2022

Yes, No, Maybe: An Architectural Application of Compositional Choice Tactics

Mitzi O'Brien

[email protected]
021510614
CHARCOAL
MARKING ALPHABET

When chance is discussed in architecture, it appears as the antithesis of the formal, established processes of architecture and construction. This thesis works to develop a methodology influenced by Kester Rattenbury's architectural application of random compositional choice tactics, an adaption of the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, the I-Ching — in the way that the musician John Cage used it to compose his pieces.


This process of making is not in the pursuit of random chance; choices are realised through the act of questions asked. Chance is used as a discipline to aid in the development of a methodology, a pattern language.




This thesis participates in the tradition of thinking about what intuition is, what is determined, and the moment in which decisions are made. The I-Ching is not a random generator in its purest form; it is in touch with cosmic forces, a patterning of fate harking back to the use of the Augury to read signals for the formation of architecture. Modernism comes with a comparable rationale for decision-making around form and function. These all intervene in the frameworks of decision-making in design. The compositional chance tactics developed in this thesis follow the aforementioned predecessors, with formal and spiritual guidelines replaced with a script written before the related element's design starts.


Results are plotted to form a visual record of the answers given by chance operations.

 
1
COLLAGE
MOB DIAGRAMS
PLACEMENT OF FUNDAMENTAL ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENTS WITHIN A GRID
MOB 33
PHYSICAL EXPRESSION OF GRID DIAGRAMS

The developed methodology and resulting graphic language are applied to solve and unite a site in the depths of indeterminacy, the historic St James site, and its surroundings. Decision-making around the site's future remains indeterminate, culminating around the one corridor of determination; the remnants of the theatre.

 
24
DEVELOPMENT OF MASSING (From left to right - placement on a grid, rotation, extrusion, introduction of the St.James)
MOB AXOS5
F AXO
MOB 77