An erratic act : a solo descent into an altered landscape

Abstract

An erratic, in geology, is a rock that differs in shape and size from those native to its location, often moved by glaciers over significantly large distances. The rock is deposited in a new location when the carrying ice melts and leaves it in its wake. It is matter out of place, but somehow of the place. An erratic bears a curious likeness to Architecture-often an artifact from outside, carried on a commission. The site of inquiry is a recently decommissioned granite quarry on coastal Maine, in the small town of Stonington. If things take their usual course, the old quarry is up for either a reclamatory cover-up or abandonment. The thesis considers the afterlife of this altered landscape through the workings of a singular, external agent, an architect, or more appropriately, a student of the discipline. It's a staging of solo acts in the wake of an extractivist history with its own numerous actors and stakeholders. What does it take to create a room for one's self in this abandon, and more fittingly perhaps in Architecture? The thesis embodies authorship as a temporality, whereby works are often generated in series, or in parallel between different mediums, and offers a critique of its methods through their accumulation.