“The Great Stink”, a mini-opera in three acts, seeks to explore how collaboration between architecture, performance, and engineering can stimulate an understanding of systems in the built environment typically left unseen. By using residential bathrooms as a scenographic backdrop to tell the story of hidden hygienic systems and their environmental impact, plumbing pipes are reproduced as instruments, props, and sets becoming performing tools for conography into a mini-opera that casts new light on what we culturally prefer to ignore, namely plumbing and the human activities that deploy it.

Through a range of experimental design methodologies, including
(1)Acoustical design research
(2) Primary building code research
(3) Contextually framing of history and elements around domestic bathrooms.

Collaborating with people who are outside of the architecture discipline, the thesis aims to reveal the design norms which hide the bathroom in the domestic setting. Prefabricated bathroom fixtures and their coded organization conceals culturally constructed norms and their environmental impact.

The thesis harnesses the power of the performing arts to help restructure the relationship between bathrooms, toilets, and bodies by defamiliarizing the experience of sound, water, and light flow. Plumbing is transformed into musical instruments, bathrooms are untethered in domestic space, opera singers teach us about code, and cats fly. The experiment sensitizes audiences to matters of architectural standardization, resource extraction, and socially constructed norms.

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  Collaborators  

Chun-Li Chen ︎︎🧾
University of Michigan Taubman College and Urban Planning, Master of Architecture
Originally from Taipei, Taiwan, Chun-Li Chen is interested in challenging the norms of space in daily experience. With over 10 years of drawing experience, she uses sketches to understand spaces that often left unseen to observe human activities around them.

Adam Chase ︎︎
University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance
Born in the Bay Area of California, Adam Chase (b. 2001) is a classically trained singer and composer who is finishing his studies at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Upon receiving his Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance, he’ll be pursuing his masters at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.

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Acknowledgement  

ArtsEngine, for supporring with Arts Integrative Interdisciplinary Research (AiiR) Grant from the University of Michigan
Anya Sirota,  Partner and Design Principal. Detroit, Michigan: Akoaki, Associate Dean for Academic Initiatives, Associate Professor of Architecture at University of Michigan Taubman College Architecture+ Urban Planning, for all the support in the whloe process of thesis
Mojtaba Navvab,  Associate Professor at University of Michigan Taubman College Architecture+ Urban Planning of Architecture, for supporting the acoustic design research
Pierre Lambla, for supporting pipe intrument fabrication discussions
Mick Kennedy,  Associate Professor at University of Michigan Taubman College Architecture+ Urban Planning of Architecture, for supporting the knowledge of plumbing
2022 AOU Thesis Team, for all the discussion and supports we have in class