Loomings: the sleep of reason produces monsters

Abstract

To Architect is to always work with others. Working with others, though, can be hell, as friction abounds in the process of multiple voices and stances coalescing into one.

I design as a form of co-authorship, a processional lineage of the works of others. I build off of foundations previously laid, and am never alone in this process, for there is always someone looking over my shoulder. The things that I create enter into dialogues with the relics and artifacts that reside in the archives of architectural knowledge. In this sense, me and my ghosts live in a symbiotic relationship. I steal their work and mutate it into a new context, a different proposition, an optimistic visioning; in turn, they get to live on as afterimage.

This thesis is an exploration, instantiation and reflection on my own personal design method as I have come to understand how I work in graduate school. It is both a method and an attitude or ethos towards design. In working through this stance, one enters into active participation in architecture.

I have chosen a number of projects that haunt me to use as a basis for this project. I do not run from ghosts, but instead embrace living amongst them. These are all remnants of utopias. These projects all have something to say about pragmatism, or idealism, or sometimes both. They are ideologically fraught, some saying something about place, some about polis, about politics, about being. They are all housing projects. They all have something to say about being together. They all are about collectivity; what can architecture say about the city? Is architecture distinct from city? How will we all be together? What is the space between us? What is this sea, and how did we become stranded together apart on separate islands?

These projects are all massive. They all have much to signify. They purport and carry their cumbersome baggage as pilgrims. Together we set out to sea so as to salvage a design method of rework from the murky depths.