revised.

Throughout the technological advances of humanity, architecture has been a means with which we can consider previous generations, understand their priorities, trials, and ethics. Each investigation into these histories provides an interpretation of that particular shape of the contemporary, the customs and methods concerning the time for cultivation. The attempt to reconnect fragments of past, legacies of former civilizations and moments in earthly existence, is the antithesis to defining an understanding of our present. However, in order to place the works being realized today, we must also articulate the state of the here and now and, consequentially, inquire into that condition as a force shaping these actions. Endless amounts of information and turbulent eddies of correspondence pervade within present humanity. The availability of pedagogical details and the potential alacrity of the discussion encourage a deep consideration of the implications arising with each endeavor. As saturation of knowledge provides an understanding hidden within established histories, I aim to contribute an architecture that is responsive to the conditions as they are – reacting to the force of the contemporary.

Over its existence, the landscape of southern Louisiana has prevailed as a palimpsest of history, gradients of soil deposition registering the varied energies influencing conditional surface development. Throughout millennia, the meandering courses of the Mississippi River have scoured the crust of the earth, repeatedly shifting, leaving traces of geological histories embedded within the state. Throughout the recent centuries, the developments and technologies of our civilization have attempted to solidify the River’s flow. A system of control propels the perpetual current, the remnants of place along with it, out into the gulf, preventing the deposition of sediment and the former proliferation of the resultant wetland barrier. The growth and survival of these wetland conditions, the shield that previously protected this southern state, is suffocating in the River’s restriction. The evolution of the contemporary, the environment for the contribution of this culture, provides the foundation for an imaginative and developmental form of architectural investigation.

Capitalizing on the flood of information and persistence of data inquisition, the condition of this time emboldens a burgeoning record of possibilities; nature and culture are mutually reliant in the current aesthetic. The capacity to investigate natural history demands an appreciation of human energies; simultaneously, the construction of a continued human existence requires an understanding of nature and its guidance. The ever - present determination of communication and the resultant collaborative endeavors across disciplines, including but not exclusive to physical boundaries, stimulates that potential. I am working to develop a structure of unfolding these layers of cultural and physical history, attempting to understand the forces that shape them, and subsequently using the direction latent in these surfaces of past to inform sympathetic architectural territories. The diversity of available information in conjunction with a desire for contextual appreciation provide an alternative means of articulating the work of the present. Inventive architectural practices and unrestricted aesthetic responses nurture the location of ideas within the flow of contemporary culture.