As a physical extension of my graduate thesis, this large-scale model explores the unfolding of a speculative scenario:

What if individuals were forced to live among every object they accumulate?

Set within a sectioned Haussmann building in Paris, France, the model becomes a test site for material excess, personal identity, and spatial confrontation. Paris, chosen for its cultural obsession with beauty, objects, and order, is both the backdrop and the subject of critique. The model draws inspiration from the 2023 Paris garbage strike, which left over 10,000 tons of waste on the city’s streets, temporarily unmasking the material reality behind the city’s romantic facade.

Haussmann’s rigidly uniform boulevards — born of a historical effort to “beautify” and hide the undesirable — provide the perfect architectural framework for the experiment. I cut through one such building in section, extending the model across the street to include neighboring facades, allowing for a full streetscape intervention.

Constructed over five months, the model was always intended to remain in flux — a working model where no solution is final. Using scrap materials, found objects, and architectural leftovers, I designed and re-designed spatial interventions, imagined furniture, and object archives to explore how residents might negotiate a life surrounded by their own accumulated belongings. These interventions spilled from private interiors into shared and public spaces, questioning not only how we live with our objects, but where we allow that reality to be seen.

The model resists completion because the confrontation itself has no end. Like the landfill, it grows. Like the home, it adapts. Like theatre, it reflects.

This piece operates at the intersection of design, performance, and social commentary, offering a critical, evolving playground where material culture and architecture collide.