Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemForgotten game(University of Melbourne, 1999)
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ItemSpace, time and representation(University of Melbourne, 2006)
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ItemSAPE : some architectural publications and ethics which requires the positing of a meta-ethics of Architecture( 2008)The scholarly journals of architecture are a likely rich source to mine for matters of ethical concern pertinent to architecture. The thesis launches from this premise and develops a research tool, grounded in corpus linguistics and content analysis, to identify words in the essays of four important scholarly journals that are placeholders for matters of ethical concern. The result of this word-mining is the Ethical Universal Scholar of Architecture (Eusa). She is invited into the text of the thesis to make her own commentary on matters in general, and specifically on her four most important matters of ethical concern. Her commentary is interesting enough but if left here the thesis would leave itself open to the criticism that its findings are only constituted by the author's common sense, and Eusa's limited universe, which shows no knowledges of contemporary ethical discourse. For an informed discourse to continue an intellectual framework is required and this ought to be a Meta-ethics of architecture. From the literature it is readily apparent that this does not exist and, encouraged by a call from a few authors for such a construct, the thesis temporarily sets Eusa aside, and goes about to design and construct this Meta-ethics. The thesis, on sound historic grounds, defines the necessary and sufficient conditions for an entity to be named architecture to be that it must be both practical shelter and art. It now appropriates Rorty's propositions on liberal society and axiomatically names the Meta-ethics of architecture as the structure that, in the first place, separates practical shelter and art and deems them incommensurable. It names them the Creative Ethics and the Practical Ethics of architecture. Having done this it observes that architecture, because of its means of production, the material of its medium, and the immutability of the completed concrete artefact, is unlike other art forms and demands that decisions be made in the face of the self created incommensurables of the Practical and Creative Ethics. To effect this, the thesis turns to the affective valuing of Elizabeth Anderson, whilst not ignoring the limited usefulness of consequentualist ethics, makes the central claim that it is not irrational to make decisions and then act on them on the basis of the way we feel, provided we open them up for inter-subjective agreement. Eusa's is returned to, and her utterances, her fragments of texts, her four most important matters of ethical concern are re-interrogated to enable them to be located in the meta-ethics of architecture. This is done and the matrix is cross tabulated with the way she deploys, most probably in ignorance, affective valuing to adequately express her feelings towards the things that matter. The contents of the matrix are considered closely to identify where incommensurability, exists and then to deploy the affective reading of Eusa's utterances to ascertain if it does, or could, effect reconciliation. This is the test of the Meta-ethics in praxis, enabled by affective valuing.
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ItemThinking through the space of the body : a performance account of the body and architecture( 2008)In the last few decades, there has been a shift within the humanities: may from text, may from objects, away from monuments, and from this the process of reading cultural objects as representations of cultural production. What has been highlighted instead is the dynamic processes of culture - the performative. This shift in emphasis is also shaping the discipline of architecture. Central to this shift in perspective is the focus on the body as a site and medium for understanding processual relations, which augments representational thinking, where architecture is framed, contemplated and mastered by man-as-subject through distance and objectivity. The analysis in this thesis investigates the ways in which the body is thought about in the explicitly theoretical works of both Judith Butler and Deleuze and Guattari, which emphasise a performative understanding of the space of the body. In turn, this thesis then looks at how the 'spacing of the body' is physically and conceptually realised through the performative spatial practices of Arakawa and Gins, Bernard Tschumi and Grundei Kaindl Teckert. Chapter Seven integrates theoretical and practical investigations through Learning-by-Making as a representative case study. The crucial point of this project is to suggest that the constraints and the restrictions that are imposed on the body are not just symbolic and discursive but also impact on the 'lived body.' This thesis also focuses on how the spacing of the body, through a performative rhetoric, becomes a site of utopian possibilities and dissolution, where neither mind, body nor space is privileged. In this framework the agency of the material is understood as an affective force in the construction of meaning. Thus the 'spacing of the body' is explored in this thesis as a composition of the two terms performance and performativity as a way to understand how the spacing of the body is both constrained by normative relations and also produced through bodily experience which privileges the concept of affect.
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Iteminterpreting sustainability : examining the social approach to environmentally sustainable architecture in India( 2007)There is a need to rethink the way that sustainable architecture is produced in post liberalised India. Emerging green architecture in India is inspired by the global discourse on sustainable architecture with a predilection for active engagement with technology. Market driven environmentalism has failed to address vital social issues and has led to privileging technology-driven, quantitative solutions by the Indian government and architects alike. As a result, `sustainable' architecture produced in India in the last decade stresses on technology as a panacea for all environmental problems whether it is `green' or low cost `alternative' architecture. The main argument of this thesis is that the current approach tends to ignore culturally inscribed environmental practices and neglects crucial social issues that adversely impact the environment in India. Furthermore, sustainable architecture in India ought to reflect the changing social and environmental conditions in urban centres caused by rapid population growth, modernization and urbanization. Hence, this thesis argues that it is critical to have appropriate frameworks that take social, economic and ecological causes into account when producing a sustainable built environment. To broaden the understanding of the hypothesis, the research method in this thesis relied on three examples to expose various underlying social issues that impact the environmental sustainability of an architectural project. Case studies were chosen to investigate the relevance of social dimensions of sustainability. The selected examples demonstrated conditions where building practices intersected with the social aspects in very particular ways, uncovering very specific conditions influencing the production of sustainable architecture. Four social factors were identified as primarily impacting the sustainability of the built environment in India. They were - property ownership, optimal use of space, provision of infrastructure, and choice of construction materials and processes. Such issues are typically taken for granted in affluent societies where property ownership, taxation and individual rights are linked to one another and where use of space is fairly homogenous. In such industrialized societies infrastructure provision is an expectation of urban life and construction materials and processes are linked to an industrial past. The situation in India is far more ambiguous. Social inequities impact these issues in specific ways challenging received interpretations of sustainability. In conclusion the interpretation of environmental sustainability needs to incorporate social issues as its basis for it to be relevant to any locality undergoing rapid urban and economic transformation. The results of this research project are significant for developing countries such as India that are in the process of rapid industrialization but have yet to confront the high social costs of development. It is hoped that the questions raised in this particular study will contribute to more inclusive polices and therefore socially sustainable approaches to environmental sustainability in architecture specifically and to the built environment more generally.
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ItemAesthetics and change in the Tai cultural landscapes of Mae Hong Son, Thailand( 2008)This research studies landscape transformations in Tal culture and the sociocultural perceptions of those changes pertinent to landscape aesthetics. Theories of landscape aesthetics are examined through a review of the East and West aesthetic traditions, revealing little interpretation of the significance of local history, knowledge and subtle cultural meanings manifest in everyday life. The thesis then examines the history of the Tai (Shan) ethnic group of South East Asia demonstrating how their culture has differed from those of the Siamese-Thai and Karen. A set of research questions is formulated in order to study the current local perceptions of landscape change (physical, political and socio-cultural aspects) and investigate cultural knowledge, values and meanings that might be integral to the aesthetics of landscape. Change is first investigated from the 1950s to the 2000s using desk-top analyses and archives to explore the cultural memories associated with the Tai (Shan) population which dominates in the region of Mae Hong Son province, Thailand. The research then uses methods derived from ethnography, phenomenology and semiotics to study the local aesthetic perceptions of landscape change so that cultural experiences can be considered. By applying qualitative techniques of data collection derived from these approaches - field and participant observation, interviews, cognitive maps and photographic narratives by the local inhabitants - experiences and meanings are described and analysed. The findings reveal first how the landscape changes along the spatial continuum over time and how these changes affect local ecology and livelihoods. Secondly, the findings reveal how everyday life experiences, Buddhist ethics and aesthetics, and a long ethnic tradition associated with these landscapes, construct multiple symbolic meanings. Thirdly, a multicultural discourse of conflicting ideologies is identified, underpinning Tai, Siamese-Thai and Karen concepts of landscape aesthetics, which are sociocultural and manifest themselves in human/spiritual ecology, a sense of community, symbolic meanings and cultural ideologies. Fourthly, the thesis synthesizes a holistic perspective of landscape aesthetics and proposes that contemporary theory is expanded to incorporate local values such as aesthetic perceptions of ecology, spirituality and emotions. Finally, the thesis considers the methodological implications for future research in landscape aesthetics and the implications of ethnographic and phenomenological methods for landscape planning.
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ItemImpersonal effects : architecture, Deleuze, subjectivity( 2007)This thesis imagines and articulates an image of architectural subjectivity in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Subjectivity for Deleuze does not refer to a person but is rather a power to act and to produce effects in the world. Deleuze in fact tends not to use the word subjectivity, speaking instead of what he calls prepersonal singularities, meaning those irreducible qualities or powers that can be seen to act in the world, independently of any particular person with fixed traits. To walk, to see, to love-these are general or anonymous capacities that function in a very real sense prior to the personological subject. Singular, here, does not mean specific or rare, but the reverse: the function "to sleep" or "to laugh" is singular for Deleuze because "a sleep" always retains a certain abstractness and `impersonality,' no matter who sleeps. For Deleuze, the world is composed of so many singularities, which together resonate silently towards a mystery of something yet to come; this primary field of a pure encounter transcends formed identities and things. The `subject' is understood therefore not primarily as identity but as a convergence of singularities immanent to the encounter. While to speak of the `subject' in these terms-to rid oneself of identity-is a difficult thing, we might say architecture is already such a singular encounter and deindividualisation of self. There is, as soon as I step into a room, a street, or a town, a palpable mystery of the singularity "to walk inside," "to see an unfamiliar street"; each echoing and anticipating in that moment every other instance, past and future, of this primitive encounter. It is an anonymous sense of a primary production that lies beyond the individual, spatio-temporal experience I call "mine." To encounter, then, does not mean an in-between, a space between persons and concrete forms; rather, it is an event that comes before the crystallisation of these things, it is the abstract surface of all singularities. I will call architectural singularities the impersonal effects, to think the inchoate, not-yet determined fragments of architectural encounter (these I oppose to the `personal' effects of identity, such as a watch, a wallet, a cigarette case). I use "effect" in Deleuze's sense of production, in which the effect is not ephemeral, an effect of something more primary, but is in itself a primary production, an effect that works, and creates. The project here is to express, by architectural means, the image of effects. Image, here, does not mean a representation, such as a photograph or a media image, but refers to a live "arrangement" of effects. What individuates an image is precisely the mode in which it causes the effects to proliferate. I begin the project with an account of Deleuze's reception in the American architectural academy, so as to reveal the historical conditions that make Deleuze's theory of subjectivity important now. Chapter Two introduces the concept of the effect and the architectural formulation that functions in the dissertation; Chapter Three extends this work in the effects-image; Chapter Four turns to Guattari's reception in Japan, and what I observe to be a pursuit after the effects-image in Guattari's encounter with architecture; finally in Chapter Five I explore the psychoanalytic lining of Guattari's project, further engaging the working of the effects-image.
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ItemThe Green field : the sub culture of sustainable architecture( 2003)The sustainability agenda has emerged in recent years as one of the greatest challenges to our society. Mounting scientific evidence concerning the relationship between human activities and the looming environmental 'crisis', has fuelled the desire to modulate human activity to effect environmental improvement. In this context, the built environment has come under particular pressure to address the sustainability agenda, since it is not only a major contributor to environmental degradation, but it is also a legacy that must be endured by future generations. Despite global recognition of the problems and a declared commitment to sustainability from the international architectural community, progress towards sustainability within architectural practice has been slow. It is the contention of this thesis that the potential for the advancement of the integration of sustainability initiatives within architecture cannot be seen outside of the cultural context in which all decisions, are embedded. This is not to suggest that the culture of architectural practice is fundamentally opposed to sustainability, or that this is the major barrier to the integration of sustainability initiatives in practice. Rather the topic of the relationship between the culture of architectural practice and the sustainability agenda is proposed as an exploration of one arena of influence which, through lack of a sustained critique, remains relatively concealed. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of 'field' and 'symbolic capital' the ideological barriers and opportunities that 'green, architecture' presents are examined from the perspective of Australian architects currently engaged in its production. The 'green field' is presented as an arena of conflict and contest founded on a paradoxical condition between the desire for integration and the simultaneous desire for segregation, as well as the perceived necessity and impossibility of integration. Rather than propose a resolution to this paradox, the thesis argues for continued debate to reveal the complexity of the relationship between sustainability and architecture, as well as to produce new ways of thinking about 'architecture'.
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ItemFitness landscapes and the precautionary principle : the geometry of environmental risk( 2000)Current environmental impact assessment methods assume by default that, where there are multiple stressors on an environmental system, that such stressors act independently and additively. There is evidence suggesting this assumption does not hold for all such sets of stressors. Such evidence places this assumption in conflict with the precautionary principle. This thesis proposes a new means of modelling a set of environmental stressors. The model allows estimation of the sensitivity of the cumulative impact of the set to variations in number of stressors and the degree to which they interact. The method developed has, as its default assumption, the potential for non-linear interaction between stressors within sets. This method is in keeping with the objectives of the precautionary principle. The model draws on empirical data from the environmental sciences, and mathematical and computational techniques from complex adaptive systems theory. In doing so, it draws on methods used in a range of disciplines for modelling non-linear interactions between multiple parts of a complex system. These methods share the common mathematical foundation of fitness landscape theory. It is argued that the proposed model allows statements about the sensitivity of the gross effect from a set of stressars to be made when the number of stressors in the set, and/or their degree of interaction, is varied. It is argued that this can be achieved through identification of properties of the set itself, without reference to the specific causal chains determining behaviour in specific instances. While such properties are very general, they offer the potential of parameterising of the effects of sets of stressors where interactions are highly uncertain and empirical data severely limited, i.e., situations which would typically invoke the precautionary principle. The model represents a generalisation and abstraction of the Scheffe {q,m} simplex-lattice method used for modelling laboratory based chemical mixture experiments. The output of the model suggests that the cumulative impact arising from a set of environmental stressors is: a) acutely sensitive to variations in the number of stressors in the set; b) sensitive to variations in the degree of interaction between these stressors, and that this sensitivity increases with the number of stressors in the set; c) acutely sensitive to simultaneous variation in the number of stressors in the set and the degree to which they interact. It is argued that knowledge of the acuteness of these sensitivities provides a valuable additional input into precautious environmental decision making.