Hidden Systems
Graduate Thesis, Rhode Island School of Design
AIA Graduate Medal for Academic Excellence, 2026
Graduate Architecture Thesis Award, 2026
Advisor: Emily Ezquerro
Secondary Advisor: Jacqueline Shaw
Across buildings and cities, moisture is managed, concealed, and discharged through convoluted systems of containment. Still, water ultimately resists this framework. It reveals itself as leaks, puddles, condensation—moments typically understood as technical failure. Hidden Systems reframes these conditions as architectural knowledge, one that becomes evidence of water’s material capacity, limits of infrastructure, and a record of time.
NYC is constructed on, powered by, and profiting from water. Although it hosts a robust network, seepages disrupt control, allowing systems to be traced across scales. As pipes expand, contract, and freeze, the project unfolds seasonally, moving through water’s three states: solid, liquid, and gas.
The proposed interventions and built forms are not necessarily intended to solve an entire problem. However, each becomes a tactic to think about water and the excess across all scales. As we design with architectural tools, learning from infrastructure, “building with water” becomes not just a metaphor but an active mode of thinking, an ethos, a response. Bringing forth legibility to necessities often disregarded, architecture could embrace water’s agency in all states and scales.
AIA Graduate Medal for Academic Excellence, 2026
Graduate Architecture Thesis Award, 2026
Advisor: Emily Ezquerro
Secondary Advisor: Jacqueline Shaw
Across buildings and cities, moisture is managed, concealed, and discharged through convoluted systems of containment. Still, water ultimately resists this framework. It reveals itself as leaks, puddles, condensation—moments typically understood as technical failure. Hidden Systems reframes these conditions as architectural knowledge, one that becomes evidence of water’s material capacity, limits of infrastructure, and a record of time.
NYC is constructed on, powered by, and profiting from water. Although it hosts a robust network, seepages disrupt control, allowing systems to be traced across scales. As pipes expand, contract, and freeze, the project unfolds seasonally, moving through water’s three states: solid, liquid, and gas.
The proposed interventions and built forms are not necessarily intended to solve an entire problem. However, each becomes a tactic to think about water and the excess across all scales. As we design with architectural tools, learning from infrastructure, “building with water” becomes not just a metaphor but an active mode of thinking, an ethos, a response. Bringing forth legibility to necessities often disregarded, architecture could embrace water’s agency in all states and scales.
2025-2026
Building with Water
Index of Nodes:
Images from the RISD Picture Collection
The node is a point where engagement occurs, a component within the larger system where the legibility of water becomes more apparent. It is a moment within the infrastructural network where water is no longer concealed behind technical systems but begins to reveal itself through various signs: flow, pressure, condensation, leakage, sound, and accumulation. What we typically understand as hidden begins to turn into something spatially and experientially present.
As such, the node becomes significant for not only its technical function, but also its capacity to operate as an interface between users and larger environmental systems. It exists as a threshold where architecture and infrastructure can overlap, allowing water to be understood as more than just a resource to be transported efficiently.
As such, the node becomes significant for not only its technical function, but also its capacity to operate as an interface between users and larger environmental systems. It exists as a threshold where architecture and infrastructure can overlap, allowing water to be understood as more than just a resource to be transported efficiently.
Artifact 01:
Con Edison
Steam Stacks
Con Edison
Steam Stacks
Smaller
Excess of Gas:
Warming Station
Excess of Gas:
Warming Station
The Con Edison steam stacks have become a symbol of New York City. But beyond its seussical appearance, the stacks are tools that protect the roadways of NYC, redirecting leakages of steam away from the viewport of drivers and pedestrians.
With this excess of gas (steam), what is proposed is a Warming Station. The double-skinned wall harnesses steam, providing warmth to the public during the harsh winters. With its soft construction, the Warming Station itself also becomes a participatory character that interacts with the steam. Dancing and playing with the heat and pressure being released, the design intent is to stay easily assembled and deployed.
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With this excess of gas (steam), what is proposed is a Warming Station. The double-skinned wall harnesses steam, providing warmth to the public during the harsh winters. With its soft construction, the Warming Station itself also becomes a participatory character that interacts with the steam. Dancing and playing with the heat and pressure being released, the design intent is to stay easily assembled and deployed.
Artifact 02: A Bucket
Smaller
Excess of Liquid:
Bucket Pavilion
Excess of Liquid:
Bucket Pavilion
When a leak happens within a space, one’s immediate response is to turn to pots, pans, buckets—objects easy to transport, yet effective as a solution. In its ability to contain, a bucket is an honest example of where we can see the object’s scale reflecting directly on its function.
What is proposed is a Bucket Pavilion that harnesses the excess of liquid (water). This intervention does not necessarily try to collect its surrounding excess entirely. Water is utilized as a weight, allowing the pavilion to be mobilized through nature and public interaction.
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What is proposed is a Bucket Pavilion that harnesses the excess of liquid (water). This intervention does not necessarily try to collect its surrounding excess entirely. Water is utilized as a weight, allowing the pavilion to be mobilized through nature and public interaction.
Artifact 03: Crushed Ice Test
Smaller
Excess of Solid:
Windbreaker
Excess of Solid:
Windbreaker
Due to the more frequent extreme weather conditions we are getting, we end up with an abundance of material alongside a logistical excess. The process of managing heavy snowfall cannot keep pace with the speed of accumulation, resulting in snow being seen as an inconvenience.
Becoming a place where the public can seek brief shelter away from the sharp winter wind, the proposed Windbreaker transforms the excess into insulation, which stores and delays its release onto the streets. Through the process of engaging with and building the intervention, the hope is to celebrate snow as a natural phenomenon.
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Becoming a place where the public can seek brief shelter away from the sharp winter wind, the proposed Windbreaker transforms the excess into insulation, which stores and delays its release onto the streets. Through the process of engaging with and building the intervention, the hope is to celebrate snow as a natural phenomenon.
Flat Roof & Sloped Roof Conditions
Larger Excess:
NYC Department of Water
NYC Department of Water
New York City has showcased a jumping of scale to match its increase in needs. Bigness no longer has the same meaning as other cities, due to its ever-growing characteristics and demand.
Now, also considering sea-level rise as an excess, the larger scale results in a larger intervention. What is proposed is the headquarters of NYC’s Department of Water that becomes an archive of water and water technologies previously designed.
Looking at the volume of water that the tower will hold, it refers to the standard NYC block dimensions of 264 feet by 900 feet. With the tower positioned by the waterfront, the total quantity of water the building will store is around 196 cubic feet. This will help alleviate about an inch of sea-level rise for 10 standard NYC blocks.
Zoning Diagram
Epilogue
Final Installation
This project began with water and ends with water.
A necessity for life, water is uniquely ubiquitous, sustaining all that surrounds it.
A necessity for life, water is uniquely ubiquitous, sustaining all that surrounds it.
