Discovering Inspirations

February 10, 2026

After a bit of speculation, I've finally narrowed down my topic of interest with many potential questions I can ask. Before traveling, I did a bit of research associating to each topic/question that I had asked, which was revised in the past class. Here were my most recent questions:

How can architects revive social interaction in communities within the United States by increasing building density to create shared, intimate public spaces, drawing on the study of Southern Italian towns.

The research did help in discovering the obvious: the first question, although my immediate idea for my capstone on the very first day of class, was not aligning with my personal interests enough to move forward with. As I reviewed some of the Google Scholar articles, I found that I wasn't as fascinated with the question I was asking, quickly becoming disinterested in the research. When reading a handful of the abstracts, I could feel my original excitement of the topic escaping me. The leading motivations for it was my trip to visit my family in Italy, but the topic itself seemed broad, and more focused on urban planning, which I did not find very inspiring.

How can designers use nostalgia through dollhouse inspiration to create surreal contemporary architecture that breaks societal norms and satisfies imaginative aspects in the real world?

After the discussions in Thursday's class I was almost certain that I would choose the last question. I had always been fascinated with nostalgia and felt a deep connection to the topic, as I would constantly crafted my own miniature houses or furniture when I was younger. Although the question was the most developed, I believe this was a large influence of it being a top contender. A combination of research and self-reflection made me question if it was actually the topic I wanted to focus on. It all started to seem like a jumble of words, so I moved on to the last topic to try to finally make a decision between the two.

What architectural strategies can be used to push boundaries in the built world when considering the approach of film set design, which purposefully uses the physical environment to enhance a story?

This topic was one of the top two I had been juggling with in the past two weeks which, on Thursday, I had planned to eliminate entirely. Before doing so, I decided to do a bit of research as a sort of last ditch effort to test if I was truly confident in my pick, and I am extremely glad that I did. I think that my problem with the idea of film scenography was not the topic itself, but the questions that I was asking. As I read more and more of the research abstracts, it became clear to me that this was meant to be my chosen topic. The number of perspectives and processes that the authors had helped my own question begin to form into something I was finally proud of. The sheer excitement I felt from the research alone made my decision so simple that I couldn't understand why it took me so long to figure out in the first place.

Finally, I have narrowed down to one topic, which is such a big relief. I genuinely feel a weight of my shoulders and motivation to start forming questions and potential research processes I can take within this field. The agenda for next week is to officially formulate a singular question, which means I will need to delve deeper into the topic this coming week.