Descendents: Research in Architecture

Abstract

This thesis investigates the relationships between projects in the form of resistance. The thesis is accompanied by a series of projects that investigate a number of resistances. These resistances spur relationships to other works in progress; descendents. The projects are a testing ground for the ideo-logical content in an architects work.

Each project we undertake is a part of a much larger whole that may or may not be a life's work, but is, certainly, an influence in the creation of coherence as we move forth in our practice. This is not to say that everything must look alike, rather it is to keep one involved in the fundamental aspects of a project that may give clues as to what you as an architect stand for. It is itself a resistance to the problems facing us as we attempt to build. Those problems that may begin to bog us down and force us to lose sight of architecture. There are many things on one's plate as a project proceeds, it is not easy to keep focus. The architect must seek aspects that put us into dialogue with those things outside that inevitably influence the specific work at hand. A way of arriving at conclusions that do not confound an architecture. I see it as being analogous to Hertzberger's discussion of warp and weft, a defined structure into which possibilities may be woven creating relationships between the elements of the architecture. This asserts a set of rules that an architect learns how to work with, and even violate. This formulation creates multiple possibilities within and outside a framework of the architect's order. The architect learns to question within the boundaries of his times, and perhaps beyond those bounds with that understanding. He learns what to ask and what not to ask; which resistances offer stimulus and which do not. The work, through time, acts as an analogue to history itself. The designer may then create with a better grasp of the full potentiality of Architecture.