Prime Mover: Moving Beyond the Landscape

This thesis rethinks architecture's role in representing, managing and transforming tectonic and seismic forces in the context of ever-changing natural landscapes. Conventional architectural representation is an illusion of stability, knowledge and confidence - an illusion which can leave people and place ill prepared for cataclysm. The ground, as the generator and participant of many architectural endeavors, is often misrepresented as secure, stable and definite. While designed architectural environments typically communicate safety and stability, they do so without recognizing the inherent uncertainty, fraughtness and unsettled natures of landscapes as dynamic, tense and kinetic; and none more so than those terrains along the pacific rim. Using tectonic and seismic forces as provocation and inspiration, the thesis reflects on the possibilities of architectural representation and experience that embrace processes of instability.