My 5th year thesis study began with the question of how a wall becomes spatial. Through this question, I needed to define what a wall is...

A wall at its elemental form is the assembly of two planes and its interior structure which the planes encase. Programmatically, a wall defines an area, carries a load and/or provides shelter. Can a wall be inhabited and become a threshold between its dividing sides? Is it then a space and not necessarily a wall? Is it both? Is it a new classification all together? 

By studying the site around my project, and continually refining what a wall - as an architectural element - is, I designed a hiking lodge on the Appalachian Trail, just south of Mount Monroe's peak. After understanding what nature defines as a wall/boundary - i.e. cliff face, river, dense forestry, etc. - my project was an architectural intervention of a man-made wall superimposed onto a natural wall. By aligning the man-made with the natural-made, a space was created that morphs the impassable boundary into a threshold.