Making a Left Turn

At this point, this thesis is veering dangerously near to what will amount to at best a top-down authoritarian direction of social interaction in a society not my own. While I am still interested in the social ramifications of what it is I will be designing in the next 9 months or so, as it stands now, my research is less directed towards an architectural thesis than a sociology thesis. Having reached a similar conclusion to some advice given me recently, I am redirecting this thesis to address a need for usable public urban space within the developing city of Doha, in so doing still creating a larger scale urban space that still addresses issues of the pedestrian versus the car and the climate as well as obliquely hitting upon the social issues that I am interested in. In so doing, I think the thesis will become more directly architectural in nature, rather than veering into the polemics of social division in the built realm or a retread of a Modernist utopian architectural agenda.

Avoiding what was described as the Scylla and Charybdis of the polemic and the utopia, respectively.

 The former position is almost wholly undesirable to me- it is not my intent or desire to point fingers or create a bellicose architecture; similarly, it is not my desire to ignore the de facto social situation and in so doing blithely ignore the very people I am designing for. I hope that in taking this new direction, I will create a richer body of research that addresses a wider range of topics that will influence my thesis project, in so doing also leading to a freer, more interesting exploration of the myriad issues, not just the social, that are involved in the creation of successful urban space. I don't see this as in avoiding my original intent, or being an overhaul of my thesis, but rather as a redirection. Thoughts?