Capstone / Thesis
Museum of Analog Experience
What should a museum offer when attention itself has become scarce?
This capstone studio challenged students to design a Museum of Analog Experience in Denver's Golden Triangle Creative District. The museum was conceived as a sanctuary from digital distraction and a public setting for shared experience, creative exploration, multisensory engagement, and meaningful connection.
The project began with people rather than form. Through discussion, interviews, site observation, and precedent research, students investigated the psychological and social effects of excessive screen time, including anxiety, diminished empathy, isolation, and disconnection from nature. Each student developed a point of view and a specific program in response.
The course was not organized around a rejection of technology. Students worked through hands-on formal studies, drawing, physical exploration, generative AI, immersive VR, digital modeling, and advanced visualization. The objective was to use each medium intentionally while keeping human experience at the center of the architecture.
Studio Framing
Technology as Instrument, Not Subject
I framed this capstone around a contradiction that felt increasingly relevant: we would use some of the most advanced digital tools available to design places where people could step away from digital life. I did not see that as hypocrisy. It created an opportunity to ask students to distinguish between technology as a deliberate instrument and technology as a condition that quietly controls attention.
I wanted students to begin with a position rather than a shape. Interviews, discussions, site visits, and research into screen use helped them define whom the project served and what kind of disconnection or reconnection mattered. The point of view became a standard against which later decisions could be tested: does this plan support the intended social experience, does this material invite touch, does the sequence alter pace and attention, does the building offer something that a screen cannot.
The selected projects demonstrate three different architectural responses. Looking back, I am most interested in the way the studio joined critical inquiry to architectural resolution. Students are no longer completing isolated exercises. They are learning to sustain an idea across the many decisions required to make architecture coherent.
Studio Proposal 01
MAE | Light and Silence
This proposal organizes the museum through shifts in light, scale, sound, compression, and openness. Narrow passages slow movement before releasing visitors into luminous galleries and landscaped courts. The sequence makes attention physical: orientation is established through the body as much as through signage or program. The restrained material palette allows daylight, shadow, water, and occupation to become the primary sources of variation.
Full board sequence, scroll for more → click any image to view full size
Museum plaza arrival
Gallery sequence and orientation
Daylit gathering sequence
Interior threshold study
Museum plaza exterior
Analog concept transformations
Sectional program and atmosphere
Street arrival perspective
Upper level floor plan
Compressed gallery passage
Entry court perspective
Ground level floor plan
Luminous interior gathering
Gallery light study
Spatial intensity gradient
Courtyard water experience
Museum identity study
Sheltered courtyard landscape
Studio Proposal 02
The Journey
The Journey treats circulation as the museum's central exhibit. Ramps, stairs, atriums, bridges, and exterior passages connect spaces for craft, fabrication, performance, gathering, and reflection. An interactive copper facade extends that idea through time: its surface is designed to change through weathering and use, allowing the building to register transformation rather than present itself as a fixed object.
Full board sequence, scroll for more → click any image to view full size
Sectional circulation sequence
Site context and factors
Analog ideation sketches
Programmed section sequence
Circulation and facade concept
Craft gallery interior
Main level floor plan
Creative journey statement
Fabrication gallery interior
Upper level floor plan
Precedent and facade research
Secondary level plan
The journey exterior
Site plan and approach
Structural system diagram
Roof and program plan
Final exterior presentation
Connected courtyard sequence
Exterior circulation passage
Night museum exterior
Interactive facade assembly
Copper material evolution
Section sequence summary
Studio Proposal 03
Museum of Analog Experiences
Watch animated walkthrough This proposal creates an open civic institution organized around a central atrium. Galleries, performance space, an escape room, food, making, and informal gathering are linked through visible circulation and shared daylight. A screened facade mediates between interior activity and the Golden Triangle, filtering light and opening at street level to support curiosity and access.
Full board sequence, scroll for more → click any image to view full size
Animated museum walkthrough
Screened museum facade
Basement level floor plan
Ground level floor plan
Upper level floor plan
Facade and public program
Site strategy diagrams
Atrium floor plan
Atrium and daylight strategy
Longitudinal building section
Atrium sectional perspective
Escape room program rationale
Program distribution graphic
Spatial concept sketches
Daylit gallery interior
Project overview and exterior
Street and facade perspectives
Student Experience