Vantu, Quynh; (2022) Architecture is a Verb. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Architecture is a verb. Active and in flux, movement is a generator of spatial experience that I explore through the threshold to empower an engaged and meaningful spatial and social condition within the built environment. Utilising the threshold as a methodological tool, I am exploring how this architectural element is the most active space within architecture. Ushering us in and out of spaces and offering opportunities for engagement with the built environment, the threshold is a physical manifestation of movement signifying a transition from one space to another. The threshold not only offers individuals an engaging experience with architecture, but the threshold also is a social condition that offers engagement with one another. Influenced by the theologian and philosopher, Martin Buber’s theory of the ‘in-between’ as a space necessary for human contact and meaningful relationships, I look at these cultural and social relationships fostered through developed and articulated thresholds found within architecture. My practice lies between architecture and art as I employ the method of installations and interventions as a way for spatial experimentation and promoter of social interaction. Feeding research into praxis, I speculate on ways of adapting spatial interventions that will experiment with our perceptions of movement, time and space. The generation of these built works constitutes questions of spatial practice and focuses on our perceptions through sensorial effects evoked and enhanced through movement. The very position that my practice takes is between the thresholds of art and architecture. Through an interdisciplinary practice, I am self-critical through the very nature of being challenged from both lenses of art and architecture. Placing emphasis upon my identity as an ‘architect/artist,’ I navigated the practical research through the institutions of art - participating in artist residencies and exhibitions, while the contextual research lay primarily in the discourse of architecture. I have gone about this research by building relationships; relationships between practice and theory, relationships between architecture and art, relationships of a very personal nature - reacting in practice from my own histories, experiences, background, and identity as an ‘architect/ artist,’ and relationships developed between people, communities, and cultures over the course of my nomadic practice. Travel has been an essential component of the research methodology as it provided the necessary time in the field to conduct my explorations of architecture through first-hand experiences. These experiences, paired with the critical reflection through the writing of this thesis, provides the framework for a journey that expresses further insights in this research through the form of built installations and spatial experiments. the use of both writing and the practice involved in making these works became part of the critical reflective process in this thesis, one which was a reaction to the experiences of travel and thus reflecting the ideas discovered on this journey with the works that engaged their sites and context, as well as the reflection of these experiences through writing about the very process of making to form another critical dialogue. Gaining from my analysis of these conditions of movement, transition and passage, I speculate on how the careful consideration of movement as an element for design can enhance our engagement with the built world and with each other.

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