Lubricated City

Undergraduate thesis project exploring the programmatic language of free trade urbanism in VR. Using the visual language of free trade zone (FTZ) marketing videos, Lubricated City flips the narrative to focus on the spatial lives of the migrant laborers who allow these cities to exist and turn a profit, but who are relegated to their margins, both physically and otherwise. Users move from construction sites in the shining commercial centers to dormitories on the outskirts of town on employer-provided buses, all in the suspiciously clean video game aesthetic offered by FTZ trailers.