to a brilliant course, Funny Thing, taught by Thom Moran of T+E+A+M. The course sought to incorporate physical humor into architectural arrangements using animation software. Not only did Thom’s course help me develop technical skills to animations, but the course posited a way of incorporating affective qualities into the formal arrangements of architectural elements. I think that having the technical and intellectual skill set that Thom helped build with his students would have drastically deepened the questions raised in my thesis.

What other thesis project were on your radar?

Rather than thesis projects, I was looking at Fellowship Projects produced by young faculty. Two specific projects come to mind.

The first is 48 Characters, produced by Andrew Holder at the University of Michigan in the Winter of 2011. Holder brought bricks to life by making them snuggle and wriggle like little pigs. Of interest here were the methods by which objects can take on qualities that are usually only found in subjects. Formally, the objects that Holder produced had an unstable relationship with their podia, such that some were under or inside the blocks on which they stood.

Tate’s work engages the history and discipline of architecture in a way that suggests an exciting possible future, and I wanted to participate in that movement.

The second was SOME VIEWS OF TRIUMPHAL ARCHES by my friend, mentor, and teacher James Michael Tate. Tate’s examination of architectural representation at multiple scales and through multiple modes like drawing, models, constructs, et cetera, was extremely influential in my thinking about how to represent an architecture which seemed to resist any singular reading or angle of view. Tate’s work engages the history and discipline of architecture in a way that suggests an exciting possible future, and I wanted to participate in that movement.

How did your institution help or guide you through thesis?

At the time of my study, the architectural thesis held a precarious position. I think that it probably still does. I had spoken with a number of faculty and administrators who made it clear that in their opinion, the development of a thesis is too difficult and the promise of payoff is too precarious. Many of these individuals would prefer that the discipline align itself with the sciences. Working with James Michael Tate taught me that the discipline of Architecture is a humanity, not a science, and that if we want it to remain a creative endeavor, we as students and practitioners need to defend its position. It’s no great secret that funding for the arts and the humanities is in jeopardy in the United States, and it is far easier to fund Scientific Research than it is to fund work in the humanities. Architecture has recently received the ‘STEM’ status, meaning that academic institutions will now receive federal funding associated with SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING and MATHEMATICS. While it seems like the influx of funding is a great benefit to the study of Architecture, it might mark the migration of the discipline from a Humanity to a Science. For me, this is deeply troubling, and Architecture’s differentiation from the sciences is what allows it to ask moral and ethical questions that science is not categorically capable of accessing.

What do you wish could have been different?

I wish that I would have started with research into the culture of technology companies, rather than with an exploration of formal relationships. In this way, the project could be more invested in the operations of political systems and therefore more informed by the power relations at play in a major technology company.

...would have focused more on thinking through animation, rather than drawing or still rendering. These modes of representation are relatively new to the discipline and therefore seem to have tremendous untapped potential.

If you could do this again, what would you change?

This seems to be a strange question to ask about a thesis, in that I feel that any real change in the process would have yielded a categorically different Thesis. The development of this project was a critical step forward in my own education, and the first movement in a larger body of work investigating the relationship between digital environments and cultural practices like art and architecture. If I were to repeat the project, I would likely have invested earlier in the construction of the model, such that the translation from physical to digital space could have been more deeply explored. I also likely would have focused more on thinking through animation, rather than drawing or still rendering. These modes of representation are relatively new to the discipline and therefore seem to have tremendous untapped potential. Or, at least, they are interesting right now.

What do you think the current state of Thesis is within Architecture, and how can it improve?

I think that the most valuable thing that a thesis does is develop the Project of an emerging architect. I mentioned my anxieties about the discipline’s relationship to the sciences, and I wonder about how education is funded. It’s hard to imagine a program having any kind of potential to last in an institution if it only seems to drain financial resources. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine ways to fund a non-research based thesis, as it seems difficult to monetize cultural practices and much easier to monetize scientific research that can be supported by relevant industries. It seems like the only way to preserve the thesis as a cultural institution is to provide robust funding for the arts, funding that’s not beholden to private interests that would erode the intellectual clarity of the work.