2021

Finding the Forest in the Tree: Poaching in an Endless Global Interior

Hans Hong

Cover
Toward a reimagination of the 'Endless Interior' born from the generic city of globalisation

This thesis presents a runaway architectural speculation toward the reignition of the imagination, a fundamental essence of being, that has become endangered by the increasingly reductive conditions we occupy. We operate within an increasingly globalised context in which complex systems dominate. The autonomy of the individual, both body and psyche, has become increasingly contested, leaving the individual to contend with an increasingly reductive world of capital-centric systems and power structures beyond their control and understanding. 

This thesis explores what it means to make such a condition livable, questioning the roles architecture may play in facilitating the enriched occupation required to create meaning in an increasingly ungrounded globalised condition. Proceeding through a non-linear practice engaging in film, narrative writing, modelling, and static image, the realities and paradoxes of urban life are drawn out, highlighting the imaginative and tactical practices that have become necessary for survival. 


The reductive nature of our context crystallises in our cities. We see life sanitised, obscured between gridded facades and concrete floor plates, scaled up to impossible heights. Within these cities of reduction lie further realms of exclusion and scopic control—the city apartment, the atomised and isolated dwelling which is becoming increasingly definitive of our condition, presents a microcosm of the insidious censorship of the complexity of contemporary life.

 
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Interior-Exterior: Stills from an experimental film installation exploring an augmentation of a hyper-connected cityscape within the urban dwelling
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Bodily Intensity 02: The Shower - Speculating on the role of the urban dwelling

The explorations undertaken throughout the thesis culminate in an architectural speculation of the generic apartment complex. The apartment is transformed into a world of tactics, its architecture shifting around a cast of fictionalised characters that together illustrate the radical social diversity and transformative potential that urban life offers. The resulting interactions between character and architecture take on a life of its own—challenging both the reductive spatial practices of the city, as well as the interactions of the body and psyche within our rapidly globalising conditions.

Ultimately, the thesis presents a vision for transformative, tactical urban architecture - one that calls for a practice of emancipatory free play, seeing the existing generic architectures of the globalising city reclaimed by its residents through an imaginative engagement.

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Rebalancing the Scopic - Toward an enriched urban dwelling
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Re-Engineering the City Apartment. The generic apartment is stripped back to its bare concrete structure, with timber framing reinserting itself at critical junctions. The porous zones formed offer the potential for liberating and connective space-making to occur - from the scale of an individual's dwelling, to larger public gestures
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The Crane Operator dwells above the structure in the framing of the shifting gantry, as well as occupying the workshop space below. Their character plays the role of outwardly reflecting on the needs of the apartment dwellers - to attempt to balance the contradictions and paradoxes that present themselves in urban life.
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A tactical architecture unfolds across the urban landscape
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De-Anonymizing the City Fabric: Pigeon Feeders, Cultivators, and Netflix Watchers populate the facade
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De-Anonymizing the City Fabric: Facade as Interactive Interface
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Escape Machine 01 - Netflix Watcher
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Escape Machine 03 - Opera Singer