New Order in the Air: On Aggregation and Dispersion of an Urban Body in Nature

Abstract

There is a disconnection between urban centers and the larger context of nature even for a town in a largely rural state, such as Vermont and New Hampshire. Dartmouth College, which has an identity unmistakably based on nature, and the adjacent center of the town of Hanover are experiencing this type of disconnection behind the current site of the Hopkins Center for the Arts, which connects to the town center. This condition forms an opportunity to not only expand the current performing arts facilities, which is what Dartmouth asked for, but also instill nature both physically and ideologically into the center of this urban body. Since the intervention needs to aggregate programs and resources to form a downtown experience, an oxymoronic combination of aggregation and dispersion is required in the design of such a town center. This inquiry into such paradoxical nature of an urban body in nature adds to the trend of interest in built spaces in the countryside along with its social and ideological implications, evident in OMA’s exhibition “Countryside: The Future” and Pedro Gadanho’s option studio on the rural metropolis in Portugal at the GSD in the spring of 2024. This thesis proposes additions to the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College while densifying the adjacent town center; meanwhile, it takes in and projects out to its natural context. Eventually, it proposes an ideal of what it is like to be in an urban body in a larger context of nature.