The slow food movement has cultivated an ideal of “slowness,” and developed actionable methods that celebrate and protect the local. Based on an analogy with gastronomy, slow architecture will adapt slow food principles to create strategies for extending the current discourse of regionalism. An urban village including co-housing, a micro-winery, and a restaurant, within the historical landscape of Over the Rhine in Cincinnati, will serve as a fertile ground to slow the audience down, revealing particularities of place, dwelling, and tectonic expression.
The resources, networks, and experience of place organize the discussion of slow architecture. Resources link tradition and ritual, through interpreting the particularities of place. Networks link identity, sustenance and pleasure, through dwelling. Experience links making and ingredients through the sensorial experience of the body. This thesis will investigate the idea of the “slow joint” as an intelligent conversation between historic and contemporary architectures, drawing on key precedents and theoretical foundations such as Kenneth Frampton, Steven Moore, Carlo Scarpa, and Sverre Fehn. Tectonic interventions responding to resources, networks, and experience are posited as the foundation for a slow architecture.
The principles of a “slow architecture” can shape an attitude to designing in urban environments that can preserve identity and culture for communities in transition and can energize the sense of community and shared ownership.