Conversing Landscapes

Abstract

This thesis is about the perception and interpretation of space. It attempts to read the world as it is found, and investigate the relationship between human bodies and landscapes. All my thesis investigations have been rooted in a deep commitment to explore how we perceive space and interact with the larger realm of the city and the built and natural landscape. Places are physical, but they are also mental. Like buildings, bodies are permeable and deeply connected with their surroundings ... by themselves, perhaps they are incomplete. By engaging elements on the thesis site - an industrial landscape in Halifax, Nova Scotia - and by creating new elements, relationships between "subject" and "object" are studied. These elements were chosen for their unique sensorial characteristics, that remind the body of its presence and relationship to the landscape, revealing a reciprocal dialogue that landscapes and objects in them have with the human body.

The site serves as an industrial laboratory where the scale of the body is at odds with the "industrial sublime". As landscape and architectural elements enter into relationship, intriguing physical and theoretical architectural experiences arise. Through reading, translating, and responding to concepts of "intertwining", this thesis pursues a deeper understanding of, and attempts to reveal, an architecture of "phenomena" within an industrial landscape.