Undergraduate Architecture Thesis Documentation
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Micajah Tucker

Abstract:

A building acts as a formal joint between tangible, environmental phenomena: for example, land, water, and sky. Structure has the potential to accentuate and intensify these phenomena through alignment with or defiance of existing datums. How the structure is articulated can concertize intangible qualities, such as latent forces or atmospheric character. The gathering and reinterpretation of physical and qualitative characteristics through the language of an expressive structure allows for a building to embody and reveal qualities of place.

This proposition is explored through an architectural intervention on Williams Island in Chattanooga, Tennessee. At the river’s edge, sky, water, and land converge. The character of the river’s edge is one of dynamism and change. The intervention allows for the river’s boundary to exist while simultaneously creating a place above the riverbank that deifies both the existing horizon and gravity. Iterative building sections—supplemented by quick, speculative drawings—are used to study the intersection of site and structure.