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Impermanence is inescapable. This thesis attempts to confront the myth of enduring built form.
Decay, derived from the latin de-caderre; to fall down, is the biological breakdown of a substrate to make its components available for new growth.
Architectural decay invokes imagery of derelict, forlorn landscapes. As an organic process, new life would be impossible without decay. Therefore, rather than presenting an image of dereliction as a lamentable loss of function, what would it mean to examine the entropic possibilities instead; following the seemingly random results of time, the meandering path of ivy or the spread of rust patterns on a steel roof. Decay can be a process of loss as well as an opportunity for growth.
This thesis highlights the rich, diverse ecologies present in post industrial landscapes.The current global conditions call for an architecture which manifests as transformation. This thesis explores an architectural language of re-inhabitation which does not seek to strip away the ivy, or deterritorialize these third landscapes for their new inhabitants.
In Tentacular Thinking, Donna Harraway proclaims that Gaia is not a personification, rather a complex systemic phenomena of “species, kinds and assemblages”. This thesis explores a post humanist examination of architectural decay. Through cycles of rot and growth, an architecture could become an assemblage of nature, rather than standing in opposition to it.
This is not a heroic architecture, it is slow, transient and tentative.
