Sense as a Trigger for Memory

susan:

i would embrace that [individualized design], if that is ultimately the result. I wonder if I was asking you to consider that as a possibility; some of you won't end up with a building or a built thing, but a method for making, in the end, that could be about a building type, a construction method, a building system, an urban system, a suburban system, or about the practice of architecture itself. i find the most challenging thing in thinking about what an architectural thesis truly is, is that it can't always be easily classified into a category, as Professor Green outlined last Wednesday.

to your other questions...

what i like about your thesis, thus far, is that you are investing (what appears to me) a very personal response to a definition of architecture through the use of your "memory-images", which we can have further discussions on regarding that as an historical instrument for knowing and making. I am not sure that context for you is a physical context, but may be something more abstract. i know that you have mentioned the pool/park that you inhabited as a child/young person, but is that the context, or something that just happened to be where those memories were created? Does memory, and the images they evoke, become a portable thing for you that is deposited, and re-deposited, over time and over a variety of landscapes, structures, forms, and build the framework for the new architecture that you present? As to film, is the structure of cinematography the method for depositing, as well as, extracting memory from this architecture (construction methodology), or a wayfinding strategy (navigating the architecture)?

i think you are closer to having a clear thesis statement; however,

to create a spatial condition that awakens THE senses in order to engage context (to make us care about where we live/ how we live). I do this by referencing my own memories and understanding of a place, to use a methodology that uses imagery (that is a reference to cinematography but is otherwise architecturally framing context) as a means of bringing emphasis and importance to the overall context.

i would argue that memories are not senses, but that the senses both create and help to recall memory (the senses are devices that serve memory). Is "context" place, or, genius loci? are you developing a new system that will imbue new meaning/value to an individuals, or society's, relationship with place? I think, ultimately, that you are referencing a crisis of place, and that what you are proposing is a system of making that seeks to redefine meaning for place. What you will need to be careful of, if this is the case, is what is place (a building, an urban or suburban construct, or a larger context that ties all of these physical forms with abstract concepts, such as cultural, societal, physiological, psychological and metaphysical factors).