Ryan Drummond asked, Why the ocean?
The ocean is the only earthly environment which man cannot overpower, the ocean belittles man.
“...our tools are always deployed in the service of some philosophy or ideology. If we are to use our tools in the service of fitting in on Earth, our basic relationship to nature- even the story we tell ourselves about who we are in the universe has to change.” _Janine Benyus
Water in this context is a mechanism, and the architecture; an experiential tool. The power and scale-less immensity of the ocean challenges human significance. The ocean transforms social structure. Community is necessitated by man’s inability to control the force of the sea.
On interdisciplinary exploration (informational systems integration) :
"...in the fertile crests between intellectual habitats. Where ecology meets agriculture, medicine, materials science, energy, computing, [architecture,] and commerce, they are learning that there is more to discover than to invent." _Janine Benyus
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Thesis Statement: Systems Integration
Architecture in its current state is isolated because it does not recognize itself as an adaptive system within a larger constantly evolving network. Subtractive, analytical processes serve to isolate the subject from the very factors which define them, while systemic processes derive order from cooperative interaction with dynamic systems.
Systemic integration is a way of understanding and evolving the connections between systems which have previously been understood as singular elements. This thesis specifically explores the ocean as an environmental network and a mechanism to be experienced.
The existing structures of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico provide a framework to which an architectural system can be applied to initiate this investigation. The oil platform as it exists currently is exclusively industrial and does not relate to the oceanic context but draws only from the oil reserves beneath the sea floor. To the oil company; when the reserves are dry, so ends the life of the platform. Thinking about this structural system as a part of a network allows performative and experiential systems to be designed for and integrated into the existing network.
This thesis explores how architecture can be designed through a process of compositing informational systems, which then informs the design network, which becomes the architecture. The architecture as a realized project and a process becomes an integrative tool.
Systemic integration is a way of understanding and evolving the connections between systems which have previously been understood as singular elements. This thesis specifically explores the ocean as an environmental network and a mechanism to be experienced.
The existing structures of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico provide a framework to which an architectural system can be applied to initiate this investigation. The oil platform as it exists currently is exclusively industrial and does not relate to the oceanic context but draws only from the oil reserves beneath the sea floor. To the oil company; when the reserves are dry, so ends the life of the platform. Thinking about this structural system as a part of a network allows performative and experiential systems to be designed for and integrated into the existing network.
This thesis explores how architecture can be designed through a process of compositing informational systems, which then informs the design network, which becomes the architecture. The architecture as a realized project and a process becomes an integrative tool.
Quotes
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
_Sir Isaac Newton, from Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)
A band pointing towards the ocean epitomizing what human endeavor can accomplish at one scale with geometric clarity but modest deliberation, to give the scaleless sweep of the ocean.
_Louis I. Kahn
All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.
_John F. Kennedy, Speech given at Newport at the dinner before the America's Cup Races, September 1962
Knowledge is not a series of self consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is a part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness.
_Paul Feyerabend
_Sir Isaac Newton, from Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855)
A band pointing towards the ocean epitomizing what human endeavor can accomplish at one scale with geometric clarity but modest deliberation, to give the scaleless sweep of the ocean.
_Louis I. Kahn
All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.
_John F. Kennedy, Speech given at Newport at the dinner before the America's Cup Races, September 1962
Knowledge is not a series of self consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is a part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness.
_Paul Feyerabend
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