Jan '11 - Jan '12
There are four more weeks of writing left for me to compose into entries before I can call this blog complete, but while I muster up the courage to revisit the final month of our thesis I thought I'd share some more recent images instead.
On one of the few really cold weekends in November (this winter has been unseasonably warm in Manitoba) we made the drive out to my parents' farm to finish the work we started in early January.
What better way to say good-bye to a labour of love than with a big bonfire?
View full entry
My hiatus has been a lot longer than I expected it to be! Final thesis reviews were in April, and we went back to the house for another month in May to bring the project to as much of a final resolution as we could given the time available. There is still more standing out at the site than we... View full entry
11.02.22 With trim and finishes in the southeast bedroom removed, we transition to the hardwood. The flooring in the first bedroom did not come up cleanly enough to salvage, so we decide to start removal from the opposite direction to see if it has any effect. At the suggestion of our technical... View full entry
Well, I'm way behind on entries but I do have a few more weeks of work ready to blog once I compile the photographs and documentation of the smoke drawings. We passed our final review (yay!) and are in the process of completing the book, so the final chapters should be ready to share very soon... View full entry
11.02.12 In our weekly review, we’ve begun discussing the means by which the home’s undoing can transition into the pages of a book. In a project that must somehow translate itself to a far-removed audience, starting early in this process will be critical to ensure we don’t miss... View full entry
11.02.05 The death of the house is a slow withdrawal, a peeling away. With the layers of asphalt shingles and fir planks removed, heavy drifts of snow settle onto the exposed shiplap. Temperatures climb from -30 degrees celcius to +1 in a matter of days, and dark stains begin to spread across the... View full entry
11.01.29 Snow falls inch by inch, hour by hour. Almost everywhere in the province highways are closed to traffic. Stuck in the city, we explore the missing gap in the full-scale drawing process. As building paper only exists on the floor and exterior walls in each room, we question how the... View full entry
11.01.22 The fire is too large for a test this early in the drawing process. Lacking a strong updraft, smoke pours from every unattended opening. An exhaust pipe that went unnoticed inside a kitchen cupboard, poorly blocked vents in the bedrooms upstairs – all of these unsealed orifices... View full entry
11.01.15 A classmate in need of some old hardwood planks meets us in the morning and we drive out to the site together. She’s able to salvage a large sliding door from one of the tractor sheds on the site, and we get a big bag of homemade perogies in exchange (thanks Aleksandra!). Our own... View full entry
11.01.07 It’s windy. Snow snakes across the road in murky strands, and the path my dad cleared to the house begins to drift full of snow. Once on the roof, we’re thankful that the sheathing on the north side is still intact. We bring down the remaining boards on the east side... View full entry
Please refer back to the previous entry for a summary of the project thus far. The following daily entries were written during our first deconstruction weekend at the site.11.01.01 It seems appropriate that our work at the site begins on the first day of the new year. We start in the dark cavity... View full entry
With the house in our possession (see photo in the last entry) but no clear understanding of what it could become, we spent the first semester trying to uncover the latent potential embedded in the site. Interior photographs of the house. Typically in our program, students spend the first term... View full entry
So it begins! I’m Shannon – welcome to the final semester of my Master of Architecture thesis at the University of Manitoba. As there hasn’t been a blogger from our school in a couple of years, I’ll give a short synopsis of how the faculty is currently structured. The... View full entry
Sited within an abandoned Eaton’s Catalogue Home on a farmstead in rural Manitoba, the thesis dwells in the duality of domestic space as symbolic image and constructed interior. As the final occupants of a building that must be demolished, our work strives to inhabit the instant between waking and dreaming, “the moment where the subject is not sure of the distinction between a representation and a spatial condition” [Charles Rice, The Emergence of the Interior].
