Frames + Fieldnotes: Existential Architectures for the Landscape of Climate Change

Abstract

The transcendental experiences and perceptual insights evoked by good architecture are not merely qualitative outcomes. They form the elements of a way of measuring what is much larger than our selves. This thesis explores how the experiential metric facilitated by architecture is an essential part of understanding landscapes as they carry us toward a difficult environmental future. The theory is structured by two elements: “spacing paths” which move across the landscape and “timing places” for dwelling or pausing in the landscape. These pieces are further refined in a conceptual design for a recently abandoned wetland on the fragile coast of Staten Island. The project argues for an architectural environmentalism that is based on experience, and the less tangible traces of memory and emotion as much as it is based on what is empirically measurable.