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Nine Lenses of Place: Explorations of Palimpsest and Path

Ball, Ryan A.

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2012, MARCH, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture.

Place is omnipresent, it is everywhere and it is inescapable. It provides significance and value to the spaces we occupy everyday. Without it we could not locate ourselves in space or time; our environment would be barren, empty, and devoid of meaning. Yet with the rise of globalization, place has often become indistinguishable. The functionality of progress and consumerism has birthed a McDonaldization of place that is no longer discernible as an independent location in space. Architecture as a practice has grown to see the world as its experimental playground. Works of “starchitects” are collected like pieces of fine art, projects are designed from overseas often with little regard for the context they are placed in, and mechanical systems are employed to normalize the environmental qualities of the region. Yet out of this dilution of place has born a resilient architecture of activism. Created in part due to a lack of large-scale infrastructure projects in the United States, this architecture seeks to move beyond physical construction, engaging practice as a social relationship.

Often, we look to the past as a place saturated with meaning, character, and charm. This notion stems from our memories, photographs, and accounts; yet this history is not an objective truth. In large part it is a past of subconscious creation, a selective lens through which we remember only what is advantageous. In this case, our perceptual understanding of place is inconsistent with the objective reality; a fact that is trivial given that without perception, place is reduced to a numeric location. The true realization lies in the importance of human perception on the value of place. This essay seeks to understand that value by examining place through nine lenses.

The nine lenses are knowing, perception, atmosphere, scale, materiality, geography, evolution, preservation, and inhabitation. These lenses will be further divided into three categories, which are the experiential, inherent, and organic lenses of place. The first are designed to understand the way in which we experience place. These findings will then be utilized to compare the inherent spatial qualities of the built environment and their direct effect upon our experience. We will then examine the organic nature of place to understand the effects of time, growth, and decay upon that value.

Central to this thesis discourse is an experimentation in translation between theory, design, and practice. These translations will be articulated as three distinct books that will combine to form my thesis document. The separation between design and practice will be the translation between site-specific research, analysis, and design to a physical presentation, the end product of this process. To exhibit this translation I have assigned a canvas to each of the nine outlined lenses of place. These canvases will become working drawings, which through layering and iteration will be a means to translate the theories, discoveries, and design solutions of this thesis exercise into a presented product. These iterations will be documented but continually overridden, creating a distinct palimpsest of process and thought.

Jeffrey Tilman, PhD (Committee Chair)
John Eliot Hancock, MARCH (Committee Member)
301 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ball, R. A. (2012). Nine Lenses of Place: Explorations of Palimpsest and Path [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1337288854

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ball, Ryan. Nine Lenses of Place: Explorations of Palimpsest and Path. 2012. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1337288854.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ball, Ryan. "Nine Lenses of Place: Explorations of Palimpsest and Path." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1337288854

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)