Temporal Cartographies

Abstract

This project addresses issues of ecological trauma by focusing on the aesthetics and cultural issues associated with it. This approach was chosen in place of suggesting technical solutions following Tim Morton's argument regarding the development of ecological thought. In short, Morton suggests that relying on technology and the solutions it affords to overcome issues such as climate change, is exactly what got us in this mess in the first place. The project also recognizes architectural representation as the tool, or medium, in which these cultural ideas can be transmitted. Following this foundation, the research began with the curation and analysis of various historic architectural precedents. These projects were selected because they exhibit distinct attitudes regarding site, the landscape, and how the architecture responds (or doesn't). These projects led to a hypothesis that design practices associated with modernism were strongly rooted in problematic cultural attitudes. They often represent an adversarial relationship between man and nature, despite now contemporary claims by Morton and Bryant that this is not how the world really functions. In order to move past these notions, the next set of collected images focuses on how complex ideas regarding mankind and the landscape are represented. These visual studies contributed to a toolkit of representational strategies which sought to suggest an alternate understanding of an architectural project and the landscape it exists within. This project specifically focuses on using the architectural drawing to communicate ideas about the material duration of various architectural characters. The research and proposal of this project relies heavily on topics discussed in the contemporary philosophical movement called "Object-Oriented Ontology" (OOO). Site plays an important role in this project representing a place of contention between global neoliberalism, the ecological trauma associated, and a critical architectural project. Based on this research, the project proposes a garden containing various architectural follies. This garden is based on new interpretations of site and landscape directly critiquing the modernist attitudes uncovered in the first collection of precedent studies. Lastly, the production of an onto-cartographic diagram represents the site as a gradient of material duration. Doing so places focus on the temporal and ontological arrangement of the proposed follies rather than emphasizing an imposed arrangement based on the logistic requirements associated with modern site planning. The project takes aim at critical contemporary issues. The topics considered in this proposal are all things that architects must start thinking about in order to shift the discipline into one that is truly ecological