Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Architecture (MArch)
Department
Architecture
First Advisor
Mae Dessauvage
Second Advisor
Evan Farley
Abstract
The most intimate experience of architecture starts at the scale of the object, from the slight grazing past the sofa to the painful bump of the toe against the legs of the sharply angled table. These objects have become a huge part of our everyday life and how we navigate the world around us, especially in the home where we spend the most time with them. Yet how many of us are truly aware when we engage with these objects. In a methodology deeply rooted in the design of objects into things, ideas investigated through this process are situated in object-oriented ontology and thing theory scholarship. Here, an object is defined as something easily perceived and understood in terms of how to interact with it. It has a known and clear sense of its place, use, and function. A thing on the other hand, does the opposite, manifesting itself once it interacts with our bodies unexpectedly, breaks down, malfunctions, or shed its encoded social value, or eludes our understanding. This thesis develops a deeper understanding of human-object relationships as a form of cultural production focusing on the everyday experience of architectural spaces, of everything but the walls. By reimagining objects into things through a play on scale, material, form, representation, and construction, how do we become aware of the ways in which objects shape us and we shape them. How does this make us reconsider our relationship to domesticity and domestic living?
Recommended Citation
Yirenkyi, Michael K., "Objects Into Things: The Ordinary into Extraordinary" (2025). Masters Theses. 1422.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1422
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