Cary Cortona: an alternative development model for the Research Triangle Area

Cary-Cortona is a city that lies on the periphery of two realities; the reality of pragmatism and the reality of abstraction. It was conceived as a response to the pragmatic questions posed by an uncertain, yet impending future. It was nurtured by the correlation of vaguely related information until the facts and figures themselves became an abyss of abstraction. From the cavernous depths of information came a night of dreams when Cary-Cortona first emerged as walls and columns that began to form a city of arcades and courtyards. On that night the inhabitants walked the streets and alleys and the fragments of a dream became the very real elements of a living town. The subconscious residue of that dream flowed together as expressions of order, hierarchy, and form, drawn into existence through the media of models, drawings and sketches. Those formal expressions have taken on a reality of their own even when seen as abstractions through pragmatic eyes because they represent aspirations not yet realized. Cary-Cortona is very much alive in the realm of ideas, and as an idea it can emote a different series of images from each viewer who sees it. Just as there are limitless images of the future each tied to the individual, Cary-Cortona represents only one aspiration for a small corner of a vast future. In its present form Cary-Cortona is an adolescent in a purgatory between the two realities of abstraction and pragmatism, belonging to neither world completely, yet existing to be judged and scrutinized by both.

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 Polytechnic Institute and State University

Year dc:date.issued

1985

Author dc:creator

• Manning, Isaac Hall

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

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

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/53084

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/53084