Framing Architecture

The following thesis is comprised of a pair of projects focused on the making of architecture through the concept of framing. The work was conducted at the Academia d'Architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland, under the direction of Peter Zumthor, Miguel Kreisler and Myriam Sterling, emphasizing the relationship between ordered structures and contextual propriety. The making of architecture is inherently most pure when approached as the subtraction of unnecessary elements and a distillation of what is required for a specific program on a particular site. Life is given to structure through habitation; therefore the senses of the inhabitant must be engaged through interaction with the philosophical and tectonic elements of a place. In this didactic, the structure is made complete by its inhabitation and it completes the sensory framing of place by establishing the vantage point of the inhabitant. The confluence of inhabiting space and marking place together result in an architecture of experience.