SOCKS

An online magazine of Art, Architecture, Media, Culture, Sounds, Territories, Technology)

  • Media
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Culture
  • Sounds
  • Territories
  • Visual Atlas

The World is a Library and It’s Inescapable, by Michael Hara

September 22, 2011 by Fosco Lucarelli 1 Comment

Thesis project by Michael Hara.

michaelhara.com
The Architecture of Possibility

This project explores hypertextuality, fiction, and narrative, utilizing architecture as a language to investigate these philosophies and phenomena. The proposal is a home for three fictional characters: a Victorian watchmaker, a Renaissance engraver, and a post-modern librarian. The three characters convene to re-create Giulio Camillo’s memory theater, a mechanism designed to convey infinite knowledge and wisdom upon anyone who entered its construct. The project is written in both images and words; plans and poetry. It is a fiction and should be read as such.

Location: Nicollet Island, 2010
Winner of the Richard Morrill Outstanding Thesis Award

This project utilizes narrative and fiction as generators for an architectural proposition – one that is theoretical, philosophical, and physical; that is, it is an actual built proposition, not merely an idea. Within this framework the project specifically addresses issues of hypertextuality, memory, and identity in architecture. Hypertextuality is a post-modern belief in interconnectedness between literary works and, on a broader scale, the interconnectedness of all phenomena (be they physical or ethereal), whereby the universe exists not as a distinct and isolated set of phenomena but rather is a network of interconnections and associations. It also refers to the value of juxtaposition and aggregation – that new forms of knowledge might be born through their associations with dissimilar items.

Memory here refers to not only the psychological functions of storage and retrieval but the larger societal values of remembrance and history. In an age when the computers are increasingly making memory unnecessary or obsolete (indeed it is much easier now, than ever, to instantaneously retrieve information from the internet), this project explores how we can utilize architecture and its objects as a way to project our memory into the physical realm of our world.

Identity is that ambiguous and slippery term which has, perhaps, its own individual meaning to each individual, and thus proves difficult to nail down as a singular ideal. Within the framework of this project, identity is utilized as the schema through which architecture and its contents – including furniture, objects, and people – can come to reflect the identity and personality of a single person.

Full text here.

Related Posts

  • The world and its adventure

    Scans from various 1950's educational books Illustrator: F.H.K. Henrion and others. Via: Mondorama2000 and Rainbow…

  • Architecture without contents studio at Mendrisio

    Beautiful set posted at NLDR of Ed Ruscha-like architectural landscapes from Architecture Without Contents' studio…

  • An Unbuilt Project by L. Kahn: The Library of the Washington University

    In 1956, architect Louis Kahn was invited to take part in the competition for "The Olin…

  • LIVE FOREVER - The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition

    Intelligent, critical, to the point. LIVE FOREVER - The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition  

  • Michael Webb interviewed by Tim Abrahams

    On drawing techniques, Sin Centre, new and old technologies, America and the golden years. Tim…

Comments

  1. Adrian_C says

    October 2, 2015 at 1:28 pm

    I found your project incredibly inspiring and rejoice in your embrace of the fictional narrative as an exploratory tool within an architectural context. I found the concepts you presented of hypertextuality, aggregation and memory intriguing and I wonder what would emerge if you extracted the same tools and placed them in a contemporary real life context in the design of an academic library as an example.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr

Socks is a non-linear journey through distant territories of human imagination.

About | Visual Atlas | Topics

We are Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli from Microcities. Ask us anything

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr


SOCKS is a project by Fosco Lucarelli and Mariabruna Fabrizi of MICROCITIES, Architecture Cityscape, Landscape.
Except where otherwise noted, the content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.
Whenever possible we try to attribute content (images, videos, and quotes) to their creators and original sources. Please feel free to write us if you notice misattributions or wish something to be removed.
SOCKS is powered by WordPress.