PROJECT DIRECTORY

ABOUT | NIKITA RAFIKOV




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Seeing Double; Understanding Home Place
Capstone Thesis
Published as part of Honors Repository, Seeing Double is an investigation of juxtapositions and dualities of home place; the idea that layering our views, our memories, and our lives upon one another can produce the feeling of home for all. 

To speak of home is to speak of multiplicity. Home is never a singular space nor a fixed condition, but rather home, or the idea of home place, is a layering of memories, of rituals, of materials, and of emotions.

Capstone Thesis  | 2025
Ballard, WA

Project Inquiry
Capstone Thesis
Published as part of Honors Repository The first semester of the capstone year was a research phase known as Project Inquiry. As part of the Metaphysics of Light, this phase would be based around explorations of light and site. I began to be fascinated with our eyes’ optics and their role in our perception. I came focus on how we can warp our perceptions to see something more than what is already there, something I began interpreting as seeing the palimpsest of a space. With a series of light-based models, I began to explore and understand how exactly light is interpreted by our eyes. Specifically, I researched and explored binocular confusion and rivalry: how our eyes react and make sense of space when each eye sees through a different medium, seeing different spaces. These explorations led me to the concept of seeing double as an architectural condition, and began a series of drawings and explorations of warping our perspective of the site, Ballard, WA. From these explorations, I began to focus on the history of Ballard and exploring the palimpsest of all the people who have made the site their home, from the earliest indigenous settlers to refugees of historic and modern wars to the typical Seattle suburbanite. From here, the concept of my concept was born: Seeing Double; Understanding Home Place. By seeing double more than just an optical trick, but rather seeing the palimpsest of the site, I began to wonder how we can all create a home for all here in Ballard. That concept would be explored further the next semester, as part of the Capstone Thesis.

Capstone Thesis  | 2025
Ballard, WA

Ballard, WA
Capstone Thesis
Film Photography These photos are part of my trip to Ballard, WA, a small neighborhood in Seattle once known as the “Shingle Capital of the World”. The connection to the Sea, from the Ballard Locks and Bridge, to the Chinook Salmon in the water and the canoe culture of the Duwamish that once lived here can still be felt in its misty air.

Personal/Capstone Thesis  | 2025
Ballard, WA

Gathering Light
410F Options Studio: Poetics of Light
Submitted to Buildner’s Last Nuclear Bomb Memorial Competition

Team: Abdullah Alobaid, Nikita Rafikov
Moments of profound loss have shaped human history, leaving marks that endure across generations. Gathering Light is conceived as a memorial to the nuclear bomb that acknowledges this collective trauma. Rather than recounting destruction, the project focuses on the symbol of resilience: using the space as a vessel for remembrance and shared empathy.


Competition/Academic | 2024
White Sands National Park, NM

Stitches
410F Options Studio: Poetics of Light
Team: Abdullah Alobaid, Nikita Rafikov
This was the first iteration of the nuclear bomb memorial conceptualized as part of the Poetics of Light studio. The concept would eventually evolve into Gathering Light.


Academic | 2024
White Sands National Park, NM

Nuclear Memorial Concept Charettes 
410F Options Studio: Poetics of Light

Given just a week to conceptualize three ways to imagine a memorial to the nuclear bomb, these short charettes represent my initial ideas and key thought processes behind what felt like the essential ideas for such a heavy memorial. I found my focus on ideas that refute human ego and the pain it causes, creating architecture that embraces peace as something to be constantly nurtured, and evoking the emotions of the terror of being a survivor of a nuclear bomb.

Academic | 2024
White Sands National Park, NM

Water at White Sands
410F Options Studio: Poetics of Light
Team: Mimi McVey, Luis Morales, Nikita Rafikov
Preliminary explorations of the site conditions of White Sands National Park, exploring the water condition on the site and the ancient Lake Otero, the site of the earliest evidence of human existence in the Americas and the cause for the gypsum dunes of Whites Sands today.


Academic | 2024
White Sands National Park, NM

Orange Panorama
ARC330: On Light and Lighting
Team: Luis Morales, Angelica Santana, Nikita Rafikov
Conceptualized as a new art gallery in the historic Al Beadle studio in Phoenix, this gallery is divided into spaces of light, darkness, and color. Each space takes you on a journey of light as you explore the art and architecture within. The layout is designed to be circumambulated, allowing visitors to witness the panoramic views of the Al Beadle studio as they explore the art within.


Academic | 2024
Phoenix, AZ

Twirling Lamp
ARC330: On Light and Lighting

This lamp was made as part of the On Light and Lighting class, designed to be an outdoor lamp, the wings on the lamp shade grab passing breezes and twirl the lamp to create a playful ambience.


Academic/Personal | 2024
Phoenix, AZ

Decentralizing the Mahalla
PLG496D: International Planning

As part of a planning course covering urban planning, both the issues (informal settlements, lack of good infrastructure), as well as the innovative solutions that are influencing urban planning in the Global North, this Urban Improvement Action Plan takes a look at culturally significant urban social organizations called Mahallas once common in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and begins to reimagine them for the modern city.


Academic | 2024
Phoenix, AZ

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