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Thesis Topic
I am an M.Arch. student developing my Thesis Proposal and wanted to get some feedback or just some interesting new perspectives on my topic... something that I may not have thought of.. or any projects architects I could look at as case studies.
I am interested in an architecture for a transient lifestyle.. and I think there are many interesting facets to the concept on several different levels (infrastructural, social, ecological...)
here are a few ways I am thinking about the concept of Transiency:
Baudelaire's Le Flaneur.. but on a global scale.
Homelessness
SRO (single room only) Hotels
Migrant workers
Globalization
Local Adaptation - relationship to the local
This topic may result in a hybrid program of varying length-of-stay residences /educational.. or other types of program that could be essential to people who do not have a static 'home'
I know there is a basic concept/hypothesis/argument in there somewhere... I am just trying to distill it.. and make-sense-of/edit all the different facets of the idea.
You have to break your thesis into two categories. Voluntary and involuntary transience. There is a huge distinction. Both can/have been romanticized to death. Literature, music, and film have been feeding off this concept forever.
From Chaplin's tramp, Hemingway's Spanish war, to the ever touring band, you have quite a few protagonists to pick from.
On the other side you have natural disaster victims, immigrants and refugees, sex-slave workers, drug addicts, runaway teenagers, and mental illness.
And then you have the truck drivers.
As far as physical non-dwellings for these people go, no community wants anything to do with them; be that a musician touring flop-house, injection site, or a half-way home. Not having a permanent cave is shunned down by those who do.
mdler showed an image of a travelling salesman/businessman. Solution for these has been established long ago. It's called Motel 8.
For the rest, I'm not sure if a purely architectural solution exists. Most of these people have no money, so a free-market-solution would be to say fuck 'em all. A more pragmatic solution would call for a development of a good public policy (that COULD have a strong architectural component).
I'm not sure if you want to go down that road. For all I know your main inspiration is Kevin Costner's "Postman" :)
tim
i just dont know how to post an image
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