WHY / WHERE
Architecture did not emerge to produce neutral or stable environments. It emerged as a means to moderate climate—to make heat, cold, rain, and wind bearable rather than disappear. From its earliest forms, architecture operated as a mediator between the human body and an unstable environment, adjusting exposure, shelter, and occupation without ever eliminating climatic difference. Only very recently did architecture begin to imagine that climate itself could be erased through enclosure and mechanical control. This belief in permanent environmental stability, enabled by fossil energy and technical systems, is the historical anomaly—not climatic variability itself.
The defining environmental crisis of our time is therefore not that the world is permanently becoming tropical, but that it is becoming temporarily tropical — repeatedly and unpredictably—subject to episodic surges of heat, humidity, and rainfall that exceed the spatial, cultural, and architectural assumptions of permanence and control on which many buildings and infrastructures remain organized. These conditions, once geographically concentrated, now interrupt temperate environments calibrated for moderation and regularity. They are neither rare anomalies nor stable climatic regimes; they are recurrent disruptions that expose how deeply modern architecture depends on the illusion of equilibrium.
This condition reveals not a failure of technology, but a failure of architectural imagination. In much of the non-tropical world, buildings have been conceived as sealed objects optimized for a narrow range of “normal” conditions, supported by uninterrupted energy, drainage, and maintenance systems. As a result, there is limited thermal, hydrological, and behavioral literacy for inhabiting volatility. When conditions exceed the narrow assumptions under which these architectures were conceived—when power falters, water rises, or heat persists—they reveal their dependence on stability rather than their capacity for negotiation. They are architectures of control, not architectures of survival.
The entire planet has thus become—if only for brief but recurring periods each year— a planetary site of tropical intensity, without the cultural, architectural, or regulatory frameworks that historically accepted instability as a basic condition of life.
This studio rejects “Tropicality” as a geographic category or stylistic reference. It treats it instead as an architectural condition that has always existed wherever climate exceeds control. Tropical architecture is not defined by palm trees, shading devices, or vernacular aesthetics. It is defined by an acceptance that architecture is never climatically stable—that comfort is negotiated, space is contingent, and occupation shifts over time.
Where can this mode of architecture be examined without nostalgia or moralization? We turn to the urbanized delta of the Central Plain of Thailand, with Bangkok as its most concentrated and conflicted manifestation. This region does not offer lessons in harmony or balance. It offers evidence of continuous negotiation under pressure—between water and ground, exposure and shelter, informality and regulation. Its self-built and hybrid environments are not treated as models to imitate, but as architectural situations shaped by constraint, failure, improvisation, and repetition. What can be learned here are not forms, but logics of tolerance—ways architecture remains inhabitable when conditions are expected to change.
WHAT
The central challenge of the studio is not environmental performance, but architectural translation. How can an architecture that has historically accepted instability as a condition of life inform contexts that still mistake control for resilience? This is the studio’s thesis: the pursuit of a Hybrid Intelligence, in which architectural form, social behavior, material tolerance, and regulatory frameworks operate together without assuming equilibrium.
Students will analyze tropical architectures not as finished objects, but as incomplete systems—architectures that anticipate modification, seasonal reconfiguration, uneven use, and partial failure. These environments will be studied through spatial organization, degrees of openness, thresholds of exposure, material aging, and patterns of occupation over time. The aim is not to extract solutions, but to understand how architecture remains inhabitable while never resolving its relationship to climate.
From this analysis, students will develop an architecture of oscillation. Oscillation here is not a technical trick or kinetic effect, but an architectural attitude: the capacity of a building to exist in multiple states without collapsing into inefficiency or spectacle. This may involve winter cores and summer peripheries, shifting boundaries between inside and outside, or spatial hierarchies that allow comfort to migrate rather than stabilize. The goal is not optimization, but the ability to remain legible and usable across change.
Crucially, this studio investigates Protocols of Habitation. Architecture does not simply shelter bodies; it disciplines, enables, and constrains behavior. Rather than designing idealized lifestyles, students will examine how architecture compels adaptation—how daily routines, dress, social interaction, and spatial use shift when comfort is variable rather than guaranteed. These protocols are not optional narratives; they are the unavoidable consequences of architectural decisions.
Students will also confront regulatory reality. Modern building codes largely enforce the assumption of sealed, stable interiors. Each project will identify a specific regulatory constraint that prevents adaptive architecture and propose a Regulatory Speculation—a precise architectural argument for how regulation might tolerate instability without reverting to enclosure and control.
HOW
The studio is structured as a continuous design inquiry grounded in bodily experience, spatial analysis, and architectural speculation.
Students will begin by working within a two-hour radius of the Yale campus, selecting a site exposed to heat stress, flooding, or seasonal climatic volatility. This region is not treated as “non-tropical,” but as a territory increasingly subjected to temporary tropical conditions it was never designed to host. Students will investigate local building traditions, past climatic adaptations, and the architectural assumptions embedded in existing structures.
The studio will then travel to Bangkok and Ayutthaya. This travel is not for inspiration, precedent collection, or visual consumption. It is a form of bodily and spatial recalibration—resetting assumptions about comfort, exposure, and architectural responsibility. Ayutthaya is approached not as a historical ideal, but as evidence of a settlement logic that organized life around water rather than attempting to exclude it. In Bangkok, students will observe how contemporary architectures—formal and informal—negotiate heat, humidity, and flooding through occupation, tolerance, and modification rather than control. The focus is not on what these buildings look like, but on how they continue to function while never achieving stability.
Returning to Yale, students will apply this understanding to their chosen site. The final project is conceived as a retrofit of both architecture and behavior. Each proposal must articulate an architectural system that anticipates climatic variability and refuses to depend on stability, alongside a Manual for Living that makes explicit the behavioral protocols demanded by such an architecture. This manual is not a compensatory narrative or lifestyle add-on; it is a direct consequence of architectural decisions. A weak building cannot be redeemed by a convincing manual. The manual exists only to expose the architectural logic already at work.
The final outcome is a rigorously argued architectural thesis defining a contemporary mode of Practising Tropicality — not as environmental design, not as sustainability rhetoric, but as architecture after the collapse of stability as a credible ideal.