Post Unimog : Thinking Thesis.

Sometimes, you think you know exactly what you want to do, until you set out to do it. So with the final project of the M1 term finished, I am savoring a few moments to stop and think about my summer, and my masters education. The presentation of the Unimog went as well as I could have hoped and the project itself was super fun, more fun than it should have been, so much fun I have to ask myself, do I really want to research hydro mills for the rest of my graduate education? Maybe.

The Unimog Project was fun for a few reasons, the first was the over all coolness of the truck and the blending of camping and architecture. The real thing that got me constantly fired up though was the fact that the Unimog is a machine. I like machines. I like the Pink Floyd Song "Welcome to the Machine" and I also really like robots, never mind.  On top of all this, I like tools, tools of all sizes, forms and shapes, tools began very simply and one of the first tool that scientists speculate on is the creation of a fabric clasp, a button, or broach. Pretty obscure sure, but seriously the broach in combination with a fur, or skin enabled a woman with child to carry and protect their young without using their hands. It also allowed the child to continue to grow before needing to be mobile allowing for longer duration for brain development and maturation. The sling was the first tool, not the bone or club like 2001: Space Odyssey would have you believe. Tools became extensions of the human body, a sling mimicking the womb, then a club to lengthen the reach of the fist, all the way through to axes, chainsaws, cars, excavators, bull dozers, cranes, and computers.

So yeah I like tools, I like machines, I like wheels and gears, moving parts and rust. So in my thesis thinking, in my multiple fascinations that I am to juggle, shuffle and use for inspiration, where does the machine come out? The Mill is one part of the fascination, the mill is the picturesque machine within nature, in a pastoral setting, the mill is deceiving, for all of its quant representations, the mill is a machine, or a machine housing, protecting the equipment from the elements, hiding the dangerous wheels and gears and spinning rollers and saws, the Mill is a tool, the mill is a machine. So there is some traction with mills. Nature and the machine.

There is also the idea of architecture as machine, a house as a machine for living, and architecture as tool. Recently I have been partaking in an anti-planning / protest exercise for the west harbour in hamilton, advocating for the re-use, and preservation of some pretty narly, historic industrial buildings, the Rheem building being one of them. The Rheem building is a tool, its main supporting structure is a gantry crane with a truss roof sitting on top. see image below.

 This Industrial aesthetic is something I always come back to, the machine as inspiration for architecture. Lately this has led me to look at things like excavators, back hoes, and bulldozers. A kind of industrial industrial design. So now there is a pull, a pull away from the Mill and toward the factory, and the machine. I guess right now, it all falls generally under the theme of the building as machine, architecture as tool, architecture as an extension of the human body.