Intermittently engulfed by thick fog and floating 32km off the coast of Shanghai, Yangshan Port is an artificial island dominated by autonomous machines. It resides within the Free Trade Zone, an urban periphery littered with warehouses and corporate campuses—in a never-ending pursuit for quantity and efficiency. This thesis questions the role and scale of humans in this large entangled logistical realm, where local and global trade violently collide. It taps into perspectival moments within the port and its locality—individual stories of isolation, persistence, propaganda, and transience to locate the tiny human presence within a sea of machines.

Program: Master of Architecture

Thesis Advisor: Jeannie Kim