THESIS : The Other Place: Building a Retreat of One’s Own

The Other Place:

Building a Retreat of One’s Own

Brock Benninger

How is one to ground themselves in an increasingly virtual and abstract world? The Other Place offers a complimentary environment to daily life. Here one can establish the necessary critical distance from the conditions which define day to day life, and gain the perspective required to position ones self within, or against, these conditions. Interpretations of The Other Place, beginning with the ideology of Otium as expressed through the roman villa, continue today, varying widely across cultures, regions and individuals. The Other Place, then, can be understood as representative of characteristics that are at once general, and quite specific, reflective of broad contextual considerations, and the particularities of its occupant.

The rich and complex process of designing and building a retreat of one’s own, in the tradition of the Ontario Cottage, on an island property 3 hours northeast of Toronto is used to engage with, in a rich and tangible way, the architecture, and understanding of the retreat as a complimentary environment necessary in contemporary life. The act of building leads to an examination of how building and self are inseparable. Building, then, becomes a means of architectural and self understanding. As The Other Place facilitates a wholeness in contemporary existence found through its experience, so too is a wholeness in architectural education gained in the pragmatic relationship between theory and practice found in moving from the studio to building site and applying knowledge gained from one to the other.

Supervisor
Rick Andrighetti, University of Waterloo

Committee Members
John McMinn, University of Waterloo
Rick Haldenby, University of Waterloo

External Reader
Paul Dowling

The Defence Examination will take place
Friday March 24, 2017
at 1:30 PM in ARC 2026