Stefan Gzyl to defend his PhD

On June 1st, 2026, at 15:00 in the Arena room, Echo Building, Stefan Gzyl will defend his dissertation titled:

The Caretaker: Reinventing domestic worlds amid collapse in Caracas

This dissertation examines Caracas as a city living through collapse. It considers Venezuela’s migratory crisis a defining trait of the country’s breakdown and takes the domestic world left behind by migrants as an entry point into the city’s collapse, examining how migrants' spaces and objects are maintained, used, or transformed.

The investigation centers on the figure of the caretaker, who manages the vast material inventory of emigration. Caretakers are part of the socio-economic ecosystem of collapse, thriving in the interstices of formal, informal, and illegal economies. Their work challenges preservation as mere suspension in time and imbues mundane tasks with symbolic meaning. In a context of migration, infrastructural failure, and precarity, the caretaker allows us to examine collapse anew, reframing it as a prolonged meanwhile, an interstitial state in which transformation and endurance are in unresolved tension.

The dissertation is structured as a series of 'caretaking stories' that bridge description, interpretation, and speculation, aiming to remain close to the lived experience of the field while opening material residues to new (architectural) possibilities. Like the contingent, shifting articulations documented in Caracas, the work is a snapshot of a historical moment in the country’s turbulent decline, articulating a broad vision of architecture’s role amid societal transitions.

(Co)promotors: Marc Schoonderbeek, Aleksandar Staničić, Vanessa Grossman

Independent members: Steven J. Jackson,  Vicente Lecuna, Eva van Roekel, Paul Vermeulen