Festival Kit : Reassembling Collective Time
Name
Kim-minykim07-march-arch-2026-thesis.pdf
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27.32 MB
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f20d2860221d5ed6f9a20e90045587b2
Author(s)
Kim, Minyoung
Advisor(s)
Clifford, Brandon
Date Issued
February 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis proposes a time- and space-intensive architectural prototype to rebuild the conditions of the public realm within the context of accelerated redevelopment. Large-scale development in Korea, initiated thirty-five years ago, transformed nature into a resource, work into labor, and communities into commodities. By 2026, this process has entered what this thesis calls the “Second Loop,” confronting even more profound crises. Unlike the state-led first loop, contemporary redevelopment is driven by large corporations, unfolding with greater speed and force, thereby dismantling the public realms established during the initial phase. Notably, this tabula rasa redevelopment is locally perceived not as destruction but as a “ticket to success.” Within this process, risk becomes utterly invisible. To make risk visible, this thesis acknowledges the importance of the public realm as a condition through which a collective can encounter risk together. Yet it raises a central question: how can the public realm be rebuilt amid a colossal sinking—the disappearance of things and rituals, and the massive dissolution of relationships that followed? To address this question, the thesis draws inspiration from historical precedents in which architecture functioned as a process that formed relationships and exposed risk. In these cases, construction operated as a public venue where risk was collectively encountered and negotiated through intertwined acts of making and enactment. Drawing on these precedents, this thesis proposes the Festival Kit, a modular system for “proto-rituals.” Rather than directly intervening in redevelopment, it introduces friction that challenges entrenched modes of making and enactment. Through collective building, making is realized as enactment, forming a spatial anchor. Enactment, in turn, incorporates making and forms a temporal anchor, unfolding as a festival. Through this process, the thesis asks whether architecture can become a public realm again, reopening the fundamental question of what kind of world we want to sustain together.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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