Y500: Constructing architectural permanence through material agency

Abstract

This thesis proposes that materials and time are active agents in architecture, and that permanence is contingent on material agency. It examines how, through dynamic relationships, materials shape inhabitation, spatiality, and their location, both temporally and in terms of site. This idea is tested through the design of a settlement intended to last 500 years; it invokes and reinterprets permanence as a desired outcome of architecture. The design demonstrates the ability of impermanent materials to generate permanence, and leverages the dynamic properties of site as constructive elements rather than destructive forces; as materials in their own right. Through an experimental architecture, designed to exist for multiple generations, this thesis shows how materials reveal the entanglement of the ephemeral and the permanent.