Introduction:

Unknown City+ Interest Amalgam

CCA Thesis Research Seminar Fall 2011 Instructor: Neal Schwartz

The objective of individual and collective investigation is to identify structures of power that exist in the world spatially, virtually, and physically. It is of the individual and collective effort to seek alternative methods, practices, and modes of operation that establish, reinvent, or reinvigorate forms of resistance. My interests lie within investigating a historic practice of map making based on assumptions [not assessment] and its contemporary socio-economic and political effects on marginal and affluent communities. Identifying structures of power, possibly the act of mapping, and seeking ways in which architecture can respond as a form of resistance positions my interests within the overarching goal of this course. My colleagues align their initial interests as follows: Becky Lam: Becky seeks to identify new housing typologies based on historic high-density housing strategies in Vietnam. This could potentially be ground for resisting insufficient housing development and promoting alternative strategies based on historic spatial organization. Erin McDonough: Erin seeks to explore ways of strengthening Malawi's method of building promoting conscious sustainable design while resisting counter intuitive and environmental methods. Greg Baker: Greg's interests lie within the discrepancies, disconnections, and displacement caused by infrastructural intervention. I believe that Greg's identifies structures of power infrastructural and is investigating architectural methods of resistance. John Westfall: John's interests lie within Socio-digital space and the alteration of human interaction, sociology as they relate to space. I believe he seeks to identify this virtual space as a structure of power, possibly shifting historical and primitive means of human interaction. Jon Butler: Jon seeks ways in which physical spaces dominate the body's response as a structure of power. Interactive Architecture that relates to data input and responsive architectural concepts. Sam Slater: Seeking ways in which architecture and education intersect to form new ways of agencies and enlightenment of structures of power through a form of resistance? Shawn Whitehorn: I am investigating contemporary socio-economic effects of an historicalg map making process and identifying tools of infrastructure used to deploy this structure of power. Laura Mosca: Laura is interested in identifying political structures of power that determine development and displacement of citizens in relation to sporting event campaigning. The concept behind the structure of my book is to maintain a constant oscillation between scales of the urban: human, infrastructural, and planning alike. Through this oscillation do I hope to reveal nuances both revealed and concealed in the urban fabric.Operating within the parameters of the urban calls for an acknowledgement of both ephemeral and durable ways in which it evolves. While Jon Butler, John Westfall, and Sam Slater position their investigations in technology and virtual components of the urban which seemingly are everchanging [ephemeral], my remaining colleagues are interested in durable alternatives that transform the built environment.
The city should bring together the micro architectural and macro planning scales, the everyday realm and the urban, inside and outside, work and non-work, the everyday realm and the urban, the durable and the ephemeral, and so forth; it must be situated between the perceived and the lived. [Borden, Rendell, Kerr, and Pivaro p. 20]

John, Jon, and Sam Slater have proposed interests in what seems to be human scale, body to body interaction only varying the mediums or methods in which they operate or encounter exchange, Becky and Erin propose solutions that operate at a large scale simultaneously dwarfed by the planning scales of the rest of the group. While people make places and places make people, what could be the result of a place produced by a heterogeneous, socio-spatial and economic diverse body of inputs? I anticipate as a driver into thesis work being productive or grounding theoretical findings into a material reality.this [as Lefebvre mentions it] space to come.