On Time|In Time: Reimagining the Dwelling
Academic year: Spring 2024
Studio: Design IX; Capstone 
Instructor: Hansjöerg Göritz
Location: Cades Cove, NC
In this capstone studio, which focused on the implications of time within the built environment, architecture was envisioned through the lens of monumentality and longevity. Thinking about architecture through this lens allowed for a more meaningful curation of what is fundamentally essential within our interactions with designed space. Considering time, therefore, allowed architecture to escape the minutiae of our modern world and reach towards the fundamental and transcendent relationship between humans and their environment or stomping ground. Through investigating, designing, and grappling with these ideas, nature, as it always does, reveals itself to be crucially important in the human connection to something greater, something truly timeless. 
In this communal dwelling scheme, the "traditional" multi-room dwelling is broken up into separate standalone spaces, each capable of serving a variety of programmatic needs. With individual structures arranged in a complete, southern-facing semi-circle, the rhythm and play of light throughout the day becomes a key driver in how space can be utilized and perceived. The movement of inhabitants around each community, therefore, breaks away from the efficient but stagnant logic of many contemporary dwellings seen today, where time and the rhythms that subconsciously define our lives are barely, if at all, considered. 
The idea and relationship of reserved and shared space within the dwelling or community is also carefully considered and crucial to ethos of the overall scheme. Architecturally, two-level spaces allow for height, enclosure, and view to dictate privacy rather than situation. Each two-level space contains a "viewport" out to both the natural landscape beyond and an internal garden at ground level. In this way, the central garden becomes the heart of each community, offering a different yet equally impactful sensorial experience to the grandiose scale of the natural landscape. These dualities of reserved-shared and natural-cultivated allow time to be experienced both inwardly, through highly personal, sensorial, and spatially amplified experiences, and externally, where experience is not directly tied to one self.
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