(Post)Colonial Tectonics: reflections on relations in Indigenous spatial practice between the Beautiful Waters and Willow River

I find myself studying architecture in Cambridge, Ontario, a settler on lands stewarded by the Neutral, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples for countless generations, on a tract following the Grand River (or Willow River) which was promised to the Six Nations. I came here from Toronto (or Tkaronto) - on the shores of Lake Ontario (or Beautiful Waters) - the territory of Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee communities throughout time, “purchased” by British settlers from the Mississaugas of the Credit River. The settler view of these two agreements, each covering vast swaths of territory, tends to obscure the nature of the Indigenous relationships to land which treaty-making was designed to protect. These erasures have been used to justify the colonial practices which architecture is embedded in, such as clear-cutting and urban sprawl, which disrupted and continue to disrupt reciprocal relationships to land in these places between the river and the lake. This thesis is an attempt to move past passive understandings of these disruptions by actively reading this colonial milieu and recognizing the work Indigenous peoples are doing to renew these relations in urban areas. The work takes the form of a written collection of reflections, analyses, and speculations on an array of stories, gatherings, art pieces, and structures crafted by Indigenous leaders and in some cases supported by settler allies. Ranging in duration, the works I study creatively undermine imposed spatial orders by carefully constructing resurgent relations between community, culture, tradition, environment, and space. By engaging with these practices, I hope to begin a longer process of walking on, looking at, and designing in these places in a better way

Contemporary Surface Architecture : The correspondence between surface and space

This thesis aims to investigate aspects of contemporary architecture that concentrate on the role of surface, in sense of demateriality. The word 'demateriality' denotes the spatiality rather than a physical substance; it does not refer to the actual absence of matter or the abolishment of the solid materials of construction. Rather it describes the phenomenal perception of a particular spatialisation that the surface creates through either the way it is formed or through the optical quality of its materials. The terms surface and surface architecture discussed in this thesis thus have specific meanings beyond the generally received understanding of 'architectural surface', 'material surface' and so on. What is focused on is the particular role of surface architecture as a spatial boundary, especially between inside and outside spaces. In this context, the research aims to explore the correspondence between the surface and space, between the forms of the surface and the experience that they induce. As a programme of PhD with design, this research includes both theoretical and practical approaches, including a design research project supported by an extensive literature review and theoretical argument. The thesis mainly consists of five parts. It begins from an Introduction including subject and questions, context, definition and methodology of the research. Chapter One is about a critical review of history of surface-space architecture, both in theory and design will be considered first. This will mainly focus on the architecture of 20th century modernism. Chapter Two focus on contemporary theories and practices of surface architecture, as well as the conception of surface in other intellectual areas such as philosophy and cultural theory. Based on a rigorous theoretical framework built by the historical and contemporary research, a series of design works will be developed in Chapter Three, and attempt to offer a further understanding and rethinking of the knowledge gained from the first phase. Finally, at the end of the thesis, there is a brief Conclusion

Vimana: A Crisis of Translation

The architecture of the Hindu temple, as we know it today, has become a caricature of applied style and a theater for rituals rather than the symbolic representation of the core concepts of Hinduism. There is a disconnection between the beliefs and their translation into architecture, which has resulted in a dissolution and erosion of the temple as a vehicle for the ritual spiritual journey1. The temple is built on a literal and conceptual framework of core essential elements such as the sanctum sanctorum, the roof, the plinth, its orientation on earth, and its function to, metaphorically, transport people from earth to the sky. Lost in this apparent evocation is the ability for the architecture to transmit and provide a permanent built monument to the universe and a conduit for the individual’s soul to realize moksha (ultimate enlightenment). This thesis proposes to design a possible new evolution of the Hindu temple through the identification, extraction, and redefinition of Hindu mythology, cosmology, ritual, architectural tectonics of the temple, and the vimana as a machine. The word vimana first refers to an ancient aircraft extensively documented in ancient Indian scriptures that predate Hindu temples2, translated through history to mean mythological flying palace/chariot, and then phased into temple architectural vocabulary to mean the monumental roof structure over the sanctum. The injection of the vimana’s mechanistic origins back into the temple typology will result in what can be interpreted as a pre-historic future architecture. The ambition for the architecture is to create a meaningful translation of the core essential elements of the Hindu temple and the prehistory of the vimana that will set the groundwork for the temporal continuity of its typology. This thesis may or may not operate as a prototypical framework of the Hindu temple where the essential elements are often combined to communicate its place on earth regardless of context or site

The search for hybrid tectonics in contemporary African architecture: encounters between the global and the local

This thesis is based on the proposition that there is an emerging phenomenon of tectonic hybridisation in contemporary architecture in Africa where global and local ways of making are being combined. A growing awareness of this tendency was informed by an extended period of practicing, teaching, and re - searching architectural technology in Africa. I embarked on a directed search for examples that demonstrate this, but I soon realised that they are shaped by ongoing tectonic transitions that highlight the encounters between techno and technē, between the global and the local, and between the global North and the global South. These binaries can and should be contested, and this study seeks to understand the underpinnings and tectonic strategies of buildings that demonstrate evidence of this contestation. The phenomenon of tectonic hybridisation was interrogated as a case study using mixed methods consisting of literature reviews, the identification, investigation and cataloguing of works, and the analysis of key projects through primary sources and visual research methods. The literature review explored different positions related to technē, technology and tectonics, and consid - ered theories that range from Bhabha's reading of hybridisation to Frampton, Lefaivre and Tzonis' development of Critical Regionalism. In parallel, a cata - logue of buildings that exhibit a tendency towards hybridisation was produced and developed into an open access website. Subsequent analysis of this un - covered common strategies across projects which could be located within the spectrum of global and local tectonics. Further examination revealed buildings that share similar tectonic strategies, which often coalesce into constellations, and key projects within these were identified for more detailed investigation. Data was gathered through personal interviews with the architects, site visits, seminars, additional literature review, and in some instances, through co-pro - duction. The data was then analysed further through cross-comparison in the form of tables, discursive textual comparison, and visual research methods. As a result of these investigations, a significant number of works that signal a shift towards hybridisation are revealed. Further analysis clarifies their tectonic strategies, their ethical underpinnings, and how they relate to this transitional shift. A set of criteria is proposed as a measure for recognising, studying, and evaluating contemporary architecture in Africa. The prospect of this work is to extend the field into the further investigation of hybrid tectonics

Translations of culture and identity : a study of Internet use in the Haitian community

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-95).Despite the reality of the digital divide, over the years many bridges have been built over this chasm; diverse people of diverse backgrounds, cultures and countries utilize computers and their inherent technologies. One of the communities that use the Internet is the Haitian community. A detailed study on what the Haitian community - citizens and those of the Diaspora - finds in the Internet, what they make of this tool and how they relate its possibilities to themselves will reveal a profusion of information about both the Haitian culture and about the Internet. This ethnographic research will shed light on how useful the Internet is to this particular community. These findings may be used to engineer design that is more specific to the needs of this community. This 'culturized' study is presented through the lens of theoretical frameworks that view the user as playing a dominant role in defining the nature, scope and functions of the technology. This research hopes to focus on users and the way in which they shape the Internet media to have meaning in their everyday life and culture. The research examines the way in which the role of the technology is shaped within the domestic environment - how it is manipulated to compliment existing patterns of behavior and routine. The purpose of this research is to ask what domestic Internet users do with their media and how they construct it as meaningful in the existing network of everyday life. A qualitative approach has been adopted, which prioritizes the role of the user.by Johanne A. Blain.S.M

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

PROTOTYPING PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES : Reading Frank Gehry’s experiments through Deleuze and Guattari

This thesis attempts to describe and interpret the design practice of an American architect, Frank O. Gehry through concepts developed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaborator, French psychotherapist, philosopher and activist, Félix Guattari. At the same time, prototyping a website-based interactive project called PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES, it explores an alternative form for the Doctoral thesis. In addition to connections with visual arts, such as painting and cinema, the experimental project PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES includes references to concepts and phenomena from various areas of knowledge revealing distinctive, unusual qualities of Gehry’s creative approach in the production of design artefacts. The thesis documents and discusses means of representation in architectural design fused into the specific creative culture of Frank O. Gehry. It notices that the discourse in architectural theory and practice, often neglects what occurs on a particular molecular level of the architectural design process. It shows that elements of micro-level of design procedures render Gehry’s idiosyncratic design phenomena intelligible and perceptible in a new way. It claims that it has been possible because Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts become perceptibly operational in the interpretation of such phenomena, at the level of elementary units of Gehry’s design procedures. Moreover, through this close-up perspective, the thesis’ investigations identify certain similarities in the operational modes of the architect and the painter. It demonstrates how Gehry, who has anchored his interest in painting, and specifically in what he defined as ‘immediacy in painting,’ was able to transform the practice of architectural drawing from projective to a cognitive one. It also shows, how the architect re-defines the commonly applied projective geometries from passive, arbitrary role to an active agent, and how the architect links drawing practice with the construction process on a new, almost palpable level. While stressing its the manual character, the thesis demonstrates that Gehry’s explorative culture of challenging means of representation employed in architectural design production facilitates the re-disciplining of architecture culminating in the integration of the CATIA system in the design procedures. This study of Gehry’s design actions and strategies can help the reader to understand the significance of experimental and intuitive design practices. The thesis proposes the Deleuzian interpretation of Gehry’s experiments in the aesthetics of design thinking and acting. It renders perceptions of patterns, according to which, other design practices can operate