Project for a Model, Sacramento: Waste Objecthood, Indeterminacy, and the As-found

Abstract

Insofar as architecture can be considered a medium at all, it is a medium first and foremost of preformed material objects, objects with histories of their own. This thesis seeks to develop an alternative environmental aesthetics for architecture in working through the scalar problems inherent to using as-found waste objects as both building materials and modeling materials. The studies completed as part of the project endeavor to move away from the standardized abstraction of commodity materials (which the modern architect is assumed to treat as a kind of translational medium through which to project absolute ideas of abstract space) and instead towards the messily contingent specifics of as-found objecthood. Three primary indeterminate qualities characterize found waste objects: formal indeterminacy, tectonic indeterminacy, and scalar indeterminacy. The project aims to develop a methodology for working with these kinds of indeterminacy through architectural scale models.