Agency as Praxis: A New Building for the Nova Scotia Association of Architects

Abstract

This thesis begins from the observation that architects operate with diminished agency, constrained by market forces and institutional structures. Architecture’s historic pursuit of autonomy has contributed to this, distancing the discipline from political and social engagement. In response, the thesis proposes a design method that prioritizes process over outcome. Where fixed concepts risk closing possibilities, process allows for emergence—open-ended engagement where agency is enacted through continual decisions, translations, and adjustments. The method is structured around extradisciplinary models, architectural precedent, architectural representation, and iterative heuristics. It uses translation and abstraction not to impose meaning, but to draw it out. To test the method, a segment of professional basketball was analyzed, diagrammed, and transformed into nine architectural propositions—each corresponding to a floor in a building for the Nova Scotia Association of Architects. The resulting design embeds dynamic and unconventional spatial logics within a conventional frame, offering both critique and provocation.