heurme(neu)tic formations
or the productive space of the creative impasse
The Memorial to Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China (constructed in 1977) is the final resting place of the embalmed body of Mao Zedong. It supports an ongoing ritual of public visitation to this body – a ritual with profound implications for the larger symbolic order of contemporary Chinese culture. This thesis explores the possibility for reformulating the memorial and the visitation ritual in relation to its physical and cultural-symbolic context. In particular, it seeks to re-direct Tiananmen Square towards its original, most radical (and perhaps idealized) conception as a post-enlightenment political formation; a pure, oceanic space, outside of history, perpetually restructuring itself in the contingency of its daily inhabitation.
This thesis starts with the presumption that the problems posed by the Mao Zedong Memorial are in many ways too big for architecture. As such, it has embraced and attempted to stay honest to what might be described as a schizophrenic design process (operating through multiple, and at times contradictory personalities). In doing so it poses a deeper question that must be asked of any conceptual architectural project: how and at what moment – without sacrificing the intellectual dimensions of the project – does the designer make the transition from objective observer to one who is complicit with the narrative of the design? In this sense, the thesis evolves into a deeply personal project, seeking to understand and make productive the impasse between my own sense-of-self and the external ecology of architectural, socio-political and philosophical discourse.
This thesis starts with the presumption that the problems posed by the Mao Zedong Memorial are in many ways too big for architecture. As such, it has embraced and attempted to stay honest to what might be described as a schizophrenic design process (operating through multiple, and at times contradictory personalities). In doing so it poses a deeper question that must be asked of any conceptual architectural project: how and at what moment – without sacrificing the intellectual dimensions of the project – does the designer make the transition from objective observer to one who is complicit with the narrative of the design? In this sense, the thesis evolves into a deeply personal project, seeking to understand and make productive the impasse between my own sense-of-self and the external ecology of architectural, socio-political and philosophical discourse.
1 comment:
John Edwards also reached for the pluralistic universality of the human condition but in the end he managed only to grope for the individualistic particularity of Rielle Hunter.
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