Architectura Transtopica: Totems of a Journeyman

Abstract

The project Architectura Transtopica: Totems of a Journeyman argues in favour of using and interpreting fixed architectural structures as metaphors and symbols of expatriation. The primary inquiry of this paper is to consider how autobiographic re-enactments of lived experiences with architecture, triggered by non-country specific places, illustrate one’s life journey. Building on studies that are at the intersection of social and cultural studies, humanistic geography, evolutionary ecology, anthropology, art and architecture (Alahdadi, 2018; Avci et al., 2017; Kunz, 2016; Martin et al., 2015; Cotton, 2015; Mathur, 2011; Cresswell, 2006; Relph, 1977), I argue here that producing creative parallels of expatriation and the self in transience through fixed structures involves a concrete representational framework. In what follows, I offer insights on the conceptual fabrication, representational framework, and expanded photographic practices I followed for the completion of Architectura Transtopica. Drawing from practice and theory concepts synthetically, I present visual examples, complimented with an analysis on how fixed architectural structures can become emblematic in order to communicate the intricacies of expatriation and selfhood facing the self in transience.