under observation : a site of totality in uncertain futures

Abstract

This thesis asks how we can integrate ourselves into the unforgiving yet susceptible cosmology of our universe, a feat we have repeatedly failed to do in recent history. Through technological advancement, we have abstracted, pixelated, consumed, and mined our world to irreversible measures, as well as distanced ourselves from what used to be a crucial symbiotic relationship between land and people. Therefore, it is necessary for us as humans to reestablish our relationship to our planet and beyond. It does so by tracking three recurrences of one event in one site over the course of one millennium, narrating changing conditions in landscape, climate, culture, and production while reclaiming the landscape for unaccounted voices in the western histories through representation and intervention.

The event, the viewing of the future total solar eclipse, brings together land and space within its path of totality, and draws mass-touristic migrations to its remote yet ideal sighting-location. Throughout history, eclipses have been pivotal tipping points, for better or for worse. In the presence of total eclipses, armies have dropped their weapons and declared truces, empire boundaries have been determined and marked, and indigenous populations have even been duped by colonizing powers. In an increasingly uncertain future, these are important moments of pause, reflection, and perhaps even optimism. And now, the viewing of the total solar eclipse exists as a highly-anticipated and -attended celestial-cultural event that requires a form of architectural-event intervention to support this particular experience.

While several eclipses happen around the world each decade, making them somewhat ubiquitous phenomenon in our global age, it typically takes about 360 years for a total eclipse path to re-land in the same location. Therefore, the viewing of the total solar eclipse becomes the framework for selecting a specific place and tracking it over long time spans, one wrought with years of violence to both the land (an abandoned pit mine in Northern Nevada) and its people (the Shoshone tribe). It becomes the place where time and space collide, where event-site and production-site become one and the same, where maybe things can change.