Stranger in Moscow

"This thesis considers the Embassy for the U.S. diplomatic mission to the Russian Federation in Moscow -- a structure implicated in a history of espionage, riddled with listening devices, procured via labyrinthine construction contracts. The reciprocal subversions performed across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War -- succinctly illustrated in MAD Magazine's Spy vs. Spy comic strips -- appear to have been recently reanimated. Through the interplay of illusionistic techniques drawn from the ecclesiastical chancel, 1960s Op-Art, and recursive computation, distortive methods propose a dialectic of concealment and revelation in architecture. Stagecraft and statecraft conspire to project the possibility of built form through the production of doubt."-- (viewed October 7, 2020)