I got a mail today from a architecture student in Aukland. She asked me about my thesis project since she was interested in doin a project on the same topic.
I started thinking and was brought back to the process of producing that project. I bet you all know that feeling of -"If I only would have..." haha. Anyway here is my reply, think it can be useful for architecture students dealing with consept and projects not directly related to buildning. Therefor I'm posting my mail here as well.
Hi
I'm flattered by your mail. Thank you for your kind
words.
My written report is in Swedish only, so I don't think
you'll get that much out of it.
Since this is a topic I'm really interested in I'm
going to try to summarize some thoughts for you (as well as for myself).
Now, two years after finishing my thesis project I see my project in a
bit of a new perspective. Therefore summarizing it now is a lot different from
how I would have summarized it two years ago. Here it goes anyway:
-I wish that I would have had a clearer trajectory,
both towards myself and towards teachers and co-students. Unfortunately I got
caught in between architecture as building/structure and architecture as
narrative/polemics. Unfortunately I did not do any of the two with full power;
rather I did both with hesitation. This mistake happened both because of me
listening to too many teachers subjective opinions, and that I didn't have
enough trust in my own ideas.
That said I would like to encourage you to specify
what your interest in the topic is (In this case food and food
production).
-Is it the production, such as growing plants,
slaughtering and fishing?
-Is it taking care of leftovers?
-Is it the preparation, such as a kitchen/restaurant etc.?
-Is it exposing what is hidden in the massive
distribution chains before the food land on our plate?
-Is it the consumption of food, such as the shopping
and/or the eating?
-Is it the cultural aspect?
...or is it something else?
Whichever you choose to focus on, your project has the
possibility to become great (or shit). You just need to stick to what you believe
in. If I only would have trusted my own idea more...
My scheme built on exposing food production. I wanted
to do this in as raw a way as possible, without the nice wrapping the grocery
stores offer. After reading up on the systems beneath the production chains, my
interest fell on a closed loop system to also show what is happening with the
waste and how waste is useful to create the next batch of food (manure, energy etc.).
I sketched up a diagrammatic system where food traveled through four machines,
one for meat, one for fish, one for veggies and one for recycling (i.e.
biogas). But then I got scared and turned these machines in to sculptures within
a cook school, because you need to have a building to put the stuff into,
right??? Because building=architecture! ...right??? OOOOH NO!!! There
everything went wrong... Because you don't need to have a building to create
architecture! Architecture can be what you want it to be. It could definitely
be the four machines that you could interact with. Maybe I should do that
project :)
So remember: Architects can be artists. Architects can
be poets. Architects can do movies. Architects can build fantastic machines.
And of course architects can do buildings and landscapes (but we don't have
to).
However you do your project be prepared to be faced
and criticized by traditionally bound teachers and colleagues if you don't go
the ordinary way. But maybe it's worth it. I got a really hard critique when
presenting my project both because what I've told you now (regarding the weakness
in trajectory) and also because they thought it was a bit strange to approach
an architectural project by exposing the "ugliness" of food
production through a type of activism, instead of doing proper disposition of
rooms and focusing on light and sight lines.
Hope this somewhat answered your question without
being able to provide you with my thesis report.
Please contact me again if you think of anything
regarding this topic or other stuff as well for that matter.
All the best
 |
| somewhere around here I'd say the project was at it's best |
