This thesis interrogates the affective relationships between self and space, architecture and landscape, through iterative making and research. Under the themes of Landscape and Water, this project evolves from atmospheric drawing into the design of a beacon at Te Waha Point which highlights intangibilities and the agency of landscape.
This thesis advocates for a greater appreciation in architectural discourse of the subjective, intangible and atmospheric qualities inherent in the perception and creation of architectural space. Perception is both conscious and unconscious, embodied and imagined, personal and universal, objective and obscure. Our response to and articulation of architecture relies on this layered view. This dissolution between the tangible and intangible allows for architecture to exist in a fluid boundary, as this document interrogates the affective relationships between self and space, architecture and landscape. This is an evocation of architecture formed from our embodied, immaterial and affective understandings; existing not as a detached object, but layered and dissolved within other landscapes.
In this body of work, an understanding of architecture is examined through two themes, Landscape and Water. The thesis is split into three parts, approaching architectural design as an extension of an iterative series of making. Part One contains series 1-6 and begins with an investigation into the perception of landscape. Art history is explored with emphasis on the movements of Romanticism and Surrealism, to understand the poetic depictions of our perception of landscape. In the development of Part One, theorists such as Tim Ingold and Karl Benediktsson frame an exploration of the inherent agency and fluidity of landscape. The nature of our dialogue within this layered landscape is mused on, with the influence of theorists such as Dalibor Vesely, Juhani Pallasmaa, Jane Bennett and Alberto Perez-Gomez.
Part Two contains series 6-11. Conceiving of architecture as a poetic image, the document proceeds into an architectural reading of Gaston Bachelard’s Water and Dreams. A series of makings emerging from the reading follow the journey from surface to depth, reflection to darkness. Water is established as a poetic, material intangibility that acts as a tool for dissolution; understanding the poetics of water as architectural material.
In order to move into an architectural conclusion, a brief was designed, arising from the process. In Part Three, the lighthouse is critiqued as a human imposed object on landscape, to be converted instead into an imagined beacon at Piha that acknowledges the Taniwha Paikea and Kaiwhare and the sublime environment. Designed with atmosphere first, this beacon reinforces the learnings of this thesis, highlighting the intangibilities and affective emotion present in architectural perception and creation.
