Mobility & the Investigation of Self-Reliance

Abstract

This thesis is centered around the study of an individual in mobile spaces that are designed to allow one to experience environments and landscapes outside of their current dwelling. The study is designed to be interpretable for others- the utilization of this work as a map is encouraged for the reader. Note that this thesis cannot tell you the way; it can only show you what has been done and seen, how one individual has perceived where they have been, and what was drawn from their experiences.

This thesis will draw upon an understanding of Richard Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth as a base to encourage a sense of searching nomadicism in an individual. The thing they are searching for is not describable outside of Pirsig’s “knife”, which cuts the fabrics of every environment an individual has been a part of into the generalized elements of how they perceive that place: Romantic or Classical views, along with Thoreau’s ‘seat’, “for wherever I sit, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a seat? ‘Well, there I might live,’ I said, and there I did live for an hour, a summer, and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off...”

How will a designed mobile apparatus allow individuals to understand their architectural environments through the discovery and documentation of their knife from the living space of their seat?

Does this nomadic sacrament teach a higher understanding of the millions of things around us that we are aware of, but not really conscious of?