Leatherscapes
Masterproef 2026-27
Supervisor: Dr. Rebecca Carrai
Campus: Brussels & Ghent
Language: EN
Capacity: Max 2-3 students
Theme:
Additional, often hidden territories incorporated into the circuits of capitalism have helped alleviate its self-generated difficulties. This is what geographers and Marxian thinkers such as David Harvey describe as capitalism’s search for a “spatial fix”: the displacement of capital and labor to sustain growth and address crises of overaccumulation. In recent decades, multinational firms have relocated production to ever lower-cost regions, generating new patterns of uneven development and contributing to the Capitalocene. Second only to the construction sector in its polluting impact, the fashion industry clearly exemplifies this dynamic, with both fast fashion and luxury brands producing significant emissions and waste that tend to be displaced to low- and middle-income countries.
Within this system, the leather sector occupies a particularly controversial position. Once animal skin, then dead matter, leather has long been associated with luxury, craft, and technological refinement, while its production entails major environmental and ethical costs, from intensive animal farming to pollution caused by toxic tanning processes, which are increasingly relocated from Europe to other, often non-Western, regions. In other words, producing, treating, and reworking leather, and then transforming this material into saleable items, requires substantial effort and infrastructure. Positioned at the intersection of fashion, environmental, and cultural histories, leather offers a critical lens through which to examine the impact of global production on societies and territories alike. This master dissertation therefore broadly asks: how can architecture reveal the spatial networks that underpin these processes?
Topics:
This master dissertation proposes the study of the environments that enable and are conditioned by the leather sector within the fashion industry, especially its luxury branch. It is further concerned with how certain sites—from water treatment plants to tanneries located in industrial areas and more—are designed, constructed, and at times deliberately concealed. Adopting a “follow-the-thing” methodological approach (borrowed from the social sciences and here applied to architectural thinking), the master dissertation project will follow leather across selected buildings, networks of actors, and territories. While mapping, redrawing, and highlighting the connections between the various realms through which goods circulate—from the places where they are displayed to those where manufacturing processes take place, and so on—the dissertation will place particular emphasis on the production dimension.
Possible entry points include an industrial facility, a manufacturing district, or a company of interest (or familiarity to the student) operating within the luxury leather fashion industry. It is encouraged that students choose a geographical context accessible for fieldwork and on-site observation.
Moving away from the architect and from questions of aesthetics as the sole focus of investigation, the project will map leather’s spatial geography through an architectural lens. It will adopt a materialist, environmental, and relational investigative approach that links human and non-human things, while considering different scales of business operations. In doing so, the dissertation aims to reveal “leatherscapes” as interconnected sites in which raw material is gradually transformed into commodities.
Set up:
The master dissertation student will engage with extensive literature and archival sources which, given the subject at hand, are intrinsically interdisciplinary, thus requiring substantial effort to become acquainted with fundamental knowledge in capitalism and globalization studies, environmental research within the architectural humanities, and histories of craft, design, and fashion, amongst other subjects. At the start of the first semester, a number of reading seminars (between 1-3) will be organized. Having attended the course “Histories of Modern Interiors and Design” during the spring semester of 2025–2026 is a plus but not a prerequisite to apply.
Students are encouraged to get in touch with the supervisor and acquaint themselves with the basic knowledge required to start the course during the summer break of 2026. With a view to devoting the second semester entirely to research, writing, or designing, students are expected to carry out the required field or archival work during the first semester. Choosing a case study, checking available archives, preparing site visits, and addressing practical issues such as accessibility and permission to take pictures or use archival documents etc. should be finalized before the start of the second semester. During both the first and second semesters, feedback will be provided monthly or bimonthly (depending on the students’ needs and other circumstances) by the supervisor.
While the supervisor will guide the student in improving critical thinking, writing, and research skills, the master’s student is expected to demonstrate independence between feedback sessions. Please also note that the ability to read and write academic English is a prerequisite for this master dissertation.
Outcome:
While the scope, format, and outcome of the dissertation (a written master dissertation, with or without a design component, such as a documentary video or a final exhibition) depend on the topic and the perspective chosen, the dissertation should become a focused, case-based approach that enriches the architectural field both historiographically and conceptually.
Regardless of the student’s choice to include a design component or not, the written component should not exceed 10,000 words and should be well complemented by a graphic apparatus encompassing, for instance, photos, maps, diagrams, and more.
Other:
If you have questions about the studio, feel free to email me.
Students interested in applying are encouraged to submit a motivation letter via email by Friday June 19.
Selected References:
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Benzecry, Claudio E. The Perfect Fit. University of Chicago Press, 2024.
Bruckert, Michaël. “‘Follow-the-Thing’: Tracing Food Products to Chronicle Their Sociospatial Biography.” In Studying Food and Eaters: A Cocktail of Perspectives and Methods, edited by Olivier Lepiller, Tristan Fournier, Nicolas Bricas, and Muriel Figuié. Éditions Quae, 2024. https://doi.org/10.35690/978-2-7592-3664-0/c10.
Cook, Ian. “Follow the Thing: Papaya.” Antipode 36, no. 4 (2004): 642–64.
Crewe, Louise. The Geographies of Fashion. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Harvey, David. The Limits to Capital. Verso, 1999.
Hodson, Elise. “Follow the Boots: A Case Study of Design and Global Value Chains.” Journal of Design History. (2023): https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epad018.
Moore, Jason W. “The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 44, no. 3 (2017): 594–630.
Pouillard, Véronique. Paris to New York: The Transatlantic Fashion Industry in the Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press, 2021.
Notes and acknowledgements:
The master dissertation project belongs to a broader research project titled “The Architecture of Global Luxury Fashion: Tracing Leather Goods in and beyond Florence (1980s–present),” awarded by FWO, The Research Foundation – Flanders, to postdoctoral researcher Dr. Rebecca Carrai, and co-supervised by Prof. Fredie Flore and Prof. Cat Rossi (UCA, Canterbury, UK).