Maria (Meli) Vasquez

Neither Created Nor Destroyed

(Club Culture, Thermal Sensing, Public Space)

A Playground for Queer Club Culture, Downtown Los Angeles, California

In the pulsating urban tableau, the omnipresent embrace of heat emerges as a silent choreographer, sculpting the social and spatial narratives that define our cities. Much like a latent code, the historical residues of a locale inscribe themselves onto thermal imprints, beckoning us to reimagine the banal components of architecture as agents of subversion, erasing the chilling traces left by public performances.

An intricately woven narrative unfolds, one that unfurls through an incisive dissection of the multifaceted language of heat and its orchestrated interplay within the urban milieu. Here, an avant-garde architectural vernacular crystallizes; a language distilled from material lexicons that resonate intrinsically, birthing spaces that traverse the mundane. These spaces not only evoke an intensified state of symbiosis with our surroundings and fellow inhabitants but also unfold as sanctuaries—incubators for the kinetic poetry of dance, movement, and self-expression.

In its corporeal manifestation, heat transcends mere thermal energy, radiating into the intangible realms of experiential ontology.

Heat emerges as:

An Atmosphere: A spectral energy, it envelops the urban canvas, infusing passions, shaping encounters, and influencing identities.

A Catalyst: its elusive agency sparks connections, foments conversations, and catalyzes a communion of bodies in space, forging a new corporeal narrative.

A Material Enigma: A play of textures, densities, and hues, it emerges as a compositional medium, forging the contours of urban form and spatial narratives.

A Choreographer of Perception: heat is an intangible design element, orchestrating sensory choreographies that elicit emotional resonances, birthing transformative dialogues.

My thesis unfolds as an act of spatial reimagining, a synesthetic recalibration of both thermodynamic landscapes and queer historical echoes. It transmutes space into an intricate thermal script, where temperatures, materials, and design interventions intertwine in an evocative dance of care, efficiency, and immersion. In this odyssey, a revelation awaits—one that lays bare the profound impact of heat on spatial cognition, the ethos of inclusivity, and the cultivation of collective memory.

Render of Platforms

Render of North Entrance

Nighttime Render of Vaults

Chunk Axonometric View

Axon of Overall Site