Concurrent Design: Architectural Iconography Connecting Time and Place

Abstract

It is no surprise that over the last century the earth we have lived on is ever changing. The natural resource supply is being depleted at a rate that cannot be reversed. Many governmental policies are encouraging the consumption rate to be slowed, but it falls on deaf ears. It is common practice to be affixed to the newest and best devices. However, when one loses sight of what was there before them, the affixation becomes like a disease, stripping the inherently beautiful parts of something and makes it uniform. This is the disease; contemporary architecture where numerous things are becoming more and more universal across the nation and even the world. The style of architecture is becoming less about the geographic location and more and more about the time it is sited in. Vernacular architecture of the world is becoming distinct like the dinosaurs that once roamed this world. A regions identity is becoming lost as the region becomes universal, rather than unique, to the world. When an architect takes queues from the time and year, but neglects the place, a vast struggle to continue to search for an identity develops. Architecture is something that needs to be self-reflexive, looking inside itself, being able to distill the processes that are employed in a building. This is the process this thesis examines. Its aim is to understand the way in which people inhabit and construct space in a region and how those processes can form new structure. The goal is to produce architecture in a quality that marries both the technology of the time and the technology of the past. The focus on sustainability is outlined by LEED asking for the use of things in order to improve efficiency, but why follow a model that was created in the last two decades when in fact the historical, vernacular, and preservation architecture are tested and tried, modified for perfection, and have proved their superiority? The question I ask is what is truly more efficient that an adobe house? What if the design of the 21st century was based on restoring the identity of a region by using their historic style and the modern technological advancements? It is the intersection of these two where this thesis begins; the creation of something by understanding where it came from.