Dub City: Sample, Remix, and the Techno-Urban Graft

Abstract

This thesis looks to techno music, and subsequently to the DJ, as models for a way of understanding urban spatial ecology. In its compositional use of rhythm to create a sense of musical space punctuated by time, the DJ’s act of mixing audio in performance is akin to the design process: architects similarly do well to observe and acknowledge the rhythm of city life, history, climate, geology, and to mould their dynamic into an appropriate spatial interface. By aligning aspects of documentation and process with DJ methods, the thesis translates the city’s various rhythms to produce responsive, intuitive architecture. A proposal for a built intervention on a former rail yard in central Halifax, Canada, the architectural response seeks to mix aspects of the city into the site, creating a multivalent graft between military facilities and civilian neighborhoods.