Drawing inhabitation

Abstract

Drawing Inhabitation seeks to capture the liveliness of social bodies and proposes the development of an architectural character based on the record and history of activity and occupation. This design thesis begins with inhabitation. The observation of, participation in and recording of gatherings within the Sri Lankan Buddhist community inform the design of a community pavilion, which then feeds back into the idea of inhabitation, giving the community the rituals a sense of importance and becoming conducive to the experience. This is a kind of Post Occupancy Evaluation, albiet not through deploying what is typically a quantitative or data gathering method. Rather, the atmospheric and aesthetic qualities of the events are valued over the measured and rational as a driver for design. Here, recording becomes integral to the design process – its qualitative remnants create a visual vocabulary to produce an architecture that embodies the same energy that moves within and through it. Recording includes collaborative memory drawings with my mother, impressions of a Sinhalese meal, drawings of the accurate movement of bodies within the subjective experience of the events, time-lapse photography and modeling. Developed from this methodology, this thesis proposes an architecture that balances between blurred space and refined geometry, enabling the underlying structure to disappear and the busyness, liveliness, and exchange of the gatherings to be revealed. Through the aesthetic conditions of blurred and luminous space, this thesis asserts the belief that activity leaves a trace on architecture - as opposed the idea that architecture is a neutral object. In its wider context, an ancient Sinhalese monastic aesthetic is woven through the work, informing the geometry, the proportions and the pavilion’s siting in Potters Park. By recording the inhabitation of communities, this thesis distils something that is often overlooked and uses this knowledge to inform new design work. It adopts the atmospheric and aesthetic qualities of the gatherings and makes them tangible, which allows for the architectural exploration of a luminous field of white, embedded with colour and shadow, and a refined geometry imposed within the blurred luminous space, registering the formlessness of activity.