Getting lost and looking for a landscape

The possibility of becoming lost is always present, as far away as another country or as close as your own body. When truly lost, there is at first, an examining of the unfamiliar, then a quick check-in with what we know. In a way, becoming lost is a way of finding what we know. It seems that when we are off-course, we become hyper-aware of our surroundings, scanning to find out what appears to be going on. We ask, why is this happening in this way, and how is it different from what I know? Leaving the realms of what we know by going to unfamiliar spaces allows us to become more present in our immediate situation. In my work I am searching for ways of inviting this condition. Looking for a Landscape, my final work at MIT, takes as its site an ordinary object from an urban space. The work is about exposing what we do not see in our everyday lives to provide an opening for participation and dialogue through the creation of unfamiliar visions of our environment. Through seeing the city in a different way we can suddenly become lost and find opportunities for discovery. The original housing of Looking for a Landscape is a standard city utility box with a concrete base, painted and graffitied like all of the other utility boxes in the city. The doors are modified so that they do not open like a normal utility box, but are hinged at the bottom and pull down, cantilevering like a drawbridge, to create two large platforms on either side on which to sit.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Mazzotta, Matthew

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Joan Jonas.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

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

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49727

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/49727