Thesis Defence: Caelin Schneider

Monday, May 1, 2017 10:30 am - 10:30 am EDT (GMT -04:00)

Of the thesis entitled:Embracing Or Not Enclosing

Abstract:

The simultaneously archaicand hypermodern “archetypal fact” of twenty first century architecture andurbanism will be the enclosure, the wall, the barrier, the gate, the fence, thefortress.
-Lieven De Cauter

I no longer know what there is behind thewall, I no longer know there is a wall, I no longer know this wall is a wall, Ino longer know what a wall is. I no longer know that in my apartment there arewalls, and that if thereweren’t any walls, there would be no apartment.
-Georges Perec

Reflectingon the parallel between displaced towns in France during World War II and thecultural condition of an average Westerner today, Nicolas Bourriaud states:“Culture today essentially constitutes a mobile entity, unconnected to anysoil.” Through the processesof ‘Modernism’ and then ‘Postmodernism,’globalization has brought the world ‘closer’ together through an expansion ofcapitalism, often under the guise of democracy and equality. The ceaselessprogress of neoliberal globalization and its parallel of Postmodernismpromiseda horizontality and a recognition of the other that had been conventionallyrepressed and pushed away by Modernism. Yet the shimmer of those promises haslong faded away. From globalization’s subsumption of uniform interiors tocontemporary society’sevolution into what Lieven De Cauter calls a “CapsularCivilization.” Here the everyday reality clearly aligns with Michael Hardt andAntonio Negri’s prescription of an illusion of continuous, uniform space, whichis in fact densely crossed by divisions.

Emergingout of this context, this thesis investigates architecture’s role in theproduction of new inside-outsides which therefore entangles it in the processesof control, regulation, division and connection that result from thecontemporary multiplication of boundaries.The partitioning of the world thatis so often delegated to architects to act out is never neutral, and theregulation of the transmission between the exterior and interior of thesepartitioned capsules can be seen as manifestations of Hardt and Negri’s ‘NewSegmentations,’wherein architecture acts to reproduce these contiguous centersand peripheries among the interactions of daily life.

Thework of this thesis takes the inherited site of the ݮƵ School ofArchitecture as an area for questioning the structures that reduce ourrelations to what is outside. The research investigates the found technologiesused to support and structure the conditions ofaccess: the locked door, thecamera, the window and the wall, and looks to provide a text and a series ofartifacts which subvert these identified forces. Reflecting a desire to thinksomething other than the division of inside/outside, self/other; to search fornew stories ofthe interior.

The examining committee is as follows:

Supervisor:

Adrian Blackwell,University of ݮƵ

CommitteeMembers:

AnneBordeleau, University of ݮƵ

Dereck Revington, University of ݮƵ

External Reader:

LuisJacob, Visiting Professor - University of Toronto


The committee has been approved as authorized by the Graduate Studies Committee.

The Defence Examination will take place:

Monday May 1, 2017
10:30 AM
ARC Loft


A copy of the thesis is available for perusal in ARC 2106A.