beginnings of time-based geographic section drawings.

lower mississippi. south of cairo. sections as series down river. disintegration of sidewalls through flows. growth of information collection down stream.

moving down the River.

i literally have dreams about it. floating down this hugely massive entity that pulls information from place and people and transports it hundreds of miles away. ive always wanted more of a physical relationship to the River.

i have been gathering data from everywhere and not knowing what to do with it. not physically making the connections with the things id been absorbing. i hadnt been defining my architecture and taking responsibility for it with the same valor as i am trying to do for my class. . .

i hadnt been thinking of this movement down the River as a communicating watercraft. at least in a way that was exciting.

a relationship/interactions with history. culture. place. people. a sensual experience with information. knowledge. education. protoarchitecture as a method of storing that data.

i dont know how i just realized this.

spirit of humor

"it is comical to use ones quest for the ineffable Other as an excuse for ignoring other peoples quite different quests. it is comical to think that anyone could transcend the quest for happiness, to think that any theory could be more than a means to happiness, that there is something called Truth which transcends pleasure and pain."

"we all just stand for ourselves, equal inhabitants of a paradise of individuals in which everybody has the right to be understood, but nobody has the right to rule."

"heidegger, kundera, and dickens." essays on heidegger and others. richard rorty

nature and culture

"there are no natural contexts in and around new orleans and there have not been since humans entered the region. accepting all humans, both past and present, western or native, as agents of change and not as part of nature reminds us that the gulf between us and them, past and present is perhaps not as wide as we think. we can no longer act as if there is a clear distinction between nature and culture. to speak of natural history requires an understanding of human actions and to write human history demands an appreciation of nature and its influence. new orleans is not just a colonial or post colonial city, new orleans is a sum of all its past. we cannot forget that humans acting as a part of, not apart from the environment shaped this past."

transforming new orleans and its environs : centuries of change. craig colten

seismographic images.

in order to understand the geological layers of the earth, seismic surveys are conducted by creating shock waves and interpreting their results. events and explosions induce undulations which reflect the subsurface formations, then recorded upon return to the surface. these images portray the layers of rock and sediment deposition, their anomalies being caused by pockets of hydrocarbons, ie oil or natural gas.

i have been attempting to understand the River and its influences. our desire as well as need to control it... authority as a perspectival point that actively impacts that which surrounds it. we seek to control our natural world precisely because we lack that control of our own lives.

so, the historical folding of the external world. a system that continuously reinforms the folding and unfolding of time and event. the idea that mother nature is restricted, the tension visible in the limitations placed on the body. articulation of the surfaces shifting and responding to one another. reacting to stresses. oscillations. restrictions. events. rebuilding the body on its own physical traces.

form making again.

reverted back to the comfort zone of familiarity. no good.

thesis abstract

Throughout the technological advances of humanity, architecture has been the means with which we can consider previous generations, understand their priorities, trials, and ethics. Places with past look to buildings to tell their stories; however, what is to be said for those places that cannot be understood in the same contextual dialogue? What sort of translation is necessary to register the changes and developments in energies? When the future reminisces, what will exist in order to understand today? I am looking to define a more particular architecture that is directly responsive to the conditions as they are – reacting to the relations between organisms and their environment as well as the dynamics and physical history of the earth.

Over its existence, the landscape of southern Louisiana has prevailed as a palimpsest of history, gradients of soil deposition registering a subsurface cultural diversity different from the conditions above. Throughout millennia, the meandering courses of the Mississippi River have scoured the surface of the earth, repeatedly shifting, leaving traces of geological histories embedded within the state. This history lies dormant, buried beneath the tides and currents, the beauty shadowed by the muddy waters and the people on the surface blinded by the darkness. The actions, thoughts, ideals, and opinions fundamental to a Country lie suspended in these layers – surfaces of past supporting a society continually less aware. Amidst the stratum, migration of underlying energies leaves traces and residues behind, fusing as they settle in sought reservoirs. The River, an omnipresent power to view, reveal, transform, and challenge that which it alone can see, is the viable catalyst for exposure.

Throughout the recent centuries, the Country has attempted to solidify the River’s flow. Previously, the changing courses of the River have varied as much as the identities now spread throughout the Country. The perceived authority demonstrated by the Country has established a screen of normalcy, shielding the current inhabitants from the traumas of vulnerability. Today, the will to power propels the controlled remnants of present cultures into the Gulf; here, they vanish into open seas, preventing their former proliferation as a wetland barrier dividing the powers of multiple worlds. The control of the Country eradicates the barrier that formerly protected the Country itself.

The contextual surfaces in which the River is embedded currently hold the flows in place. Barriers and control structures attempt to keep the waters at bay, the muddy divergences in check. The growth and survival of wetland conditions are suffocating in the River’s restriction. Still, the River will never permanently settle into one path – something of this magnitude, energy, intensity, and lure cannot be subdued. The River was never meant to be constrained. I aim to unlock the guidance and energies latent in these surfaces of past; I aspire to develop a system of unfolding these layers, utilizing the unexpressed reality found in the cultural and physical histories, to inform sympathetic architectural territories. In my eyes, the River and its future existence are the articulation of the varied, coinciding, interwoven history.