In the introduction to his research on "The Contemporary City" Rem Koolhaas observes, "the unavoidable fragmentation of the existing city, has led to a displacement of the centre of gravity of urban dynamics from the city centre to the urban periphery."$\sp1$ City peripheries now display common characteristics: an apparently erratic juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible building functions and types. Here the unknown can be rethought; there is no model. Opportunities for experimentation present themselves in fields of tension between empty spaces and isolated bodies which are not subordinate to any anachronistic concept of order, but accept separateness and divergence.$\sp2$ The forces which shape the city of our times should be reinterpreted as the forces which generate the content and expression in our architecture. The objective is not to camouflage the unresolved situation; but to deal with the City as it is.

The creation of public space in the modern American city has been a persistent problem. This thesis is a revival of the problem of defining and creating public space. My choice of site is an abandoned urban parcel of land which housed the State of Ohio's Penitentiary for 150 years. The characteristics of the site which are of particular interest are its intrinsic definition of public realm, its existing order, and its proximity to the rapidly growing city of Columbus, Ohio. The use of this site, in combination with these features, will provide a novel approach for the making of public space.

Historically, architectural projects are based on a critically defined position within the culture of which they are a product. In the city of white noise there is no inherent direction or critically definable positions in the traditional sense, only limitless possibilities and options characterized by an inherent silence. It is the position of this thesis that it is the role of the architectural project to again inhabit the city on its own terms. Individual works of architecture must now begin to fill the void left by the demise of urban design. The city as field is approached in terms of matrix, frame, and module as an attempt to question the possibilities of the role of the architectural project within the city as it is currently found.

Houston's Fourth Ward has often been the object of redevelopment schemes which call for extensive change. The most recent such plan would save neighborhood houses, but would displace residents. To so easily separate buildings from their occupants requires an architecture concerned primarily with aesthetics. My thesis' premise is the desirability of maintaining the Fourth Ward's current population. Change must occur to stop this community from disintegrating due to poverty, drugs, and neglect. A community center located in and around an abandoned school, well known by residents, would act as a reinvigorated center for the neighborhood. Proposed new buildings mediate between this monumental school and shotgun homes around it. A sloped court connects neighborhood streets to the school's raised floor and serves as common entry to child care, elderly care, and commercial facilities.

Emerging morphology of American megalopoli includes a parallel arrival of megastructures and correlative empty spaces. Anthropomorphic relations to these phenomenon have been ignored in favor of economic efficacy and mass production. Although the scalar disjunction between space, form and figure is inherently a physically determinate one, it represents an existential conundrum concerning subjectivity as well; attempting to locate one's self among or between these megaobjects, one may also try to reconcile the externalized circumstances that created, and are right now becoming, these episodes of hyper-juxtaposition, i.e. late-capitalism. The philosophical armature of the sublime is equipped to contextualize this post- anthropomorphic architectural condition in terms of contemporary subjectivity and figural inscription. Conversely, the investigation reveals an effort to conjecture on an altered subject, in terms of what Jameson calls 'Hyperspace', the most recent mutation of space, having "succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually$\...$"$\sp1$ ftn$\sp1$Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), pg. 44.

Through a comparative analysis of selected modern and contemporary works, both religious and secular, a secular spiritualism is identified. The subversion of representation and suppression of a traditional sacred language, the revelation of the site and its phenomenal qualities, as well as the self-conscious manipulation of tectonics in terms of the relationship between light, material, and construction are the means for challenging the viability of this secular spiritualism at an urban scale. This thesis argues that such a spiritualism can be found in our secular world and proposes that the undefined residual spaces left by privatization become the neutral testing ground for a new urban prototype: the communal sanctuary.

Type and craftsmanship are closely bound in an architecture of urban density. Craftsmanship, manipulating material and understanding material culture provides an essential base for knowledge that can guide the design process. Type, acting as a neutral construct relies on craftsmanship to resolve conflict, respond to local traditions of construction, and develop cultural coherence. The proposed mixed-use housing development for the Magnolia Park district of Houston draws on local typological models and an analysis of local construction relationships to make an architecture that is legible and meaningful in its specific situation.

Houston is a non-traditional city. It is a unique combination of the artificial and the natural, and to a large degree, very temporary. Buildings in this city last as long as the economy can support them, as evidenced by the great scraping-away of many historic structures downtown during the 60s and 70s. Skyscrapers rest on artificial concrete bedrock floating in the sandy Houston soil. The urban fabric is neither dense nor wide open. Layers and networks--some visible, some invisible--structure the city. Within this temporary environment exist permanent enclaves, in the form of built developments like River Oaks and West University Place, and rituals like International Festival and Rodeo. Another such enclave has been proposed, involving the transformation of the temporarily-occupied Astrodomain into a new, permanent community. This unique, new community sustains itself: short-lived celebrations bring life to it, and residences and work-places allow the activity to remain.

This architectural design thesis contends that meaning is found not in historical typologies and static conceptions of architectural form but in the specifics of the proposed architecture's conditions--in its precise regional cultural territory and from the particular landscape of which it is a part (Houston). Such an approach is typically labeled Critical Regionalist as defined by architectural theorist Kenneth Frampton. This thesis proposes to extend Frampton's definition of Critical Regionalism by offering an architecture which is informed by the natural systems and processes, the geomorphology, and the phenomenology of the regional landscape. The project focuses on the bayou system, the Houston landscape's most significant and salient natural feature. The ideas derived from the bayous, along with the cultural, historical and formal content of the site are transformed into the architectural proposal from its overall massing; to its spatial configuration; and to the tactility of its smallest detail.

Blandness and paranoia in the architecture of the domestic realm has, to a great degree, been influenced by the current mode of information--the act of viewing this information, its pacing, and its rhythm. Reality is perceived in the information realm, while the experiential, physical "world of things" is unreal. We live in a commodified environment of projections from passively received information. The project is situated in the suburban condition of Daly City, California, and it is this model of society which is economic and information based that demands consideration. The articulation of the spaces in the Daly City dwelling project attempts to project an image of suburban patterns which have been reconfigured by forces of topography, perception and the physical body, information, and the automobile. What was once responsive to a narrow range of forces has become intertwined and "flowing" with a kind of momentum in the architectural elements which make the dwelling experience.