New Thesis Statement

Architecture in Flux: The Ebb and Flow of Architectonic Agency

From our diurnal routines to the annual cycle of the seasons, states of flux continually shape the built world. My claim is for an architecture in tune to the ebb and flow of our lives and seasons, responding to change as we do. For example, when a human goes to sleep his/her mind is not “off” but open and active in a new and different world than when awake. Similarly, when a building “closes” for the season in a resort town, it is now open to something new. In the resort towns that I’ve been studying, many buildings go dormant for the winter months, with entire structures falling into hibernation to rest up for the next summer. This leaves an infrastructure open for the new, the possible. How can an architecture be flexible enough to fundamentally respond to change while still maintaining an identity? I’m proposing to take advantage of the dormancy of winter to create architecture that responds not only to the summer crowd of wealth and affluence, but to the needs of the year-round citizenry as well. This is not simply through a change in program and use, but a fundamental spatial and experiential shift due to the complex of external forces that shape our lives.