Future Ruins
Name
Studebaker-stude413-arch-MArch-2026-thesis.pdf
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41.35 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
646df1bfe87b04ea07586a91610eaf31
Author(s)
Studebaker, Christian
Advisor(s)
Modesitt, Adam
Date Issued
February 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis investigates how architecture can operate when it begins from a condition of material failure rather than from a blank site or a mandate for restoration. Taking Fort Montgomery, a partially collapsed nineteenth-century stone fortification along Lake Champlain, as its primary site of inquiry, the project treats the ruin not as a historical artifact to be preserved nor as a structure to be repaired to a previous state, but as an active condition shaped by time, erosion, and neglect. The fort exists in an unstable middle ground between architecture and landscape, where collapse, vegetation, and sediment have become integral to its spatial and material character. Rather than resisting this condition, the thesis asks how architecture might engage with decay as a generative force. The project proposes a series of architectural grafts that work alongside the fort’s ongoing deterioration, introducing new structure, program, and material logic without erasing the evidence of failure. These grafts are conceived as timber interventions that occupy, reinforce, and reinterpret the fort’s original stone geometry, reconstructing its outer wall in wood while leaving the interior volume open to the elements. This strategy produces a new spatial condition in which enclosure and exposure coexist, allowing the ruin to remain legible while supporting contemporary use. Materially, the thesis is grounded in an interest in mass timber and reclaimed wood as systems capable of accommodating change, repair, and eventual disassembly. Timber is positioned in contrast to the fort’s stone construction, not as a replacement but as a reversible and time-bound layer that acknowledges its own impermanence. Through this material juxtaposition, the project frames architecture as a cyclical practice rather than a static object, one that accepts weathering, aging, and future modification as inevitable and productive. Programmatically, the proposal refrains from prescribing a singular use, instead prioritizing spatial flexibility and openness. The large, unconditioned interior volume and two enclosed timber spaces support seasonal occupation, public gathering, and interpretive use, allowing the site to operate as both a civic landscape and an architectural intervention. In this way, the thesis challenges conventional preservation and adaptive reuse models by refusing completion as an end state. Ultimately, this thesis argues for an architectural practice that is less concerned with fixing what is broken and more invested in working with what already exists. By treating ruin as a starting point rather than a problem to solve, the project proposes a framework for architectural intervention that embraces uncertainty, material life cycles, and the slow processes of change that shape the built environment over time.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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