Plain objects

Abstract

Given the renewed status of the object in contemporary architectural discourse, this thesis explores the object's potential to participate in urban-scale field conditions despite its singularity and perceived autonomy from surrounding context. It proposes a strategy of object-making that privileges two faces as a means to highlight the parallel opposition that exists between the perimeter and core of a typical city block, and the binary conditions that occur as a result of this divide. The emphasis on two faces also creates the effect of flatness, challenging the three-dimensional quality of objects by defining them with twodimensional figures. The scenario of an expanding urban university campus, specifically the expansion of New York University in lower Manhattan, is used as the case study. The thesis accepts the theory that the knowledge economy has replaced industry in driving the socioeconomic and urban development of 21st-century cities, and that universities, a key player, must grow to stay competitive. The academic campus often functions like a city in microcosm, requiring its own services and infrastructure, and having to balance individual identity with a collective sense of place. At the same time, its growth inevitably conflicts with the communities that occupy the property in question. The two-faced formal device seeks to call out this simultaneous parallel and opposition, and argues for the object's potential to participate both in semiotics and abstract field conditions.