Circles & Squares

THESIS ABSTRACT
RICHARD SMITH | MARCH 10, 2009

Reconnecting Fragments: The Labour of Love

Boat building and fort construction in maritime Canada form two of the first productive enterprises in the colonies, involving individuals from the community exchanging and developing ideas through the medium of the ship’s draught. This made a profound intellectual impact such as the genesis of engineering in Canada but also the transferring of one culture of building to another . Through this intellectual phenomenon came hybrid solutions to conventional building methods and high-quality construction of dwellings because of skilled boat builders. This creative and analogous relationship has since been divided by historical preservationism and the modernization of craftsmanship.

This thesis explores the theoretical writing of amorous attraction by Barbara Maria Stafford, and a discussion of the amorous qualities philia, and agapē in the writing of Alberto Perez Gomez. Together, these make up essential connective qualities that emphasize making connections between divided relationships and learning through similarity, not difference. Taking spoils of boats and appropriating them inventively, the fort will be transformed into a boat building and repair workshop with outlying trades buildings––common to boat building and fort construction.

Amorous attraction contends that we have forgotten how to think analogically, that we should conduct the nobler task of connecting using analogy rather than dividing by disanalogy. Coupling this process to the architectural process of craftsmanship and bricolage therein, the proposed architecture can help reconnect the vast potential of this hybrid vernacular culture of building.