A wooded 7.8 acre parcel located in Northern Virginia near the Potomac River is bordered by a National Wildlife Refuge and provides a setting for ''A Walk through the Woods", a place for a single family to live. As one enters the site, travels along the entrance road and moves through the house, stimulating and dynamic visual experi~ ences occur. Physically, the residence is a linear horizontal structure with a natural stepping of rooms in plan and elevation. Characteristic of the residence are extroverted experiences, contrasts between openness and closure, transitions from outside to inside, rooms well-lighted by daylight and rhythmic experiences as one travels from / common areas to personal areas along a path not unlike a path through the forest. The site, of rolling terrain bisected by small streams, encompasses a knoll from which the house evolved. The structure is compatible with nature on the outside and incorporates nature on the inside. At times the house and its surroundings almost become one. / Master of Architecture

Using the vehicle of redeveloping downtown Blacksburg, an architectural problem concerning planning, structure, housing and landscaping, this thesis considers the implications of each component and how they interrelate, to produce a built form in harmony with its surroundings. / Master of Architecture

The Washington Alexandria Center for Architecture exists as a bridge between the abstract and real world. My continued studies at the center have afforded me the opportunity to participate in a number of real projects. These projects have been invaluable in the journey toward becoming an architect. / Master of Architecture

Master of Architecture

The thesis contains a series of ideas & conclusions: The introductory statement suggests four criteria for the pursuit of producing good architecture. These criteria are not in the realm of problem solving. But rather address issues of the heart & mind. It is through a struggle with these measures that architecture becomes true and encompasses a realization larger than the problems at hand. It is only then that architecture exists in a continuum across time. The projects in this book make a meager attempt to begin to understand a pedagogy for spirit. responsibility. making & judgement. / Master of Architecture

Through an analogical process, this thesis explores the concept of transformation as it affords opportunities for order and structure in architecture. Beginning with the square as the seed from which the projects develop, orthogonal grids are employed as a means for developing ordering geometries as form-giving structures. A historical reference, deriving structure and form from a square grid instantiates development of the theme. Having examined some conditions of transformation in architecture, the work turns to a consideration of some personal explorations of transformation that may be of use in future architectural undertakings. The consequent forms are not intended to justify the particular transformational grammars; rather they are to be taken as models for future development. / Master of Architecture

Intuition is so often right, but so seldom observed, Reno, Nevada. / Master of Architecture

Architecture is a way of making that enables man to present his world. This making allows him to find his relationship to architecture and himself. The history of architecture is a part of the history of man and demands our attention if we are to make a contribution to the life of man. Nietzsche states that history is necessary above all to the man of action...who needs examples, teachers, and comforters he cannot find among his contemporaries.¹ “We would serve history only so far as it serves life.”² He also feels that the imitation of the past will only lead to a stagnant and degenerate life. There is a contradiction between these statements concerning imitation. In philosophy imitation has been defined as having two forms positive and negative. Negative imitation would be making an image of an original that reveals all that is immanent in the original. The act is redundant and therefore unnecessary. Positive imitation involves an understanding of things or ideas inherent in the original and lets us present our understanding which may expand beyond the original or lead to a new shift in the original paradigm. We must observe the history of man’s making and gather things that inform us about the world of architecture. History becomes a tool to facilitate architecture. We gather that which for us carries some essential meaning.³ This meaning may be manifested in our understanding of types, elements, or conditions of a particular culture as well as a personal desire to understand them in relationship to ourselves. For example, the elements and conditions that compose the house in some African tribes are considered as metaphors to parts of the human body i.e. door as mouth, window as eye, etcetera. When a family member loses a body part the corresponding element is removed or altered. Throughout history typologies have contained the models and archetypes of man’s ideas and ways of thinking, which are revealed through making. These remain with us and contain elements and conditions that change depending upon our focus. In the scale of the city there exists other types such as houses, churches, and libraries that become elemental when discussing the city as a whole. The conditions occur when analyzing the relationship of the elements with each other and the results that their organization produce. If we translate the scale to building types the wall, column, and stair become the elements and conditions become the mediation between these elements. Desire urges memory and imagination in our making of a re-presentation of that desire and a transformation of our observation. Imagination transforms our observation of what we find essential in history. We understand our relationship to things when we make them and through the revealing of things we come to understand ourselves. Memory recalls things or events that carry some meaning to us, but it also contains the more complete knowledge of things that we may come to know through making. Art is the imaginative appropriation of the essential strivings of historical man.⁴ The actuation of the idea is through the made object. We do this by painting, drawing, sculpture, and poetry. The object is two fold. It contains within it the idea of the reality of the thing and the drawing itself as a thing. An idea of a thing contains some elements common to all the other realities of the thing which makes them thinkable.⁵ When we speak of these things we bring to them some of its history that is known to us. Making allows us to re-present a thing which best actuates our idea and understanding of the thing, and enables us to redefine our world. 1 Nietzche, Friedrich Use and Abuse of History, The p. 12 2 Ibid., p. 3 3 Desmond, William Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics p. 61 4 Ibid., p. 61 5 Aristotle On the Soul. bk. 1, ch. 4 / Master of Architecture

It is the intention of this thesis to present not only a visual exploration of a design problem, but also to discuss the obviously dialectic relation of the two for me essential basic elements of architecture: type and topos. My architecture education has been shaped in different countries, through different educational systems, and with different teachers and students. This thesis stands as a record of my accumulated experiences and as a description of a personal approach to working with architectural problems. I believe the most important part of an architecture education is the development of one’s own design process. This exposition represents a beginning, / Master of Architecture

A house for a stage for the event of poetic impulse. An architecture founded on the understanding of the fragment and the definition of place of being. A building of the acknowledgement of the rituals of man. / Master of Architecture