Glazed

The research takes as its primary case study Canela (Cecilia del Valle, 2022), a documentary following a 58-year-old transgender architect from Argentina deliberating whether to undergo gender-affirming surgery.

Much of the film unfolds in medical waiting rooms and travels through the city by car, framing individual mobility as a foundational condition of access for aging and non-normative bodies. Drawing on J. Logan Smilges's Queer Silence (2022), the waiting room emerges not as passive space but as a site where bodily difference accumulates quietly.

Older transgender individuals carry decades of navigating environments not designed for them, producing a lived accumulation of non-normative adaptations and detours. The HIL building is examined through mobility, spatial presence of transness, and non-normative aesthetics.

The analysis begins in the garage and follows the elevator shafts upward, connecting to adjacent bathrooms: spaces organized around privacy, binary classification, and standardized bodies, where care is practiced in isolation. Materially, they are defined by ceramic tile, a surface centered on hygiene and function-driven design.

The design operates through two cores positioned at key circulation nodes. Each includes a rotating sink within a velvet-lined niche for rest, inclusive single-stall toilets, and a shower cabin. An elevated walkway connects the two cores; glass brick construction introduces permeability, reconceiving hygiene infrastructure as a site of collective encounter.

Master Thesis Spring 2026

Project by: Filippo Kleinstein Teaching Team: Anna Puigjaner, Pol Esteve Castelló, He Shen 何珅, Ethel Baraona Pohl, Lisa Maillard, Paule Perron, Valentina Noce. In Collaboration with Guillaume Habert and He Yufei (BUK).

Images 2, 8, 11: Luís Úrculo