Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2016

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Architecture

Major

Architecture

Major Professor

Brian Ambroziak

Committee Members

Jennifer Ackerman, Beauvais Lyons

Abstract

The 21st century’s most dominant characteristic, and greatest challenge, is the explosive growth of the world’s population. Swelling at an exponential rate, the increasing physical distance between the acts of growth and consumption yields an agrarian system that is highly unsustainable… a crisis looms in the future!

This crisis is most easily detected in images of the Earth taken from satellites. These recently recorded pixels of reflected light taken from the cherished Icarian vantage point have been acquired and perfected over the past five decades. Ultimately, these lightning speed revelations show patterns that emerge as broken relationships that can be manipulated by the screen-printing process to yield even greater readings. The focus of this investigation is on the image that attacks from numerous angles and at various scales so as to generate roots for many unexpected architectural outcomes.

The chosen site is the stretch of the Nashville and Eastern Railroad from downtown Nashville, Tennessee to Lebanon, Tennessee. The thesis explores the site through a series of images that are reformulated to emphasize relationships between individual pixels. By addressing the pixels themselves, a set of alternatives is offered that is directly related to the image and begins to reformulate our connection to the landscape. These alternatives are explored and then valued against the initial set of images.

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