Agitated Architecture

Abstract

Through the notion of agitation, this thesis aims to generate a means for architecture to impact contemporary society through the disruption of modernism. With the increasing number of totalising plans for our aging and terrorised cities the understanding of architecture as a key part of city generation is coming into question. This thesis searches for a turbulent architecture for the city which confronts the capabilities of unpredictable tension and conflict as a counter argument to the contemporary desire for totalising urban plans. It investigates agitation in terms of urban architecture and specifically looks at the potential of island sites as places with defined, but reactive, borders. Agitation is conceived as an argument which oscillates between bland conformity and violent ruin, and consequently hinges on the relationship between architecture and event. It generates questions about origin and end by operating in a fragile suspension in between, opening up the possibility for an architecture of trace rather than of program or erasure. The intent is to understand what an architecture of agitation looks like and what types of spaces it could create. Provoking questions about whether an architecture of agitation could have the ability to engage with our increasingly disruptive society to better effect than current plans for otherwise empty urban spaces. Fabricated in the Hauraki Gulf, the project plays out the development of an island city on Auckland’s anticipated new volcano. The fictional city proposes the development of agitated spaces defined by architecture, rather than finite diagrams. This thesis questions whether the condition of the island, and its dystopic affiliations, can destabilise contemporary urban architecture and allow it to evolve with the future of the city for the Other. It seeks to agitate contemporary architectural assumptions, destabilising the globalised city by playing between the chaotic violence of dystopia and the overpowering absorption of utopia.