Romantic Not

  A series of explosions shook the city of Tianjin and left the site covered in debris and a huge crater. The indelible negligence and lack of transparency in the disclosure of information exposed the land and survivors in perplexed grief. The thesis research was two folds: To investigate the paradoxical duality of object and land, presence and loss, parts and whole. And to translate collective memory into architectural form and utility through the activation of participatory events and media.

 

A similar relationship was found in Michael Heizer’s 1969 land art Double Negative where he cut two trenches into the mountain edge of Mormon Mesa. The stark contrast between the sizes of rupture and boulder, and the unfinished state of subtleties the artwork was left in, inspired this project’s formal articulation which collapsed the distinction between building and context, monolith and plurality.

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Inside the museum is a blend of  distorted planes and multiple viewer perspectives. One is led through a sequence of multi-media interactive programs engaging the sensorial faculty, which reinforces both perceptive and cognitive formation of space and memory. The architectural intervention sought to simulate a reality that conjures up deep consciousness.

 

undergraduate thesis at Virginia Tech school of architecture + design