2005 Bachelor of Architecture
Additive Subtraction

Urban planning has always been about colonization, the marking of boundaries, of order and form. Architecture is the instrument of this organization. It transforms the cluttered into the cultivated, the fallow into the productive, and the void into the built. It is the power of accumulation, of accretion, of addition. But very little consideration is given to the act of subtraction in urban design and planning. As such, I am interested in a type of urban space that falls outside the scope of what we call normal or significant. These subtractive spaces—vacant lots, self-regulating zones, residual spaces, the informal, and nonplanned—act as counterpoints to the way order and consumption control the city. Many of these spaces contain the ineffable qualities that architecture tries so hard to accomplish yet so very often fails to actualize.

The first view of these spaces is that they are unacceptable due to the socioeconomic deterioration and abandonment implied in them. They disrupt the image of order. A second view holds that these spaces offer room for spontaneous, creative appropriation and informal uses. These are the kind of uses that would normally have a hard time finding room within the urban fabric and its demands of commerce and commodity. Although they are not the revenue-generating sites that most cities need, they supply their residents with services that the city is not able to supply. Like a comma in a sentence, these spaces are a pause in the built environment that allows one to step back and more clearly read the character of the city as a whole. What can we as emerging architects and planners leverage from these built and unbuilt environments that currently lie outside our discipline yet resonate and serve those who come into contact with them every day?

Itinerary

When the generic is seen as unique and when the obvious is seen as enlightening, there comes a forgetfulness that threatens to severely limit the way we are able to experience our day-to-day lives. Our current bureaucratic, top-down urban planning and zoning policies have for the most part, created public spaces that are monotonous and trivial when one considers the critical roles these spaces should play. Therefore, my itinerary will include visits to urban areas outside of the normative consciousness of architectural education and practice. Subtractive spaces—economically marginalized, materially relegated—yet additive in the imaginative way they look at alternative versions of program, urban planning, zoning, and materials and methods. Innovative informal architecture can help to reactivate the terrain vague of our emerging postindustrial city centers. The itinerary is broken into three stages; past solutions and continuing evolutions (Fez); present conditions and innovations (Caracas); and near-future, emerging scenarios (Portland).