My graduate thesis is an exploration of a proposition - that architects could describe the mass of a building with the same discursive, speculative design energy that we usually reserve for the spaces of a building. We most often require that the spaces we inhabit perform the qualitative aspects of architecture, its construing or intention, while requiring that the masses , like walls and floors, perform the quantitative aspects of architecture, its construction or execution. Masses of buildings are defined explicitly through a tool called the 'detail' - but one history of moden architecture has been the passing on of this explicit definition to builders and suppliers. When we defer this definition to assumptions about how things are built and what they are made of, we lose the ability to deploy the full architectural possibliities of this mass.
I redesigned the details of six precedent buildings, literally the inside of their walls, exploiting quantitative aspects such as temperature difference, wall thickness and surface treatment to highlight and sharpen the qualitative ambitions of the individual buildings. But this was not only a drawing excercise - I built full size mockups, using full size materials, to test these interactions without having to simply imagine them. I realized that the physical construction of the mockups dictated the redesigned drawn details as much as any prior intentions I had for them. My project proposal takes this as the initial charge - to design the construction of the building as much as the form of the building itself. But this was not ordinary construction. Instead of the contingencies and compromises of the outdoor building site, I sought an expanded version of the shop environment in which I built the mockups - a shipyard module shop.
The building is constructed out of three types of module - core towers, wall and floor modules and roof modules. They are all prefabricated in a shipyard and delivered just off the coastline site by ship, where they are airlifted by helicopter to the specific building site. The geometries and details make it possible for all of the modules to lock together, and the configurations of the wall layers depend on all of the modules linking together to seal the building, to provide insulation and to hold everything up. The details are anything but assumed - the walls are layers of solid cedar timbers and plate steel - but are specifically chosen for their locations, constructability and sequences. The program of the building is less important than the speculative exploration of the detail - its implications on mass and space, and that architecture might gain agency by addressing it directly.
The final presentation documents are too large to see in detail above: / RESEARCH BOOK / DETAILS 1 / DETAILS 2 /ASSEMBLY 1 / ASSEMBLY 2 / ASSEMBLY 3 / FINAL PLANS /
