Thesis Concept Sketch #1

I am as yet undecided on the nature of my thesis project, and think it's difficult simply wading through the large knowledge bases and improvised sets we've accumulated through our time in studio to then settle and choose a focused area of thought to fully elaborate. I've chosen to start at least initially with words in the articulation of my ideas. Even the way I consider projects has abstracted in some cases or evolved to become more aware and inclusive of the critical qualities or characteristics exhibited in a space and readable as text. Lately I have been of the opinion that the city and the built environment exist partly as a celebration of life but also as systems of controlling the population, and permeate as the results of imperial or conquering forces throughout our culture, subject to our violent history. The coordination of these systems of life and the upturning of their monetary foundation through the global recession may be something we're witnessing.

Some of these controlling measures are in terms of surveillance or the manipulation of fear tied to a war-ridden or authoritatively uncertain state. Rural, empty contexts or those closer to nature are considered in some regard the escapist option in a world attempting to come together, but electronic connectivity changes the scale at which global life is to be considered and brings a realm of simultaneous events to a single virtual location. The materials under consideration are no longer physical in nature but are also ideological, spiritual, or subjective. The way we place ourselves within and define those boundaries since ancient times have served as cornerstones of the public realm and an open discourse gaurantees a healthy progression. The structures and hierarchies that oversaw the rule of kingdoms and civilizations were manifest and brought to a height in the creation of architecture for functional as well as symbolic purposes to further a particular idea or emerging concept. Today the demands of environmental protection and the growth of the sustainability movement worldwide, in some ways place the needs of the planet above those of the population, claiming ecological salvation as the primary impetus and charge to humankind in the 21st century. The overdependence on technology may have negatively affected our approach to systems thought, as the broad spectrum of experience is inevitably condensed to a prescriptive path. Cleaning up the damage caused in past years strikes to the core of questioning the way we live. After our enormous leaps in technological development, we are left with discovering an ecological responsibility to simultaneously generate and maintain.

Response: How To Draw Up A Project

In Jose Luis Mateo's article, architecture takes on a variety of elements, frameworks, and forms that apply to physical objects as well as to conceptual references of space that encapsulate those bodies, so-called phantom functions that adopt subsequent specialized modifications. By gauging the physical potentialities of material functions, analogies such as service networks or layers of skin membranes to model architectural action stress the importance of conceptualizing space in a rudimentary structure that is still subject to natural laws. Such a perspective lends a considerable utility in the attempt to modulate energy flows and movements between given groups of these building blocks, be they even of subatomically elementary or cosmically massive scales.

A common analogy in architectural design is the use of biological organisms to model behavior of systems comprised by living things, such as trees, in the development of sequential production decisions. I'm interested in the so-called natural selection process that are undergone in simulation by the architect or designer in consideration of these social systems and traditions over time, and the selection of a certain model as being a welcome replacement or representing a valid approximation of a real-life scenario. Surely the question of architecture engenders a cornucopia of problems and our anticipation of their impact in scope is going to push the theoretical heights of computation in the coming years. The number of miscalculations that can occur is astounding, and keeping estimated accounts or designs in an open fashion makes sure that those anomalies can be anticipated and accomodated for. The unpredictable aspects of human societies seem to be most indicative of the quality of life, winding in its way.