❷ OASIS AS A DIFFICULT WHOLE
❸ ABOUT JUNK & HANGING OUT
❹ ATHENS, AN EFFORT TO LOG
❺ POINT THE KNEES TOGETHER
❻ IT TAKES A VILLAGE
❼ SPRAWL OUT SORAUREN
❽ BREAK
An undergraduate thesis project under advisor Laura Miller.
Fully titled: ABOUT JUNK & HANGING OUT
Assemblies of Upcycled Infrastucture in the Greater Toronto Area; Renaissance of DIY & Low-Tech Building to Catalyze New Suburbanism.
The town of Stouffville becomes a testing ground for a suburban vernacular, pushing against the sterile, generic developer-driven public realm. Town residents are offered space to donate leftover material that more often simply accumulates in households; communal tools and a workspace facilitate the reinvention of new uses and forms.
Ivan Ilich’s writings, which are used as part of the beginning research for the year-long project, argue that people desire to give shape to infrastructure according to their own taste. Conviviality becomes a primary concern of this thesis, defined by Ilich as the joy borne of the power to be able to make things, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. The project relies on the idea of giving suburban residents, already interested in renovating on their private lots, the tools to do so in the public realm.
Published in SCAFFOLD* Journal’s First Edition,
and presented at the Journal’s launch on October 25th, 2024.