Urban Hospice: A Montage of Expiration and Memory

Architecture is visuality. Its object is what Norman Bryson has referred to as a screen of signs. "Between subject and the world is inserted the entire sum of discourses which make up visuality, that cultural construct, and make visuality different from vision, the notion of unmediated visual experience. Between retina and the world is inserted a screen of signs, a screen consisting of all the multiple discourses on vision built into the social arena." (Norman Bryson, from Practice; Architecture, Technique, and Representation, by Stan Allen) Architecture and representation are integral to the screen. How do we make architecture? Is the act of making architecture a montage? Can architecture be made through montage? What is the role of montage in an architecture for life and death? The process of making architecture is not a prescribed methodology with a predetermined outcome. Architecture, crafted by the hand of the architect, is a divine act of assemblage of subconscious allegorical thought, image, and tectonics. Through this art of assemblage, an architecture is born capable of instigating a narrative of metaphor and memory. Metaphorical narrative has the innate ability of summoning memory, and is critical in an architecture for life and death. Architecture is the only total sensory means of narrative.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Architecture

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Architecture

Department dc:contributor.department

Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Finney, Timothy John

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Piedmont-Palladino, Susan C.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Emmons, Paul F.
• Frascari, Marco

• materiality
• cavity
• recorded construction
• cypress tree
• weathering
• expiration
• place
• Architecture
• montage
• departure
• brain
• death
• life
• hospice
• Memory
• frontis piece
• patient bed
• cosmos

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-02152007-193250

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/31237