Post apocalypse of the future: architectural potentiality in a changing world

Abstract

Due to the looming Climate Change threat of anthropogenic origins, the prospects of humanity’s place in the world are uncertain. Conceiving an architectural response that would serve as the basis for humanity’s survival under these new climatic conditions becomes a question of adaptability and potentiality. As wrought out by Climate Change’s effect on an environment and its people over time, the immense gamut of possibilities implies that the potential conditions a society might find itself in are undoubtedly vast. Therefore, it is insufficient to conceive an architectural response that satisfies only one of those conditions. This thesis creates a framework that may generate potential architectural responses in dialogue with Climate Change. It maps out potentiality onto a site and discovers the architectural responses embedded within without being prophetic. To do so, criteria are first established. 1 - Developing an understanding of the temporal aspect of Climate Change and how something might need to respond. 2 - Involve a certain degree of speculation, so as to allow room for change and response. 3 - Outline an understanding of the milieu as an extension of the idea of site. 4 - As an extension of speculation, the inclusion of filmic apocalyptic science fiction films provide a sense of the current thought regarding Climate Change and its impacts on society and the world. Combining the aforementioned criteria, this thesis explores the potential of Climate Change to drastically change the world, and subsequently, a milieu, over time. This project seeks to examine the many modes of transition that occur during an apocalyptic process and how a subject might respond. It is more or less impossible to quantify a “good” or “bad” response. One would be remiss to imply that a set solution can be generated. Even simply using the word ‘solution’ would suggest an idea of finality, binarity, right or wrong, or up or down. Instead, it is essential that a flexible range of architectural responses, in response to a flexible gamut of points of perturbations, times, responses, lines, fields, etc., is developed during the mapping of potentiality that this project entails. Whatever this means is indeed left to interpretation.