Abstract:
This thesis uses the novel ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino and the play ‘Count Luckner’s Escape from Motuihe Island’ by Erling B. Jensen with an interest in both the search for architecture through narrative and the generative power of narrative to produce unexpected architectural outcomes. It looks at how meaning is constructed in buildings, how it can be communicated to the viewer, and examines whether narrative can drive architecture design to reveal lesser known histories. The chosen site of Motuihe Island has a past history as being a quarantine station, later turned into a prisoner of war camp, and then naval training base. In the year of 1917 a German prisoner of war Count Felix von Luckner attempted to escape Motuihe Island. While he made it as far as Kermadec island, Felix von Luckner was captured and returned to the island. Hejduk’s approach of “Masques” is applied onto the site of Motuihe: architectural structures embodying a character, specified more by the construction of relationships with other elements than by a specific identity, and the use of stories, poems, definition, materials and geometrical themes placed side by side to create a “carnivalesque narrative.” Hejduk’s method to designing according to memory and documenting the past and many moments of the site forms an architecture “about people who rehearse daily their understanding of their history, past, present, and future.” This specific moment in 1917 is shown through eight structures designed according to Erling B. Jensen’s play of nine episodes that unveil and become the stage to how von Luckner escapes in relation to history.