Tuesday, September 28, 2010

[place].

I've been reading articles on place and experience, and am attaching to certain arguments presented by J. Gillis and B. D. Wortham-Galvin (among others, including Norberg-Schulz). When framing the thesis as site exercise, I'm trying to consider the mind, and how space exists in both the physical and emotive sense. Gillis discusses how the people we surround ourselves with and model our lives by (families specifically) are really separate entities. One is physical, the other is a construct. Similarly, Wortham-Galvin describes this theme in terms of place- that place is both physical space and the mental associations that come with. Further, Norberg-Schulz discusses that place is composed of both "structure" and "character", again referring to the doubled sided construct of space. I feel the site for my thesis then is both one that is real and one that is imagined/constructed/experienced. The site seems to unquestionably need dual dimensions.

*J. Gillis, "A World of Their Own Making"
*B. D. Wortham-Galvin, "Mythologies of Placemaking"
*Norberg-Schulz, "Genius Loci"

Friday, September 10, 2010

[reflections].

Following the first pinup of the year, I wanted to distill comments brought up in the critique and also to talk through ideas on moving the work forward.

First, I seem to be struggling to define a clear objective of this year's research. For this past project, I spent more thought on the house/project itself, rather than the larger conceptual frameworks that surrounded the work. Therefore, I felt a bit behind not having nailed down these concepts, not having a site/region chosen, and not having worked through some of the specifics. I realize that a thesis is not a studio project- but rather a set of ideas and topics of discovery that might produce 10+ studio projects. So, reframing, perhaps I'm just having a difficult time knowing how specific I should be at this point in the process, or how general my ideas should come across.

Following the discussion on Wednesday, I am also concerned that my topic is not original enough. There is a large body of work regarding memory and space, which causes me to further question the originality of this topic and its worth as a U of M thesis project.

Conversation was raised as to the purpose of architecture in the realm of memory that I feel is important to restate here. Should architecture act as a repository of memory or a space to elicit memory? (eliciting memory seemed to have the panel more excited).

Looking ahead, I now need to proceed with the DEMO assignment to capture ideas on how to break the work down and build it anew.