A Living Archive: inhabiting idiosyncratic exhibitions of memory
in a new geography of curiosity
Harvard GSD Thesis, spring 2010 / Mariana Ibanez, advisor
James Templeton Kelley Thesis Prize, 2010
also see Thesis Book
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Thesis Statement_This thesis proposes the design of a new architectural type – a living archive. The project recognizes the cultural compulsion to collect in the U.S., and investigates how this practice should transform the existing typologies of the home and the archive within an emergent American landscape of storage. This new architectural intervention experiments with the home as the activated site for engagement with a collection by reintegrating object curation with the idiosyncratic habits of living to create a dynamic archive. This new type proposes the return of the classification of objects, as a tool for the structuring of knowledge, to its roots in the interactive lab of the home while also offering a space for the exhibition and encoding of personal memory. The goal of this project is to better spatially capture and project the dynamism, emotion, and discursive potentials intrinsic to the process of personal collecting.
