Katheryn Czub
ARCH-4980.1 | Chris Perry, Assistant Professor
THE ARCHITECT IS A CAVE MAN
KATHERYN CZUB
“Man started with two basic ways of controlling environment: one by avoiding the issue and hiding under a rock, tree, tent or roof (this led ultimately to architecture as we know it) and the other by actually interfering with the local meteorology, usually by means of a camp-fire.” – Reyner Banham
The project’s research was initiated through the investigation of Reyner Banham’s theory of the campfire phenomenon and its presence in post war architecture. Among the catalog of post war projects investigated, two themes can be derived: instrumentality and aesthetics. These two themes represent the contrast between stark functionality of new technological innovations and the more whimsical integration of sensory stimulation into architecture. The project integrates these concepts of power and system based architecture in the development of microenvironments within the context of the Hudson Valley corridor.
Agriculture has been a dominant player of the Valley since the rediscovery and habitation of the America’s. With the current health status of the United States and the concern for local, sustainable products, the fertile lands of the Hudson are the departure point for the project. Reverting back to post war examples of counterculture, the project assumes the emergence of a new, futuristic community dependent on both infrastructure and agriculture.
The main focus of the project is a movement towards a technology driven, futuristic agrarian society, sustaining their community and way of life through harnessing the earth’s, the water’s, and the sky’s natural cycles through synthesis of culture and architecture. The layering of conditioning systems develops various areas of programming; interior and exterior are blurred by the dynamic nature of invisible boundary conditions. The division of architecture and agriculture is also blurred as each intersects the other, pushing and pulling sectionally to develop habitable space in multiple planes. The society lives and works in unison with the agriculture modulated both by technology and natural systems. They are TerraCulture.