Resolution Grounds: Designing with the Fragmented Survey

Resolution Grounds: Designing with the Fragmented Survey

Model of a flat surface with raised sections

Paris Bezanis (MArch I ’25)

Resolution Grounds: Designing with the Fragmented Survey repositions the architectural survey as a site of epistemic and political contestation, challenging the premise that more data yields better design. At the Kuyalnik Estuary in southern Ukraine—a landscape shaped by ecological collapse, centuries of colonial therapeutic infrastructures, and wartime inaccessibility—the disciplinary pursuit of total visual capture is not only infeasible but ethically compromised. In its place, the thesis advances the fragmented survey: a methodology that constructs spatial records from open source but incomplete, low-resolution, and often extralegal visual material. Scraped drone footage, social media images, and archival fragments are not treated as raw inputs, but as situated digital artifacts, reconstructed through AI-assisted workflows that infer missing metadata and spatial relationships. Screenshots from embedded Google Maps flyovers are processed using monocular depth estimation tools like Marigold and Stable Diffusion, then passed through photogrammetry platforms such as RealityCapture or MeshRoom. Photogrammetry is operative here because it enables the translation of heterogeneous, often degraded visual material into spatial data—producing point clouds and meshes that can be acted on architecturally. The resulting outputs range from broken, sparse point clouds to partial meshes with high degrees of inference—surfaces warped by algorithmic guesswork and visual noise. These are supplemented with inpainting, deblurring, and neural alignment techniques, and further anchored by high-resolution Polycam scans captured on-site by local collaborators. The result is not a seamless model of a digital twin, but a digital sibling: an unstable, multiscalar, and composite reconstruction that foregrounds the technical and political conditions of its own assembly.

This composite and fragmented survey becomes a design instrument calibrated to its own inconsistencies. Each resolution informs a different scale of architectural intervention: coarse, inferred terrains underpin landscape-scale berms and sedimentary commons; intermediate scans guide the reuse of precast concrete elements from nearby Soviet housing stock; high-resolution fragments support detailed tectonic insertions within sanatorium ruins. By designing through interference rather than resolving it, the project reframes digital surveying not as a pursuit of mastery, but as a situated, ethical design practice. Here, resolution is not merely a technical attribute but a methodological stance—foregrounding approximation, scarcity, and collaboration as design prompts. In doing so, the project proposes a new role for computation in architecture: not as a tool for seamless visualization or predictive modeling, but as a critical mapping practice attuned to the politics of fragmented data, uneven visibility, and constrained access—where what can be
rendered is shaped by platform infrastructures, geopolitical opacity, and the contingencies of image circulation.


CREDITS

DDP Credits and Attributions

Paris Bezanis
Spring 2025
Credits and attributions are listed below for any work shown in the thesis project that is not exclusively my own.

Citations

Labor

Plastering model: Olivia Champ, Maria Ferrari, Hannah Kim
Planting and boardwalk assembly: Griffin Snyder, Emily Hayes, Aneesh Devi, Becca Schalip
Interiors Visualization Assistance: Denis Sola

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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design

Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.

Digital Production: Design, Materials, Fabrication

Digital design and fabrication technologies have become integral to contemporary design and architectural practice discourse. The translation from design to realization is mediated by a range of tools and processes whose development is informed over time by material properties, skill, technology, and culture. As a whole, these systems are the vehicle by which design teams, manufacturers, installers, and, ultimately, users engage the materiality of architecture and design. Parallel technological developments relating to the way in which things are designed (digital modeling, simulation, generative design, AI, etc.) and the way things are made (automation, computer-controlled equipment including robotics, advanced materials, etc.) have afforded new opportunities and challenges related to the realization of new forms in architecture, part customization, user-centered design, and enhanced building performance.

Within this context, this course will explore the materialization of design as both a technical and a creative endeavor. Special attention will be given to the interplay between digital information and physical artifacts, the opportunities and shortcomings of those translations, and the impact these technologies and outcomes may have on society. Beyond technology for the sake of technology, the course will explore how climate change, destabilized supply chains, and material life cycle considerations have begun to challenge our reliance on singular global material flows in favor of increasingly distributed systems. Further, the class will explore the resonance between particular modes of making and geometrical expression, and how computational design paradigms can further enhance this relationship.

Through lectures, hands-on workshops, and making-centric assignments, students will engage with a range of methods and materials that underpin a foundation in digital fabrication. Guest lectures will highlight how digital technologies are impacting the construction and manufacturing industries across scales and contexts. Through early assignments and a term project, the course is designed to provide hands-on experience with the digital fabrication equipment available in the GSD Fabrication Lab — including CNC mills, 3D printers, 3D scanners, and industrial robotic arms — and is suited for novices and experts across all disciplines. No prerequisites are required, but students are assumed to have a basic competency in 3D modeling (Rhino 3D).

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 2nd. 

Power||Energy: Mapping the Thickened Ground of Labor

The definition of energy is dominated by a western logic of energy as a resource. This understanding was focused on the primary objective of putting energy to effective use that was then translated into power objectives and governance schemes for putting the planet to work in service of fossil-fuel empires. Subsequently this defined concepts of labour, society, and the environment through power struggles for vast territories of natural resources, land claims, the growth of economies, and development of urbanised areas.

The now outmoded and failing US electrical network of energy production, distribution, and consumption have shaped the patterns and territorial infrastructure of our urbanized landscapes. This vast infrastructure network describes a complex, dynamic exchange between human beings and the landscape over an extensive period of time. Emerging from these tensions is a thickened ground of multiple heterogeneous parts and networks intertwined with less tangible metabolic and material processes that describe the ‘natures’ of the urbanised landscape through its indeterminable characteristics.

The ubiquitous and relentless exploitation of the earth as a resource for energy production to be plundered and commodified continues to disrupt the deep complex processes of nature leading to major environmental and health ramifications. Consequently racial, social, and economic disparities that are imminently present and inherently linked to the environment are further exacerbated. The climate crisis is symptomatic of this prejudice where the power of a select few humans rises above others and their non-human counterparts, corralled into disciplinary regimes of work valued through distinct economic imperatives.

The seminar reckons with the immediate need to upgrade and expand the US electrical power grid system to meet the demands of growing urban communities and recognizes the obligation to engage with the climate crisis. In it, we envision energy systems that inherently hold a capacity for adaptation and simultaneously serve as the formative catalyst of the urban landscape.

The seminar introduces and explores new value systems for the environment and alternative definitions of power, work, and energy to tackle this complex systemic suite of crises. This project-based seminar is structured around two phases; Phase One: Energy and Power and Phase Two: Energy and Ecology, . The teaching and learning schedule includes a series of guest lectures focused on articulating the relationship between the different positions and definitions of energy and the implications of their territorial and spatial formations.  A range of critical mapping and representation techniques will be explored in order to generate an understanding and future speculations of a thickened ground of energy. The aim is to question who are the actors and agencies involved, what are the forms of governance, their territorial demarcations and land use,  ecosystems, historical events and material flows and processes that determine the shape of the ever evolving form of ground and its planetary effects.

Working Landscapes: Natural Resiliency And Redesign

Ecological principles and their application to design and planning will be emphasized. Topics will include understanding human impacts on natural systems through engineering and design, their consequences, and the use of ecological principles and methods of landscape design and planning to achieve natural restoration, resilience, balance, and sustainability. Exploration of new approaches to design and infrastructure at local and regional scales will include water management, hardened coastlines, sediment and toxics management, marsh and wetland restoration, alternative renewable energy development, reclaimed water and restored natural hydrology, and leveraging the efficiencies and effectiveness of restored natural systems to aid in the control of flooding, remediating drought, and reducing heat island effect. Additionally, using restoration as the basis for design, students will be introduced to the potential of leveraging capitalism to incentivize environmental restoration. A science field trip into wetlands acquired and protected by the US Army Corps of Engineers on the Charles River will be used to highlight the principle of protecting and restoring nature as a climate resilience strategy.

The course is designed around providing the opportunity to apply these approaches, principles, and methods to student-selected landscapes, exploring options and opportunities. By identifying and then using heavily altered historic natural systems as their guide for landscape design, students will develop a restoration aesthetic that builds resilience to climate and generates income to pay for change. Students will also learn to develop strategies for using legal and regulatory frameworks, agency initiatives, and advocates to get projects built.

Though not a prerequisite, Working Landscapes will prove quite useful to students interested in taking Creating Environmental Markets during the Spring semester. Markets examines existing environmental markets like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and stormwater trading, as well as a potential new market, Blue Cities Exchange, where the use of Working Landscapes restoration approaches and methods are the basis for water and pollution trading and preparing for the vagaries of climate. We will not resolve the climate issues we’ve created with taxes and fees. To take restoration to scale, we will need to leverage capitalism and generate income in the transformational process.
 

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 9th.

Design for Impact: Public Space and Policy in the Global South

A project-based seminar on participatory design, urban governance, and civic transformation

This project-based seminar explores how public space can become a vehicle for civic transformation, equity, and climate resilience in cities of the Global South. Students will examine the intersection of participatory design and local governance, and co-create interventions that respond to urgent challenges, ranging from gender equity and early childhood development to climate adaptation and territorial justice.

Through case studies, critical readings, and guest lectures from practitioners in Latin America and beyond, students will analyze how public space functions as a site of negotiation, conflict, participation, and governance, often under conditions of inequality, limited budgets, and institutional fragility. The course blends conceptual exploration with hands-on civic engagement, helping students understand how to act within systems, without losing sight of people.

As a central component of the course, students will collaborate directly with local governments across Peru through the Pacto por los Espacios Públicos [Public Space Pact], a national platform promoted by Ocupa Tu Calle [Occupy Your Street] that brings together 45 municipalities committed to creating walkable, inclusive, and sustainable cities. Working in interdisciplinary teams, students will co-develop public space interventions and/or policy tools grounded in the realities of each municipality’s constraints and opportunities.

In addition to policy-aligned design, the course emphasizes the development of soft yet essential real-world skills: building trust with local actors, navigating institutional structures, communicating ideas through data and visuals, and negotiating across levels of power and politics.

This course is ideal for students interested in impact-driven design, participatory planning, and civic innovation across diverse urban landscapes.

 

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 9th.

City Politics Field Lab (at HKS)

Over 80% of people in the US live in cities. City and town governments constantly have the potential to change policies with massive impact on this enormous population’s lives. Preparing for climate change, providing housing to the growing urban population, and keeping the businesses driving urban economies working are all examples of challenges facing these governments. Yet national politics gets the majority of attention — from the media, from researchers, from voters, and even from public policy students — instead of the less flashy work of governing and policymaking that happens in local governments. As a result, local governments are often under-equipped to understand the policy solutions available to them to address these challenges. Nor are they usually equipped to confront the often-contentious politics of public opinion and engagement required to actually implement these solutions.

This course is an experiential learning lab in which students work in teams on political challenges facing real-world local government clients. Project teams will partner with local cities and towns, or departments of larger government entities, to address policy challenges such as transportation, the impacts of climate change, affordable housing, and other current topics. The projects vary in policy area focus, but all allow students to apply skills learned in HKS classes to real-world policy settings, and in turn provide tangible benefits to partner cities and towns. Project teams will use a variety of skills that may incorporate original public opinion polling of city residents to assess the political viability of policy solutions, conducting focus groups or qualitative interviews, and/or behavioral A/B testing. In advance of team project-based work, the course includes training in advanced relevant analytical skills, such as GIS mapping, data visualization, and survey measurement and design. Project work and technical skills-based learning are complemented by sessions discussing current academic research on relevant urban policy issues. Extensive field work outside of class time will be required, including multiple visits to client sites by student team members. Students who complete the course may have the opportunity to develop team projects into publishable research projects following the class or extend partnerships with client governments into PAE projects.

Applicants must submit a short statement of interest and resume/CV to https://forms.gle/ZfXVtJ9J9QXJBbmbA.

This course is offered by HKS as DPI-325. 

The course meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4:30-6:30 in Wexner 330. 

Note that this course follows the HKS academic calendar, which has an irregular start of term with Friday, September 5th held as a Monday. The first class meeting will be on Friday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter. 

HKS Course Preview Days are September 2-3. See schedule for more information. 

Constructing Consensus through Collaboration: Stakeholder Management in Real Estate [Module 1]

“It takes a village” to develop a real estate project is more than just a clever catch-phrase. In any city around the world, assembling and working with the people who can make or break a real estate project, especially the ones that look perfect on paper, is a crucial tactical and strategic skill. From advocacy groups, to the public at large, to community groups, to elected officials, fostering thoughtful relationships with these individuals and groups is critical to the success of any real estate project. Using real world examples that highlight the importance of stakeholder engagement, this course will focus on teaching students how bringing people along can be the key to getting hard projects done.

After completing this course, students will be able to determine which elected officials, community members/groups, and advocacy groups can impact a real estate project positively or negatively. Students will be able to craft public relations and government relations strategies for interfacing with those key stakeholders in order to support real estate projects or defend against criticism. Students will also know which experts and consultants to partner with to add to their own capabilities. Students will be able to build well rounded project teams that can accomplish the most difficult projects and weather the most challenging storms.

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 9th. 

MRE students have prioritized enrollment in the Limited Enrollment Course Lottery. All MRE students who select this special MRE elective in the Lottery will be enrolled, with additional seats potentially available to other students.

Cities by Design

Cities by Design is concerned with the in-depth and longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among selected cities in the world. The broad aims are: to engage in a comparative study for the purpose of broadening definitions of what it is to be urban; to identify characteristics that render particular cities distinct; to understand the manner in which geography, locational circumstances, and related infrastructural improvements both constrain and promote opportunities for city development; and to gain insight into the role of human agencies, planning institutions, and design cultures in shaping cities and their role in broader regions. 

In Fall 2025, the cities under examination are Boston, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Taipei, Berlin, Shanghai, and Mumbai. Each will be the subject of 2-3 lectures. In addition to city-specific lectures, broader comparative frameworks will be provided by two lectures on Metropolitan Spatial Dynamics, and Historic Conservation.

The class is organized around a twice-a-week cadence of lectures. Beyond participation and contribution to in-class discussions, the main deliverables of the course are two short papers. Cities by Design is required by Master of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Urban Design students. A limited number of seats are available to other students. 
 

While this course is included in the limited enrollment course lottery, students in the GSD Master of Urban Design program should enroll during the open enrollment period. 

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Thursday, September 4th.

Land Use and Environmental Law B

Although the market and other mechanisms of private ordering determine much about how people use and develop land, perennial externalities and collective-action problems require coordination and regulation to mitigate and resolve conflicts. The legal system–through legislation, administrative agencies, and litigation at the federal, state, and local level–shapes the built and natural environment and brings public values into the management of private property.  Zoning ordinances, for example, set use and density limits as well as processes for development approval, influencing the geography of economic and demographic diversity, while environmental laws seek to limit pollution, regulate ecosystems, and respond to climate change.

This course provides students with working knowledge of important land use and environmental laws as well as the institutions that create, implement, and review them, offering constructive and critical perspectives on these regulatory regimes. The course also considers what distinguishes law from other fields, as well as the roles that planners, designers, policymakers, real estate professionals, community members, and the broader public play in land use and environmental law.  Through class discussions, the course engages with primary sources, such as zoning ordinances and judicial opinions, as well as secondary material, and requires no legal background. The course involves an exercise in proposing reforms to a component of a local land use law and a final exam.

There are two offerings of Land Use and Environmental Law: 5206 taught by Jerold Kayden and 5207 taught by Nestor Davidson. Students cannot take both courses for credit. 

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Thursday, September 4th.