Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia
The field of architecture has been operating under a false sense that we only construct things. Robin Evans might be right that architects make drawings, not buildings, but through these drawings, we’re also moving mountains. The geography of Appalachia has become collateral damage in architecture’s...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150121 |
| _version_ | 1811096558910832640 |
|---|---|
| author | Koskey, Katherine |
| author2 | Clifford, Brandon |
| author_facet | Clifford, Brandon Koskey, Katherine |
| author_sort | Koskey, Katherine |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The field of architecture has been operating under a false sense that we only construct things. Robin Evans might be right that architects make drawings, not buildings, but through these drawings, we’re also moving mountains. The geography of Appalachia has become collateral damage in architecture’s focus on our urban centers through mountaintop removal coal mining. Architecture’s conversations around sustainable architecture have neglected the design interventions that operate at our sites of resource extraction. We design buildings for a ~100-year lifespan, but extraction marks the landscape for millennia.
Architects, as we’re trained, are ill-equipped to address the wide-reaching impacts of extraction, but we do have a number of tools that can be used for more critical interrogation. We are comfortable with scaling ideas, with form, with figure to confront issues that deal with society at large. Recognizing that architects are inadvertently working with mountains and topography, this thesis proposes a design methodology for architectural operations through these geologic scales of place and time. With media as method, this exploratory research presents a range of approaches to telling the story of resource extraction through experimentation with time-based form transformations, mapping, scale shifting, and multimedia storytelling. Materiality, time, and non/scalability are topics that converge (and diverge) through artifacts, both found and made. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:45:36Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/150121 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:45:36Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1501212023-04-01T03:02:52Z Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia Koskey, Katherine Clifford, Brandon Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture The field of architecture has been operating under a false sense that we only construct things. Robin Evans might be right that architects make drawings, not buildings, but through these drawings, we’re also moving mountains. The geography of Appalachia has become collateral damage in architecture’s focus on our urban centers through mountaintop removal coal mining. Architecture’s conversations around sustainable architecture have neglected the design interventions that operate at our sites of resource extraction. We design buildings for a ~100-year lifespan, but extraction marks the landscape for millennia. Architects, as we’re trained, are ill-equipped to address the wide-reaching impacts of extraction, but we do have a number of tools that can be used for more critical interrogation. We are comfortable with scaling ideas, with form, with figure to confront issues that deal with society at large. Recognizing that architects are inadvertently working with mountains and topography, this thesis proposes a design methodology for architectural operations through these geologic scales of place and time. With media as method, this exploratory research presents a range of approaches to telling the story of resource extraction through experimentation with time-based form transformations, mapping, scale shifting, and multimedia storytelling. Materiality, time, and non/scalability are topics that converge (and diverge) through artifacts, both found and made. M.Arch. 2023-03-31T14:33:44Z 2023-03-31T14:33:44Z 2023-02 2023-02-28T18:52:24.831Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150121 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright MIT http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Koskey, Katherine Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia |
| title | Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia |
| title_full | Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia |
| title_fullStr | Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia |
| title_full_unstemmed | Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia |
| title_short | Beyond Topography: Remapping Appalachia |
| title_sort | beyond topography remapping appalachia |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/150121 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT koskeykatherine beyondtopographyremappingappalachia |