Other stories

Abstract

As the third millennium of the Common Era has unfolded into a new chapter of social, political, technological, and ecological complexity, the question of the Architect's capacity to address our futures implores a connection to the ability of one to navigate our pasts. As Canon rises to the surface of history--through the work we champion and the stories we espouse--it is accompanied by the ideological Mythologies it entangles. It is our responsibility not to idly assume the mantle of these Myths, and to be critical of our role in their perpetuation--a task that appeals for the investment in other stories. This thesis reflects upon our relationship to Canon, with the intention of destabilizing the relationship between an "Act" of Architecture, and the ideological ephemera with which such an Act is implicated.

Specifically, Other Stories attends to a Canon of American domesticity, and the Modern Mythologies that this Canon complicitly perpetuates--among many, a Myth of Progress, a Myth of Anthropocentricity, and a Myth of Family. Engaging through modes of curation (bookmaking) and re--presentation (drawing), the first chapter of this thesis forages for the seeds of alternative Mythologies within stories that, while belonging to this Canon, have been neglected, or forgotten, or erased. This pursuit is underpinned by an imploration for something Other: alternative threads for navigating our futures and our histories than the myopia of "Progress" and "Anthropocentricity" and "Family". The second chapter of Other Stories offers a series of conjectures that re-imagine the tenets of an American domestic Architecture through the lens of alternative Mythologies.

Taking on Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House as site, the investigation anticipates three "Other Farnsworths" that supplant "Progress" and "Anthropocentricity" and "Family" with Myths of Entropy, Rhizome, and Kin, respectively. These speculations become testing grounds for new modes of making, and communicating, architecture.