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Designing Community
Document Type: Open Access
Degree Program
Architecture
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2009
Month Degree Awarded
May
Primary Subject Category
Architecture
Advisor(s) or Committee Chair
Laurasi, Skender
Mann, Ray
Abstract
It is at the interface of the virtual and the physical worlds where both the practice and the process of architecture are generated. This premise will be explored in the context of designing community- or in other words resolving apparently binary relations.
This thesis explores the spatial interaction of two autonomous but interrelated systems- for example, the interior and the exterior, the virtual and the physical, human systems and informational systems. The proposed “building” becomes the frame of these relationships. The built project is the landscape of connections shaped by its passengers- the networked individual and the incessant flow of information.
“Community” has been sentimentalized in our American culture as the suburban “neighborhood”. By contrast I see community as networked individuality, human sociability which takes place at the interface of the digital and physical worlds and therefore transcends geographical space and time. In effect, community becomes a space of distant intimacy. It is the purpose of this project to materialize this space.
Space is what is available; space holds potential. Space is the result of social relations. Spaces are relationships.
Discipline(s)
Architecture | Landscape Architecture
Recommended Citation
Bryan, Martha, "Designing Community" (2009). Masters Theses. Paper 307.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/307
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