Exploring Brooklyn: A Study of Architecture & Time

Abstract

Time is an inescapable theme that permeates every aspect of our lives. We understand it inertly through its passage, experiencing it as aging as we grow older. From early on we recognize that the world in which we live is a world of temporality. But temporality does not explain where we live, as it is merely a condition of the environment that we live in. We live in architecture. We may think about architecture as the built environment; the landscape of human intervention. If we go back to the origins of architecture, we can understand it as a means of human adaptation, providing people with shelter and protection. Architecture emerged out of the necessity of people, inevitably changing as the needs of people change. Out of these greater cultural evolutions, the built environment emerged as a bi-product. We may begin to think about the built environment as a palimpsest; a page of antiquated text that has been scraped off and used over again. This comparison can be clearly translated architecturally, if we think of every architectural alteration, a building or otherwise, as a new layer on this page, each one either physically or metaphysically built upon the previous ones. Often times, the previous layers of the palimpsest are not completely erased, leaving behind traces of the original texts. In architectural terms, a building may be constructed over the foundations of a previous structure, leaving behind traces of its existence. Every architectural alteration then, is responding to a condition shaped by events of the past. This is an important realization for this study; at the same time, any present alteration in itself is subject to change, in turn making it another layer of the built environment. The intention of this study is to challenge the temporal nature of architecture and explore the built environment as a product of cultural evolution.