MITIGATING THE MACHINE
Master of Architecture (MArch) 2017 - The University of Lincoln
Part 1
Concept
‘Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine’ (Forster, 2011: 44)
The above quote, taken from E.M. Forsters novel ‘The Machine Stops’, highlights a marked disconnect between the experience of space and the operations taking place beyond that environment which enables it to function. The scene portrayed within the novel is one of abstraction. Where the mechanics of a society, through the expansion and development of complex infrastructures, have spatially separated the environment of consumption from the resource bases that sustain it.
Using the novel to inform a spatial narrative, the project seeks to explore and re-define the relationship between urban space and it's increasingly disconnected resource base. 'The Machine' is already at work. Our society is sustained by a large, complex web of infrastructure which is beyond the observable capacity of any one individual. Consequently, we are blindly heading towards a planetary resource crisis where the global demand for resources will soon outstrip supplies.
The following drawings provide the conceptual framework through which a year long architectural design project was developed.
The studio group utilised the common starting point of Lincoln Cathedral. This was used as a vehicle to test and refine our individual approaches to the design project and to develop an appropriate architectural language to describe these concepts.
Part 1 of 3
