The Culture of Water
Design Intention
Sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small; beauty should be smooth, and polished; the great, rugged and negligent; beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great in many cases loves the right line, and when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation; beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy; beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive.
Edmund Burke
This semester’s narrative will explore the culture of building and water in relation to Buochs, Nidwalden. What happens when the village of Buochs adapt to the culture of water? Data will be collected through hazard maps, site observations, historical photographs, working models and photographic analysis to test the narrative with consideration of the speculative nature of the physical test models. At the end of the research there will be a hypothetical series of building typological reactions to the ‘culture’ of water with consideration of the aesthetics nature of water as a theoretical background within the strip chosen in Buochs.




