Graduation Year

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.Arch.

Degree Granting Department

Architecture and Community Design

Major Professor

Mark Weston, M.Arch.

Keywords

architecture, art, cinema, film, photography

Abstract

The products of vehicular transportation have led the modern traveler into a crisis of place. The modern journey that is held within ceaseless flux, confine movement to edges facilitating prompt passage yet negating active participation. These edges govern movement, highlighting points of destination while simultaneously obscuring our journey in between travels. The limited participation and extended observation of one's place within the concurring boundaries renders the senses dormant, causing passivity and reluctance to participate or communicate with the city. These lines of movement, demanding our attention toward beginning and end but omitting the middle, transforms the city, home, and place into the background at which movement seizes the foreground. If stability and opportunities for interruption is not made attainable to the modern traveler, one's sense of place will become blurred much like the perceived image of place occurring behind the window of our automobile. There must be a juxtaposition of the mechanical and instinctual experience in the modern travel with qualities that entice all human sensibilities. Elevating these grounded qualities of place into the traveled path will elevate the character of place against the pressure of movement, preserving the memory of place against the terror of forgetting.

Qualities of architecture and urban conditions have collapsed against the swift forces of modern travel. Contextual information must arise above the ferocity of the travelers movement to supply the traveling perceiver with opportunities of interruption and introspection on place. Inscribing contextual information into the modern journey will awaken the senses, reaffirming memory of place in order that the essence of place can be reestablished within its cultural and physical context. These interjected moments of knowing will reposition the perceiving traveler within the mental as well as bodily context of the city, home, and overall environment.

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