Urban Celebration

This Thesis looks at the transformative nature of Carnival in Trinidad on the city of Port-of-Spain. Carnival in Trinidad embodies a unique cultural confluence that is born from the conjoined European, African, Indian and modern West Indian narratives that shape the Caribbean consciousness. The transformation that occurs during Carnival is of a civic, personal and perhaps even spiritual nature. This thesis will explore in depth the urban artifices of Carnival, looking at the anatomy of the festival itself, that is, the history, characters, places and moving parts that comprise its celebration in the city. Through this exploration of masquerade and urbanism, I hope to create a realistic understanding of the syncretic nature of this festival and its emancipating role in West Indian society.

Carnival in Trinidad evolved as a vehicle of emancipation for the ex-slaves of the society. Its celebration is a centrifugal force within the society; drawing on the many parallel histories of the island and bursting onto the streets in the ecstatic celebration of a unified myth and reality. The problems of identity, spatial ownership and belonging that are inherent to the post colonial mind, on the days of Carnival are temporarily non-existent. This thesis therefore aims to create the beginning of an new urban understanding of Trinidad that is rooted in Caribbean history and Caribbean behaviour, rather than in borrowed attitudes and fractured codes.

Link to site: http://urbancelebration.blogspot.com/

Slow Food for Thought

A Food and Architecture Blog

Western society is experiencing an unprecedented food revolution. A heightened awareness of globalized food production, local sustainability and loss of arable land to urban centers has become the catalyst to transform the current way of thinking. Currently, more than 50% of the food consumed in the city of Toronto is imported from Florida, California and Mexico, and travels an average of 1300 km . At the neighbourhood level, the emergence of farmers markets and community shared agriculture programs, as well as the voices of local celebrity chefs intoning the importance of local food sources are creating greater awareness of what we eat and where our food comes from.

This thesis strives, for better or for worse, to reconnect the inhabitants of Toronto with the land.

36 Strategems Towards a People’s Modernity

The design thesis is sited along the Shanghai Bund in China. It pursues an alternative modernity that is quintessentially Chinese by developing a design approach specific to the local imperatives and the contextual condition. This is achieved by first examining the development of Shanghai’s modernity, traditional construction principles, and narratives inherent to the site. Secondly, program components are reorganized for a tactical design application. The thesis concludes with a time-based and event-driven collective space that is sensitive to local culture while aiming to seed participation towards a local modernity.

The One Minute Theatre: Allan Wes Wilson

The following is an abstract of my intentions...What began as an ipod on the roof of St. Peter's has thusly evolved.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the correlative qualities between architecture and theatre. For millennia, drama has been used as a dominant vehicle for the investigation of those ethereal qualities which comprise daily life; operating as a framework for the deeper understanding of incredibly dynamic social, political and temporal relationships. To parallel an analogy by the English poet Ted Hughes; the classical dramas of the Greek poets have been conceived as quantitative elements which illustrate- which make accessible- the most intangible of human conceptions. However, episodes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century have evolved the dramatic arts into to something more critical. As such they may actually provide the richest interface for the registration and projection of colliding ideologies, capitalist motivations and cultural histories. What this thesis supposes is that drama has the capacity to express a more fundamental understanding of the affects of contemporary architectures. The proposition is made for an architectural device which may chronicle the dynamic tensions embedded in a neighbourhood in crisis.

ON LUXURY

ON LUXURY
The need to buy and the desire to buy has refined itself over and over again. The past has shown us that the politics of a plan or the spectacle of a ceiling always embedded a specific message. And as the goods created by a tastemaker embodies aspirations beyond the product’s original intrinsic value, so do these spaces for the life of each citizen.
People’s insatiable appetite for the absorption of these images is a measure of society’s investments. And on the scale of the city, it mythologizes people, histories, & geographies into inexhaustible brands. As a communal examination of current notions, by virtue of the pervasive extension of consumerism throughout our culture, deciphering the patterns can formulate an ultimate hypothetical and ironic "kit of parts luxury".

FOLLOW THE BLOG HERE

[http://thesis-in-progress.blogspot.com]

A Line in Motion

Chinese calligraphy is a spatial practice: a sensibility combining graphic design and kinesis. The Chinese character is a line graph centered within an imaginary square and written in a prescribed way using rules of stroke order, ensuring that the lines of a word are added systematically, and in the same order each time the word is painted. In Chinese calligraphy, the hand moves in the x- and y-axes – horizontally, vertically, laterally, diagonally – and the z-axis – up and down in relation to the paper. Stroke order ensures that no move is repeated successively. When a brush makes contact with a hard surface, the tip flexes, and the brush responds to a downward force; in this way, a brushstroke is a record of a hand gesture. Going beyond a two-dimensioned graphic, the brush makes active the up-and-down axis, the z-axis; writing is a gesture that operates in three dimensions: as one writes, the hand inscribes a physical space, moves circuitously over a spot while pushing and lifting the brush.

1000 Hours of Drawing: Taylor Ohlsson

Drawings are the product that architects actually create, not buildings. Through various drawing exercises, I am exploring the different aspects of architectural drawings. By drawing different building types, with different media, for a variety of purposes. I am looking for some connection between what and how we draw and the design. I am also looking to have a better understanding of what is the best way to go about drawing a project. In addition to these I want to be better at all aspects of architectural drawing. So, I guess I am looking to answer some of the questions I have in this regard to make me a better architect. I feel that, depending on the circumstances, an architect should be able to decide on what type of drawing would be best suited and how to best accomplish it. In some firms there was something missing in the drawings that were issued. An unexplainable lack of certain elements. Be it detail, information, clarity or beauty. All which are elements that are essential to an architects drawings, in my opinion.