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Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism Preeminence of the Decorated Shed Staging Uncertainty |
acknowledgements This thesis developed out of the thriving incubator of ideas about the post-industrial urban phenomenon which is the Rice School of Architecture. I am therefore indebted to the many faculty members and students who have contributed to the content of this project, whether directly or indirectly. I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee: Mark Wamble, for his ingenious development of a new fertile territory for architecture based on complex programming and the circuit and the cell; Albert Pope, for his ground-breaking work on post-war city growth and the idea of urban implosion; and John Casbarian, for his thorough development of methodological processes in architecture. I greatly appreciate the encouragement, patience, and critique which they all generously supplied. I would also like to thank Lars Lerup, Dean of the School of Architecture, for being an unspoken fourth committee member, as well as other teachers who inspired and challenged me: Michael Bell, Yung-Ho Chang, Elysabeth Gamard, Diane Ghirardo, Richard Ingersoll, Keith Krumweide, Robert Mangurian, Eric Ragne, Mary Ann Ray and Alex Wall. Essential to my experience at Rice were my fellow students, and I would like to thank them all. I would especially like to thank Shelly Pottorf and Ben Thorne for two unforgettable design collaborations, and the thesis "project team" (in order of appearance): Brian Burke, Nicola Springer, Logan Ray, Tim Gordon, and Kyle Morrow for all their help during the home stretch. I would like to thank Dean Lerup retroactively for his encouraging words which persuaded me to choose Rice in the first place: "The decision to join us in Houston demands energy, and it may demand courage, but the prospects are exhilarating: the struggle for a city, the discovery of the Other Coast, and the chance to truly excel."2 I would like to thank the family of John T. Mitchell for generously supporting my travels to Japan, as well as my mentors and friends who provided so much for me there: Charles and Yuri Kite, Seiji Ogawa, Miyata-san, Setsuko Fuchigami, Shima-san, and Yoshimura-san. Ultimately, I am indebted to my wife, Heather Brownell, for her tireless and loving support, as well as her insights about the future of design and technology in the workplace. This thesis is dedicated to her. 2Lerup, Lars, from the Introduction to Architecture at Rice (Houston: RSA, 1993) p. 2
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A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell. Copyright © 1998 by Blaine Brownell. All rights reserved. |
