Disturbance grounds : an inquiry into non-equilibrium architectural states

Abstract

Fundamentally, this project pursues the concept of construction from destructive forces. It presents architectural opportunity at the physical scale of the mega-city and the time scale of the geological, advocating for a manipulation of our environment that extends architectural operation beyond our life-span, human labor, and predefined architectural program. From nature's perspective, mass material movements are one of the ways in which it deconstructs; in the case of a natural disturbance, one can observe the rebirth of material from one form to another. Geological timelines witness the entire re-composition of materials. Materiality has always been at the heart of many architectural issues, from assembly to phenomenological and economics discussion, informing the way we construct. In architecture, aggregation of material is a wide-ranging topic, but can most traditionally be thought of as stone or concrete. This thesis takes on the issues of aggregate materials at the edge of a balanced state. As this non-equilibrium state begins to suggest the very pressing concern of environmental hazards, the project speculates on a scenario that is more frequently encountered by urban populations and is increasingly well documented as instrumentation becomes more widespread and risks increase. Perhaps we can find a way to construct an architecture that changes material phasing as a response to natural geological processes. Abstracting conditions to a lab-like studio setting, the project explores the subject of aggregation and accumulation.