Title: "It's beautiful, but who needs an endless bench?": Agony, Hypocrisy, and Robots."
Advisor: Scott Cohen, Harvard GSD
Jury: Beatriz Colomina, Mark Jarzombek, Bob Somol, Robert Levit, Catherine Ingraham, David Goodman, Danielle Etzler, Diana Agrest.
Abstract: Throughout history, architecture has engaged in a cyclical tradition of dissecting, perverting or reappropriating its own conventions to produce strange or disturbing effects during periods of great social change or uncertainty, with the intention of explicating emergent cultural antagonisms and disrupting complacent discourses.
Contemporary architecture has either failed to or opted not to engage this necessary practice, despite the fact that there have been major recent changes to our world, due primarily to the rise of digital culture and the proliferation of networks
This thesis is composed of four scenarios that attempt to critically engage users with their environments by provoking and demanding psychic reconciliation of contradictory formal, linguistic, and sensory structures. Each is couched within a particular contemporary trope with its own set of conventions and expectations that are ultimately redeployed or manipulated in startling ways: performative ornament, parametric urbanism, social justice, and sustainability.
Stills:
