Of
the
thesis
entitled: Embracing
Or
Not
Enclosing
Abstract:
The
simultaneously
archaic and
hypermodern
“archetypal
fact”
of
twenty
first
century
architecture
and urbanism
will
be
the
enclosure,
the
wall,
the
barrier,
the
gate,
the
fence,
the fortress.
-Lieven
De
Cauter
I
no
longer
know
what
there
is
behind
the wall,
I
no
longer
know
there
is
a
wall,
I
no
longer
know
this
wall
is
a
wall,
I no
longer
know
what
a
wall
is.
I
no
longer
know
that
in
my
apartment
there
are walls,
and
that
if
there weren’t
any
walls,
there
would
be
no
apartment.
-Georges
Perec
Reflecting on
the
parallel
between
displaced
towns
in
France
during
World
War
II
and
the cultural
condition
of
an
average
Westerner
today,
Nicolas
Bourriaud
states: “Culture
today
essentially
constitutes
a
mobile
entity,
unconnected
to
any soil.”
Through
the
processes of
‘Modernism’
and
then
‘Postmodernism,’ globalization
has
brought
the
world
‘closer’
together
through
an
expansion
of capitalism,
often
under
the
guise
of
democracy
and
equality.
The
ceaseless progress
of
neoliberal
globalization
and
its
parallel
of
Postmodernism promised a
horizontality
and
a
recognition
of
the
other
that
had
been
conventionally repressed
and
pushed
away
by
Modernism.
Yet
the
shimmer
of
those
promises
has long
faded
away.
From
globalization’s
subsumption
of
uniform
interiors
to contemporary
society’s evolution
into
what
Lieven
De
Cauter
calls
a
“Capsular Civilization.”
Here
the
everyday
reality
clearly
aligns
with
Michael
Hardt
and Antonio
Negri’s
prescription
of
an
illusion
of
continuous,
uniform
space,
which is
in
fact
densely
crossed
by
divisions.
Emerging out
of
this
context,
this
thesis
investigates
architecture’s
role
in
the production
of
new
inside-outsides
which
therefore
entangles
it
in
the
processes of
control,
regulation,
division
and
connection
that
result
from
the contemporary
multiplication
of
boundaries. The
partitioning
of
the
world
that is
so
often
delegated
to
architects
to
act
out
is
never
neutral,
and
the regulation
of
the
transmission
between
the
exterior
and
interior
of
these partitioned
capsules
can
be
seen
as
manifestations
of
Hardt
and
Negri’s
‘New Segmentations,’ wherein
architecture
acts
to
reproduce
these
contiguous
centers and
peripheries
among
the
interactions
of
daily
life.
The work
of
this
thesis
takes
the
inherited
site
of
the
Waterloo
School
of Architecture
as
an
area
for
questioning
the
structures
that
reduce
our relations
to
what
is
outside.
The
research
investigates
the
found
technologies used
to
support
and
structure
the
conditions
of access:
the
locked
door,
the camera,
the
window
and
the
wall,
and
looks
to
provide
a
text
and
a
series
of artifacts
which
subvert
these
identified
forces.
Reflecting
a
desire
to
think something
other
than
the
division
of
inside/outside,
self/other;
to
search
for new
stories
of the
interior.
The examining committee is as follows:
Supervisor:
Adrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo
Committee Members:
Anne Bordeleau, University of Waterloo
Dereck Revington, University of Waterloo
External Reader:
Luis Jacob, Visiting Professor - University of Toronto
The
committee
has
been
approved
as
authorized
by
the
Graduate
Studies
Committee.
The
Defence
Examination
will
take
place:
Monday
May
1,
2017
10:30
AM
ARC
Loft
A
copy
of
the
thesis
is
available
for
perusal
in
ARC
2106A.