MArch Thesis Seminar
Carleton University, 2021
Tank Worlds Website
Students: Charles-Etienne Dery, Fiki Falola, Michele Gagnon, Sophie Ganan Gavela, Shelby Hagerman, Shaylyn Kelly, Jake Nogy, Robin Papp, Rehab Salama, Joel Tremblay, Brooke Zacharuk
This graduate-level seminar/workshop grappled with the question: what are the implications of miniaturising (through architectural representation) the gigantic environmental domains affected by climate change? We looked at a range of representational approaches by architects, architectural historians, natural scientists, building scientists, landscape architects and visual artists from the late nineteenth century to the present. Students constructed their own miniatures of the gigantic: ‘tank-world’ models that positioned their thesis projects within a contemporary critical environmental context. The course was structured around a focused reading of a single environmental model within its particular disciplinary, historic, and methodological contexts. We accrued a range of vantage points for thinking about scale, representation, design agency, materiality, and modes of architectural speculation for designing amidst climate collapse.