If this is not my last blog as a Yale student, then perhaps this is my penultimate entry. I'm trying to muster the courage to share my feelings about what will happen in the next couple of weeks. I'm not necessarily talking about graduation. I'm talking about the renovation of Paul Rudolph's wonderfully curmudgeonly and ornery Art and Architecture Building. It's been a bad year for Rudolph: many of his works are on the literal chopping block, about to be reduced to smoldering heaps of rubble and cordite. But what is about to happen to the A+A building ... it's tragic. Google "A+A Building" and "Gwathmey", and you'll see what I'm talking about. Again, this is for a future post.

But on to other pertinent matters ... My days inside the A+A building are technically numbered. They will be officially over a week from today, when I receive my diploma. I am really looking forward to it: I will get to celebrate with friends and family and enjoy some decent weather for a change.

Today, I turned in my final copy of my thesis. I wouldn't say that the body of my thesis represents two years of research here at Yale. Rather, it is the thesis' lacunae, the missteps and miscalculations I had to endure that really define my tenure here, in my opinion. In other words, as much as my thesis represents a sustained research effort as well as an exercise in original, archival research, I think that what is absent or missing from it speaks volumes. Indeed, writing a thesis is as much a editorial and content-management project as anything else. However, I would not describe my thesis as full of conclusions. Rather, it is full of resignations. As in, "I still don't know enough to make a definitive conclusion about my topic" or "I am not about to make an observation I cannot support."

I've blogged about my research before. But, for starters ... my thesis is officially called Built to Destroy. The thesis is about the "Typical German and Japanese Test Structures" at Dugway Proving Ground, a weapons testing facility in the northwestern Utah desert. Erich Mendelsohn, Konrad Wachsmann, and Antonin Raymond designed these buildings. The first two designed the "German Village", which was essentially a full-scale replica of North and Central German apartment blocks (note: these were not Mietskasernen, as Mike Davis claims in his treatment of these buildings in Dead Cities). Raymond designed the equivalent "Japanese Village", which consisted of slate- and title-roof variants of urban apartments found in major Japanese industrial areas. Along with members of the RKO Studios Authenticity Division, as well with the advice of both Hans Knoll and Paul Zucker, the three architects also completed research about the linens and interior furnishings that went into the buildings. All was designed just to see how well it would burn -- the buildings were designed to test the efficacy of the AN-M69-x napalm incendiary. The results from these tests provided both the United States Army Air Force and the Royal Air Force with crucial information about targeted cities in Germany and Japan.

I do not want to get into the analysis underlying this project. It is, after all, quite rote. As for the buildings, they are architecturally unremarkable. The project isometrics, drawn by Mendelsohn and Raymond are really shoddy. These buildings are poor knockoffs of German and Japanese housing ... and thus it is their "use" that really makes this (I think) into a provocative work. When researching this project, the connection between these architects' work and the deaths of hundreds and thousands of people (not to mention the systematic annihilation of some of the world's densest urban areas) during World War II is not far-fetched. Or is it?

During my review, Emmanuel Petit asked me a very directed question: what conclusion had I reached about Mendelsohn's, Wachsmann's, and Raymond's work for the Chemical Warfare Service during World War II? He was asking me to take a stand on my topic. A similar question was posed to me by Nasser Rabbat when I presented my topic at a conference at Harvard this past February. He asked me if I was "hiding behind the archive" in order to avoid making a moral judgment on the work of these three architects.

I have been thinking about this project for almost two years now, and though I am still mortified by the history of this project, I am much more confused about it than I was. My pragmatic side wants to say the following: my job as an architectural historian is to write about the buildings, spatial configurations, etc. that define my topic, to write about its social, intellectual, and historical context, to be critical, analytical, and synthetic in one fell swoop. But those who are interested in my project want me to answer questions like, "What was going on in Erich Mendelsohn's mind when he completed this project?" I've read many of Mendelsohn's letters, and none mention the project. I've also perused some of his wartime correspondence ... and still the answer is "I don't know."

"I don't know" is not a resignation until I admit that I will not really know many of the sordid and biographical details that are intertwined into my project. In that sense a resignation can be a powerful impulse, for it implies the idea that any conclusions about my research will not be able to be reached for a long, long time. It means that I have to find new and different ways to consider and contextualize my project ... and that is equally liberating and exhilarating.

But, let me tell you things ended. It was with a whimper. I woke up this morning. I made some coffee and sat behind my computer, adjusting my table and contents and pagination (I changed the typeface on my manuscript the night before). I captured my thesis as a .pdf, and burned two copies of it onto CDR's. I then walked the .75 miles to the A+A building, walked among the strewn rubble and discarded studio projects (all the studios were being cleaned up in preparation for graduation). I trekked up six flights of stairs to the 6th floor computer lab, one of the few air-conditioned areas in the building. I printed two copies of "Built to Destroy" on 20-lb weight, alkali-buffered paper, and walked down to the third floor to deliver the manuscripts. I placed them in a box, and before I put its lid on, I wrote a check for $70 payable to "Yale University" and placed it inside.

I then went home and took a nap. And so ended my two years here at Yale.