Architecture is made to support certain activities. This thesis asks how architecture might also nurture the uncertain. The program and the conventions of architectural drawing encourage ideas of certainty. The architectural drawing is a rehearsal of the architecture it represents. This thesis searches for ways of drawing to rehearse the sorts of engagement we might have with architecture that could nurture an indeterminate condition. This is studied through the invention of seven types of drawing instrument. The early versions represent an indeterminate relationship with architecture while the later instruments nurture an indeterminate engagement through the act of drawing. Indeterminacy is a condition of uncertainty. At first the instruments concentrate on working with the sublime, an existential uncertainty. In order to understand the spatial potential of picturing there is extended research into the natural history diorama. In parallel to lessons on projective geometry, the dioramas provide a convincing case for the power of the uncanny, an intellectual uncertainty. The lessons from these studies, embodied in Instruments Two and Three, achieved what had been set out in the initial question but also provided new questions, especially about the experience of making the drawing. The later instruments project paint rather than light and provide an engagement with the person who is drawing that is analogous to the condition that is being drawn. The process of drawing becomes a rehearsal for inhabiting the architecture. The instruments are informed by a number of parallel studies: one that asks questions about ways of appropriating the city (as an indeterminate reception of the world as it is given); another into an opening up of the program, studied through a house, and the discovery of a way to disturb our certainty in the shadow and the invention of an instrument to understand the potential of that discovery.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:625750 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Chard, N. J. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1344187/ |
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