THESIS WORK / Beyond Genius Loci / Stela Popovic

THESIS WORK features the work emerging from the newly restructured Waterloo Masters of Architecture program which began in the fall term with Thesis Research and Design studios and seminars. The featured work has been selected by the TR+D1 faculty team of Lola Sheppard, Mona El Khafif and Matthew Spremulli.

Over the course of the TR+D1 studio, graduate students developed their individual research topics in preparation for a thesis in architecture. The intention is to establish a theoretical, historical and intellectual framework through a diversity of representational modes; mapping, diagramming, photo essays, writing, which will serve as the foundation for a graduate thesis to be pursued over forthcoming academic terms.

BEYOND GENIUS LOCI

An Analysis of Architectural Design Strategies of Place

Stela Popovic

The idea of a city, understood as an architectural projection of cultural value and identity, is a fantastical driving force that offers its population a trajectory for its developing environments. This central desire to build our dream city is a cyclical process whereby we look to form our identity using our environment simultaneous to our environment forming our identity. In this way, architecture acts as the “concretization of existential space”, as described by Christian Norberg-Schulz (5), and is subject to the interpretation and capabilities of its users. As such, there exists the conflict of architecture where we constantly attempt to understand and build the complexity of the genius loci, or ‘spirit of place’, which is the conceptual landscape where physical and psychological conditions meet (Norberg-Scultz, 5).

This thesis argues that within every act of architecture, an understanding and response to the genius loci is vital, not only in accordance with the pursuit of the dream city, but to ensure a relevant thoughtfulness is present in its design. One measure of this pursuit is the analysis of its places, traditionally defined as spaces with “distinct character” (Norberg-Schulz, 5). These become objects of value within the scope of a city and act as points of evaluation in the attainment of the dream city.

Within this thesis, places are understood to consist of material and social conditions, an appropriate combination of which creates the most ideal place. As such, the question of the agency of architecture is vital to the creation of meaningful places. American cities in particular become a key landscape of investigation where social places often lack a meaningful materiality. In these “architecturally resistant” cities (Gandelsonas, 43), architecture is often used as a crude tool that ignores the character of its locus in favour of a single ideology, and thus harms the potential of its cultural identity and sacrifices any deeper “existential foothold” (Norberg-Schulz, 5). In this way, identifying the instances where architecture is used industrially rather than thoughtfully provides the venue to understand the link between material place, as something that depends heavily on in-depth physical design, and social place, as something that occurs with or without a strong material place. This relationship, once understood, can then offer maneuvers to bridge any existing gaps. It then becomes possible to identify active design strategies that can create places with unified material and social conditions and achieve an intellectual culture that strives for and can build meaningful environments.

Gandelsonas, Mario. X-Urbanism: Architecture and the American City. New York: Princeton Architectural, 1999. Print.

Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Genius Loci : Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. Eds. Diego Birelli and William Dendy. New York: Rizzoli, 1980. Print.