DFN 2004 Accelerated Studio IV

Studio Critic: Professor Richard Cole

In addition to the NAAB Goals and Criteria, this assignment is designed to accomplish three specific objectives:

• To challenge the student to explore architectural form, space and site from a knowledgeable, researched base relative to sustainability, building meaning, and critical regionalism.
• To raise the student's awareness of the "meaning" of architectural form and space-making.
• To challenge the student to synthesize solutions that integrate technology (including passive technologies) with architectural form and space-making.

In March of 1845, at age 28, Henry David Thoreau began construction of his cabin on Walden Pond. With the construction he also began to construct a "new self" and a new life. Thoreau moved into his cabin on July 4, 1845, and dwelled there until 1847. His narrative of these two years of self-discovery is one of the most important publications transcendentalist movement of the 19^th century.

The premise of this design setting is that a modern-day character, imbued with the sensibility, scholarship, and values of Henry David Thoreau decides to test Thoreau's Walden experiences and conclusions in an urban setting. This decision is rationalized by this "contemporary Theoreau" to experience, as did Henry David Thoreau, the essence of living. Although the setting is different, the underlying concept of experience desired by Henry David Thoreau over 150 years ago are worth testing in this new setting by our modern-day Thoreau.

Although the student is given great latitude in establishing the detailed character of the contemporary Thoreau figure, there should be a recognition of our own chronological time. Additionally, our modern-day Thoreau (in this premise) has approached someone to assist with design (perhaps an architect) - or may be a designer, or architect, himself or herself. The contemporary Thoreau figure also desires meaning in the construct of his environment, just as Henry David Thoreau appreciated meaning in the humble construct of his Walden cabin.

Many readers mistake Henry's tone in Walden and other works, thinking he was a cranky hermit. That was far from the case, as one of his young neighbors and Edward Emerson attest. He found greater joy in his daily life than most people ever would.

The Transcendentalist Movement

It would be difficult to properly assess the goals of the project design without a fundamental knowledge of the American transcendentalist movement which was so critical in the intellectual arena of Thoreau and his mentor, Emerson.

The transcendentalist movement was the result of a heated religious controversy within the Unitarian church. It began in the 1820s with a revolt of the younger clergymen in and around Boston. They were protesting what Emerson termed "the corpse-cold Unitarianism of Harvard College and Brattle Street."

To these young clergymen, Unitarianism had removed the essentials of genuine religious experience - intuition, feeling, and mystery - and had replaced them with a rationalist, common-sense, "rule-book" approach to the religious life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the German philosopher Immanuel Kant the credit for making "Transcendentalism" a familiar term. Contrary to Locke's theory (the mind is like a blank tablet), that before any concept could be intellectualized it must first be experienced by the senses, Kant said there were experiences that could be acquired through "intuitions of the mind;" he referred to the "native spontaneity of the human mind." In his essay, "Nature," Emerson explained how every idea has its source in natural phenomena, and that the attentive person can "see" those ideas in nature. Intuition allowed the transcendentalist to disregard external authority and to rely, instead, on direct experience.

Summary

In this project, the student is urged to read Walden, study the intellectual qualities of Thoreau's life, and be knowledgeable of the transcendental influences on Thoreau. Although not mandatory, the student may consider our "modern-day Thoreau" a contemporary transcendentalist seeking an urban existence with meaning.