The Architecture of Concrete

Abstract

The ETD presented is but a simplistic representation of the time spent pursuing a proposition: what is the architecture of concrete? The timeline began in the Fall Semester of 2012 in Alexandria Virginia and ended as a formal built presentation on site to the committee in June of 2016. In its incipient form the thesis began with traditional and instructive methods involving ideas and theory. The ideas were refined by demonstration of the repertoire of tools available to an architect: hand drawings, physical models of different scales using a variety of media implicating concrete, and modern digital models transcending scale. Architecture requires that the tools, drawings, and models used in architecture respond to the site. To understand the site, I analyzed the site via various metrics, senses, and sensibilities. Upon further discussion, investigation, and opportunity, the committee allowed my proposition to transform itself into the architecture of concrete via the process of the art of building. The process lasted over two and a half years upon which I lived on site until the thesis was complete.