The Tuvalu Studio (dot.tv)

The Tuvalu Studio (dot TV), is a city inside of a building. More than that, we are proposing a nation contained inside one architecture. In this studio, we will be designing a super-structure for the citizens of Tuvalu, a nation of roughly 10,000 individuals residing on a land that is approximately 10 square miles. Tuvalu, like many island nations, is facing the plight of rapidly rising sea-level and an imminent danger of physical disappearance. As Tuvalu disappears as a natural hardware, this studio proposes to consider a total reconstruction of a completely artificial hardware to support a software facing many new challenges during a changing time.

To mobilize a focused thesis, students from the IDEAS Entertainment Studio subdivided Tuvalu into prefectures, jurisdictions, and districts, with each territory taking on its own architectural, economic, and socio-political agendas. Clusters of districts were combined into prefectures and jurisdictions each with their own hyper specialized urban role. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the fragmented parts were ultimately re-assembled back into a complete whole; a whole produced by 27 individuals working collectively.