Type_Academic
M.Arch Graduate Thesis
Year_2017
brief
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8-month self-directed research project
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10,000 word research document and images
More Stories About Ports and Polar Bears:
A Future for Churchill, Manitoba
In the summer of 2016, the only arctic seaport of Canada in Churchill, Manitoba, faced a controversial and complete closure of operations. The port’s vacant grain elevators tower over the coastal tundra landscape as a landmark to the town’s existence as a former outpost of northern prosperity shaped by the railway and past technological and military advancements, and scientific ambitions.
The project imagines a re-appropriation of the Churchill sea port and its infrastructure through themes of nature and technology. Narratives of the relationship between humans and the environment is explored through the advent of an optimistically changing climate and its effects on existing
buildings. This thesis substantiates a reconsideration for how global climate change might influence long term decisions for the built environment in northern Canada.
The practice of drawing became a way to study, compile, and imagine future architectures of the seaport. Borrowing techniques from the composite ideogram drawings of architect Douglas Darden, engineered orthographic design drawings of grain port equipment and structures are composed, collaged and laid over plans and sections of the existing structures. Collaging these contextually familiar objects together injects a specific formal language for the speculative drawings. Above,
drawn layers connects formally spatial and programmatic ideas through layers of existing architecture and the compositions of collaged imagery.
