Material Dissolve: A Poetics Of Spatial Encounters

Abstract

We are increasingly alienated from the direct sensual and intellectual encounter of space, in an epoch that gradually supplements direct spatial experience with mediated digital experience. This research reprises aspects of Phenomenology. In opposition to Phenomenology’s proponents like Zumthor—that seek to reassert the bodily presence of architecture through a kind of hypermateriality that asserts a material intensity, this thesis investigates a methodology to re-engage humans with physical spatial experience through the de-materialization of the wall. Distinct from the history of Modernist explorations of absolute transparency, and material lightness, this investigation is more akin to what Kengo Kuma calls “ Thesis Statement A spatial poetic can be created through the fusion of light and time with matter. The architectural experience is one where bodies are sensorially and intellectually engaged in moving through a series of articulated spaces. The orchestration of this movement between a series of semi-solid “walls” creates an environment of heightened sensory awareness where boundaries blur between constantly oscillating states of opacity and transparency created by the path of the user. Through literary research, precedent analysis, and a design project that explores and tests these ideas, this thesis asserts the creation of a poetics of space through this new approach to material presence, and its experience as part of a narrative sequence of encounter.