Toward an architecture of memory : a waterfront museum in East Boston

Abstract

It is the claim of this thesis that our society is undergoing a change as profound as the mechanical revolution which gave rise to modernism. An increasingly complex world demands an equally complex architecture. Not spacial complexity, necessarily, but rather semantic complexity is sought. This issue is explored through the design of a museum of Boston harbor on an East Boston waterfront site. The history of the site, its East Boston neighborhood, and the Boston waterfront are used as sources for the design. References are combined through the devices of bricolage, layering, and juxtaposition.