Date of Award
Spring 6-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Tamara Metz
Second Advisor
Jonathan Knowles
Abstract
The urban environment lacks sufficient public places to be alone, where individuals can feel free to seek respite from the intensity of city life. While solitude is easily achievable in the vast landscape of the natural world, it is something that must be carefully and deliberately carved out within the confines of the city and remains inaccessible to many. We’ve all heard of follies in the landscape, both sitting in remote places and dispersed throughout public parks in either case taking advantage of open space, but why couldn’t we carve room for follies in denser environments? What can be extracted from existing follies and learned from to create spaces of solitude? This thesis identifies essential spatial and architectural qualities present in expressly remote, man-made structures, to determine what architectural motifs add to feelings of solitude. Analysis of these architectural motifs highlights two important conditions. Firstly these manifest primarily as transitional spaces. Secondly, there are a number of associated dualities striking a precarious balance within them; disconnection and reconnection, reorientation and disorientation, views in and views out, visual weight and apparent lightness, and removal from the ground plane and puncture into the ground plane. Through remixing and reapplying the catalog of spatial conditions extracted from follies in the landscape a proposal for an urban follie is developed which questions the role of solitude within the city.
Recommended Citation
Schildge, Jack, "Icons of Solitude: Peace, Quiet, and the Urban Condition" (2024). Masters Theses. 1281.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1281
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