Waterloo Architecture
7 Melville Street South
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
N1S 2H4
architecture@uwaterloo.ca
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More than a "Thing-in-Itself": An Inquiry into Work through the Interrelations of Making, Material, and Design
The thesis began with a desire to better understand the built environment and its relationship to value, temporality and material. The stool and chair became the vehicle for this exploration. In its ubiquity the seat has found a special place in the world of design through the way it relates to the body, its structure, and ability to respond to cultural context. Over the course of the past sixteen months, I have made nineteen seats iteratively to understand the process of their becoming.
While making the seats I developed three lenses: making, material, and design. These three lenses expand the scope of the design process. Through this expansion, the process begins with the life of the material, through the process of fabrication and design, into work. The resulting work is understood holistically through its many phases of becoming.
Through this holistic understanding, the seats become a network of relations. These relations make the consumption and replacement of the seats consequential. The seats’ value changes. It is no longer a product but rather a process.
The examining committee is as follows:
Supervisor: Rick Andrighetti
Reader: Anne Bordeleau
Internal/external: Andrew Levitt
External: Marcin Kedzior
The defence examination will take place:
April 13, 2021, 10 am to 12 pm EDT, open defence.
Teams link available via the graduate student Learn page or by request.
The committee has been approved as authorized by the Graduate Studies Committee.
A copy of the thesis is available for perusal in ARC 2106A.
Waterloo Architecture
7 Melville Street South
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
N1S 2H4
architecture@uwaterloo.ca
Contact Waterloo Architecture
Support Waterloo Architecture
Tours and directions
Provide Website Feedback
Musagetes Library
The University of Waterloo acknowledges that much of our work takes place on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples. Our main campus is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land granted to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. Our active work toward reconciliation takes place across our campuses through research, learning, teaching, and community building, and is centralized within our Office of Indigenous Relations.