This study builds on the National Capital Planning Commission's (NCPC) 50 year Master Plan for Washington D.C. It focuses on several of the NCPC's five key goals; to build on the legacy of the historic L'Enfant and McMillan plans, unify the city, with the Capitol as its center, use new buildings to stimulate economic development, and integrate the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers to the city's public life. This site and project has a historical tradition. A pedestrian bridge was proposed to connect SouthWest D.C. to Haines Point with a new aquarium, which was eventually located in Baltimore, anchoring the Haines Point side. This proposal was never realized. Integral to this project is the development of the masterplan for SouthWest D.C. It proposes reinforcing the existing city grid, while developing small plazas along the water's edge. A major plaza is located at the intersection of the bridge and the city. It is the masterplan and orientation of the bridge that make it a viable development of the NCPC's masterplan. The project proposes an inhabitable bridge continuing the grid of Washington across the channel. Commercial shops and offices juxtapose views north to the city's skyline. Housing units float ontop of the bridge creating a vibrant daily cycle of activity. Public walkways and plazas provide vistas, places to gather, meet and reflect. It is the combination of functions that make the bridge a viable attraction. Finally, the intersection of public and private space on the bridge creates vibrant city life. This bridge contributes to the rich texture of Washington. / Master of Architecture

The thesis research is situated within the field of Architecture. Its principle objective is the articulation of arguments for a new theory of architecture as an architectural poetics, and related to this, a new form of discourse as poetry of an architectonic order. The research was initiated through a series of questions that architects confront when asked to create and to speak about what can be understood to be(come) frameworks for (unknown) life. It thus deals with the question of the unknown and, related to this, the question of open form. It develops on the idea that a concept of inhabitation may be feasible exclusively on the basis of a theory that extends the well known two-valued logic that has been dominant in the Western world since the times of classical metaphysics. Rooted in philosophy, the research extends contemporary architectural and critical theory, notions from poets such as Paul Celan, Marguérite Duras and Samuel Beckett, and research in second order cybernetics – the latter with an emphasis on Gotthard Günther’s writings on Non-Aristotelean logic. The text’s focus is on the notion of Architecture as a transcendental concept. It advances the understanding of Architectural Design as a performative process that creates borders rather than borderlines, limits rather than limitations and, is therefore, a discipline of radical communication that always seeks to extend itself towards an Other – the unknown – addressing it without previously quantifying it to render it provable. The research furthers the field of Architecture by contributing to it a new theory in the form of an architectural poetics. It addresses questions of design with a procedural framework in which critical engagement is an intrinsic principle, and offers an alternative to existing discourses through a poetry of architectonic order that is open to the future.

Through observation and critical response, Seven Loci: The Completion of Villa Maderni is for the author not only a work reflective of his still emergent design judgments, but also one birthed as he lived and worked in the physical fabric of the place. The primary goal of this work is to propose an inhabitable enclosure for the perimeter of an already sacred villa and garden in the Ticino region of Switzerland. The secondary goal of the thesis is to explore and propose an architecture which does not make a forgery of the villa, but one whose language is of its own time and materials, all the while responding to the invisible traditions of the town, street and site. / Master of Architecture

Every day the city plays out its spectacle unnoticed. This quotidian context is one which is full of complexity, spontaneity and possibility. It is here that architecture can engage with both the city and its user, space and experience; challenging conventional architectural typologies. It is within public space, that architecture can both enhance and celebrate the everyday. This project investigates all of these aspects within the city of Pretoria and more specifically along Van der Walt Street, focusing on the urban cavity at Munitoria. Surveillance is conceptually used to experience this spectacle, on multiple levels of enterpretation, where the architecture is reduced to support both the concept of surveillance and its experience. Copyright 2011, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Alkayyali, A 2011, Liminal public infrastructure : a typology of public space for everyday performances, MArch(Prof) dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11252011-112216 / > C12/4/35/gm / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Architecture / unrestricted

Ce travail de doctorat analyse la question du traitement de l’inventivité habitante au sein d’un bureau d’étude. L’inventivité habitante se définit par les pratiques réalisées par des habitants et détournant des normes socio-spatiales. Elles sont des modifications incrémentales et fragmentées qui participent au processus d’habitabilité. Cette thèse a pour particularité de construire un dialogue entre le monde de l’action au sein d’un bureau d’étude en aménagement du territoire et les sciences territoriales. La problématique de la thèse fait d’ailleurs référence à cet enjeu. Elle questionne la manière dont l’ingénierie territoriale a la capacité d’améliorer l’habitabilité des territoires par l’inventivité habitante.L’auteur s’appuie sur un socle théorique pragmatique et interactionniste autour des questions de l’habiter et des contraintes spatiales. Il définit l’inventivité habitante à partir d’une critique des œuvres de Michel De Certeau, notamment L’invention du quotidien, de la notion de bricolage développée par Claude Lévi-Strauss ou encore la mètis des hellénistes Détienne et Vernant. Sur les terrains d’études du cabinet de conseil, l’auteur a recherché, observé et analysé les inventivités habitantes. La profusion des terrains d’études (Communauté de Communes de Miribel et du Plateau, Aurillac, le département du Gard, etc.) a permis d’observer une grande diversité de pratiques inventives. Après une analyse quantitative, l’auteur a proposé une inventivité habitante type : des habitants se constituent en groupe(s) afin de combler un manque à l’échelle de la rue, où ni internet ni l’action publique n’ont un rôle. Ces actions s’inscrivent dans le cadre de l’économie collaborative, durant un an ou une demi-journée. Cette inventivité détourne les normes socio-spatiales en vigueur sur le territoire.A partir d’une analyse fine de l’inventivité habitante, l’auteur a travaillé sur les relations existantes avec l’habitabilité et l’ingénierie territoriale. Il affirme que l’inventivité habitante améliore l’habitabilité. Par ce postulat, il a mis en avant le processus d’émancipation comme une condition de l’habitabilité. Toute une série d’actions publiques locales ont été analysées afin d’identifier les possibilités de l’ingénierie territoriale. Enfin, l’auteur invite au débat dans un dernier chapitre, où il propose des méthodes pour une ingénierie territoriale de l’habitabilité / This Phd work analyses inhabitant inventiveness question within a planning consultant office. The inhabitant inventiveness can be defined as inhabitants practices diverting socio-spatial norms,. They are incremental and fragmented modifications which participate in the habitability process. This thesis has for distinctive characteristic to develop a dialogue between the action’s world in a design office in town planning and territorial sciences. The thesis problem underlines the stakes of such a dialogue. It questions the way territorial engineering could have the capacity to improve habitability thanks to inhabitant inventiveness.The author’s work is based on theoretical, pragmatic and interactionist theories about dwelling and spatial pressure. He defines inhabitant inventiveness from a critic of Michel De Certeau’s work, especially L’invention du quotidien, from the notion of DIY elaborate by Claude Lévi-Strauss, and mètis of the Hellenists Détienne and Vernant. From the field studies of the design office he worked for, the author looked, observed and analyzed the inhabitants inventiveness. The field studies profusion (Communauté de Communes de Miribel et du Plateau, Aurillac, le département du Gard, etc.) lead to observing a diversity of inventiveness practices. After a quantitative analysis, the author generated a model of inhabitant inventiveness : inhabitants form a group to fill a void, a “lack of”, at street level, where neither internet nor public action has no role Actions take place within the scope of collaborative economy, for one year or one half-day. This inventiveness diverts socio-spatial norms.From an in-depth analysis of inhabitant inventiveness, the author worked on the relationship between habitability and territory engineering. He claims that inhabitant inventiveness improves habitability. Local public actions were analysed to identify how spatial and territorial engineering and planning could create or restrain possibilities. Finally, the author creates a controversy in the last chapter, where he proposes methods for territorial engineering of habitability.

Cette étude analyse les modalités de l’inhabitable dans un monde hostile et instable, ainsi que les stratégies élaborées afin de contrecarrer les effets pervers de l’instabilité. La violence des affects en jeu est à l’image de la cruauté des relations sociales, et ne laisse que peu d’espace viable même au sein du cercle familial, lui aussi soumis à l’entropie de la méchanceté ontologique. Les héroïnes de Jackson, confrontées de diverses manières aux résurgences d’expériences traumatiques que la traversée du présent, odyssée physique et psychique, transforme en obstacles insurmontables, recherchent la demeure idéale où se réfugier et trouver l’ancrage que leur interdit le monde extérieur. Jackson utilise les tropes de la maison gothique, de la hantise et du surnaturel pour illustrer les rouages trompeurs qui se mettent en place dès lors que ses héroïnes pensent avoir trouvé un tel lieu. Le paradoxe du corps maternel, qui fait cohabiter la vie et la mort, sous leurs formes pulsionnelles les plus destructrices, est le principe fondateur de l’effondrement des personnages. La folie apparaît comme un des moyens de comprendre l’incompréhensible, et de contenir la fragmentation. Enfin, l’invention du nom constitue le dernier retranchement où construire une demeure intérieure. / Our study examines the modalities of the uninhabitable in the work of Jackson, where the characters are imprisoned in a world intrinsically hostile, as well as the strategies they use to thwart the instability it entails. The violence of the feelings at stake mirrors the cruelty of social relationships, leaving but little livable space even within the family circle, also affected by the entropy of ontological evil. Jackson’s heroines, variously confronted to the reemergence of past traumatic experiences that their odyssey through the present time transforms into unsurmountable obstacles, seek the ideal house, the haven that will anchor them into a world that rejects them. Jackson uses the tropes of the gothic haunted house as maternal space to illustrate the deadly deception such a place embodies. The cohabitation the most drastic forms of the death drive and vital impulses is the foundation principle of mental dissolution. Madness is one of the means to both embrace and understand the incomprehensible. We conclude by showing how the invention of one’s name is a way of elaborating an inner house.