02.17.09

To be in one place is not to deny the existence of another, even if that other place cannot be felt or seen.

A place, upon crossing a threshold, opens/closes depending on the intention of the perceiver. A threshold [any place or point of entering or beginning] is not just an entry from light to dark but a bodily threshold, a constructed experience. But how to inhabit a threshold, a space of memory that negotiates the self.

To propose an architecture where the movement through-by the perceiver-constructs the space, where the crossing of a threshold is different for every person. No two feel or see the same thing-a wrinkle.
In perception, memory plays a role. Memory as perspective-memory as a blur-a long exposure.

If the body is scale and the intention inhabits the space in a movement or shifting through time, this would change how a threshold is crossed, how light moves through. [the coming from and the going to]

The shift in perspective [a back and forth-ing] recognizes the in-between.
In the looking back the reflection finishes.completes.

A study of five precedents has been done over the wintersession period. These particular studies are of architecture that represents (to me) the understanding of the built construct as a place of transition, a place of bodily movement. To use these studies as principles for working, a point of reference to look back to, I am interested in finding a way to design the aspect of architecture, the threshold, as the architecture itself

In contemplating threshold as a point of entering or beginning, the act of the transitory space is the interest in this degree project. The understanding is that intention leads one through a threshold-a particular reason to pass through. In many cases there is a point when the same threshold is crossed again (perhaps in the leaving) but the intention is different. Using the word intention, an understanding of coming from and going to is used, the word perspective in one of its definitions. To study through perspective the direction one is going and then to look back at where one came from is the beginning of this project.

To understand the idea of the in-between and how to inhabit that place as an architectural space. What is the difference in living between two walls or inside of the wall. To use this idea as a physical understanding as well as an investigation in the aspect of time with the present being the mediating “space” of past and future.

case studies
five

casa en brejos de azeitao, setubal, portugal
aires mateus

slow house
diller + scofidio

police box at chofu station, tokyo
kazuyo sejima & associates

bridge at bellinzona
aldo rossi

monument to the resistance at cuneo
aldo rossi















to begin an investigation

to use a constructed camera obscura to draw the perspective seen in the particular threshold space looking in the direction headed. then, to look back, to turn around and face where ia m not but once was. to draw this perspective again on the same drawing just made. this overlap, when redrawn in plan will give a new definition for my place standing, the space of in-between.

the site







to propose an architecture of the looking back