Danielle Kohut
Cyclops
Drawing
In a world where the line between the archaic and the hyper-modern blurs, this thesis plunges into the enigma of neo-primitivism—a movement that straddles the edge of memory and oblivion. It delves into the dialectic between fast and slow synthesis of raw materials, where the immediacy and unrelentlessness of the global industrial system collides with the deliberate pace of ancient craftsmanship. As we grapple with the permanence—or impermanence—of both these historic methods, the thesis questions whether the historic ways of making, once considered eternal, are now at risk of becoming obsolete.
In this domestic structure, architectural production becomes a battle, not just against the physicality of materials, but against the very nature of production itself. Hand-building emerges as an intimate, almost ritualistic engagement with the human urge to synthesize, while collaboration with fabricators introduces rhythms of control and surrender. The project’s contrasting duality of materials—hot-rolled steel and sheep hair—serves as a metaphorical and literal manifestation of this struggle. The steel, rigid and unforgiving, demands physical submission to its colossal presence, while the sheep hair, soft and transient, reflects an invented and supposed naturalness of ephemeral aesthetic attributions. Together, they form a paradoxical alliance, questioning the true essence of production in an architectural discourse eager to define what is modern, ancient, and future.
Yet, beneath this interplay lies a deeper critique—a challenge to the very concept of "nature" as something separate from man. The project, conceived as a domestic structure, is designed to shelter future ape-oids from the unpredictable forces of a post-climate California. But rather than a boundary between man and his modified “nature,” the structure embodies it. The structure is the site where human preference and environmental realities merge. It reflects a world where the climate is a series of unpredictable catastrophic events, once shaped by human hands but now unknowable, its organically produced elements indistinguishable from the synthesized ones we have left behind. Here, humanity’s influence is not an aberration, but the latest expression of nature itself. This thesis redefines the relationship between man, material, and world, presenting the structure as both protector and participant in a new, dysregulated existence.
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