Memes have become a vernacular of the digital age—fluid, participatory, and widely distributed. These fragments of visual culture, often in the form of images or short-form videos, compress complex sentiments into shareable formats. They not only reflect but also construct cultural moods, ideologies, and generational humor. In this studio, we will treat memes not as disposable entertainment, but as potent social artifacts that encode spatial, temporal, and political dynamics.

Echoing the pedagogical lens of Venturi, Scott Brown, and their students in Learning from Las Vegas, this course asks: what can we learn from memes as a form of contemporary signage? Can memes, like architecture, be read as spatial texts—sites where cultural meaning is produced, layered, and contested?

We begin with a series of analytical exercises that deconstruct the anatomy of memes. Students will examine their visual rhetoric, cultural context, temporal rhythms, and spatial implications. “Meme Analysis” will be introduced as a tool to dissect the structure and subtext of short-form media, revealing how internet culture indexes collective anxieties, aspirations, and critiques.

From analysis, we move toward projection. Students will translate the compressed semiotics of memes into speculative spatial expressions. Through digital and analog techniques—modeling, mapping, scripting, and layering—students will develop spatial constructs that respond to the logics of virality, irony, and saturation. These projects will not illustrate memes literally, but rather extract their cultural vectors and re-materialize them through architectural form, atmosphere, and sequence.

The studio culminates in the design of a “Meme Museum”—a physical or virtual environment that recontextualizes internet culture as an immersive spatial experience. Each student will create an interpretive architecture that synthesizes their research into a navigable, multi-sensory encounter. These museums will not only curate meme culture but challenge the limits of representation, permanence, and authorship in the digital age.