Date of Submission
Spring 5-4-2018
Degree Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Architecture
Department
Architecture
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Edwin Akins
Secondary Advisor
Elizabeth Martin
Abstract
“Life peeks out of a thousand masks, One of these is architecture.”
As technology advances forward architecture has continuously tried to find its place within the production of each new technology. This has led to thinking of architecture as causalities as an attempt to make it closer to a production line of efficient outputs. This has caused the problem a lack of evocation, the poetics, connection to memory, the idea of mind, body, and spirit being captured in the design.
This inquiry began by looking at a missed opportunity within Christopher Alexander’s work A Pattern Language. Pattern Language introduced the idea of causality in architecture, wherein the author has final control to add gradation and intensity to enhance and evoke the memory of a place. The author (architect), many times, does not take advantage of this potential to control, “a thousand subtleties of position, color, view, and touch that create the complex and delicate experience of joy-in-inhabitation, to which we all have a right.” To interrogate these subtitles in the process of design we must uncover processes that establish a connection between mind, body, and spirit to have a better understanding of the qualitative elements that create our built environment. The tools that we use within this process will be researched to find opportunities within this exploration.
Virtual reality is an immersive tool that allows these qualities to come forward. Therefore providing a basis of study that allows an understanding of space through memory association, spatial memory, and the senses working in conjunction.
This thesis research is an attempt to create a contemporary idiom of architecture that bridges the gap between production of architecture and the phenomena of the life-world experience the connection of mind body and spirit through the lens of virtual reality.