Momentum: an architecture of passage

Abstract

Today ever-expanding thresholds of speed, efficiency, and communication are changing our definitions of space in completely unpredictable ways, and by extension challenging our understanding of architecture within the reconfigured global environment. Traditional concerns with permanence, typology and function no longer suffice as the limits according to which we design, theorize, and build architecture today. These strategies prescribe monumentality, which is typically objectified as the physical ends [i.e.: public, private spaces] by which various means [i.e.: transition spaces] deliver us. This mentality advocates stasis and rigidity, which as argued by this thesis, is not congruent with both the dynamic forces of globalization and the apparent "restlessness" of society. Due [in part] to the forces of Globalization we now find ourselves ' immersed in a new spatial paradigm, a paradigm in which indeterminate cultural identities merge with individual autonomy; borders become blurred and desires, transient. Today, as Urban Nomads we navigate precariously according to these revised perceptions of space and meaning. To once again share 'affinities' with nomadic culture is not only a natural anthropological progression, but a survival instinct we have adopted in today's boundless world. To become "nomadic," that is totally indifferent to the need for any kind of identification, allows us to contently survive in our global polis, 'neutrally' passing through the various states of anticipation and boundary. Today's urban nomad can live the impossibility of identification as a positive implication through which it is possible to pass through the indefiniteness of transitional urban spaces, as we are no longer bound by the communal ties of yesterday. In the instance of traversing the spaces "in between" the urban nomad is constantly drifting, unhindered by any physical or virtual barrier. This thesis seeks to reexamine architecture's place within the globalized polis, particularly within the shifting realms of technology, media, telecommunications, and other spatiotemporal shifts marking the end of a millennium. The design of a Ferry Terminal for Vancouver's International Airport is the vehicle by which conventional notions of space, enclosure and order are negated, opting instead for anti-monumental, dynamic strategies that begin to inform an architecture of passage vs. an architecture of stasis. Architecture for such fluid, dimensionless territories can only be an utterance, without language; an ensemble of spaces that are anticipatory, neutral and impersonally universal, allowing for a multitude of interpretations. key words: globalization urban nomad infrastructure transience