An erratic act : a solo descent into an altered landscape

An erratic, in geology, is a rock that differs in shape and size from those native to its location, often moved by glaciers over significantly large distances. The rock is deposited in a new location when the carrying ice melts and leaves it in its wake. It is matter out of place, but somehow of the place. An erratic bears a curious likeness to Architecture-often an artifact from outside, carried on a commission. The site of inquiry is a recently decommissioned granite quarry on coastal Maine, in the small town of Stonington. If things take their usual course, the old quarry is up for either a reclamatory cover-up or abandonment. The thesis considers the afterlife of this altered landscape through the workings of a singular, external agent, an architect, or more appropriately, a student of the discipline. It's a staging of solo acts in the wake of an extractivist history with its own numerous actors and stakeholders. What does it take to create a room for one's self in this abandon, and more fittingly perhaps in Architecture? The thesis embodies authorship as a temporality, whereby works are often generated in series, or in parallel between different mediums, and offers a critique of its methods through their accumulation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Ahmed, Ammar,M. Arch.Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mark Jarzombek.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121863

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/121863