Grad Show 22

Perspective view looking at an expanded pod

Abinaya Sivaprakasam Thamilarasan

Dear City, give me some space

Architecture is often regarded as a concrete entity, in its conception, materiality, and perception within cities. However, ‘impermanence’ in an essential and important characteristic of urban life and is rarely acknowledged, limiting architecture to immediate and formalistic pursuits. Multiple factors are shifting as we speak. As a consequence, many unaddressed, urgent issues receive attention only through the purview of urban design, lacking in a spatial-perspective that embraces newer configurations, methods, or imagination.

This thesis hopes to conceptually expand the framework of thinking to view architecture as a performative entity, in relation to temporal shifts.

By considering time and architecture up close, this alternate vantage point consciously shifts away from architecture being the sole protagonist. Instead, it is positioned to acknowledge the past, the current forces in flux, while speculating about the future.

Here, ways for a flexible system to exist in response to such temporal shifts, creating smaller alcoves and spaces within a larger system are explored

Experience of the interior space is closed tied to tendency of the membrane (expansion/shrinking) that is influenced by the humidity levels. The same also leads to the users defining their own furniture layouts in reponse to the changing membrane creating their own ‘micro-places’ within the structure.