A mobile dwelling

Date
1989
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Abstract

The proposal of this thesis is to explore the ideas, implications, and manifestations of a mobile dwelling. The thesis implies an investigation and conjecture of the nature of a mobile existence today; an exploration of of existence within the dwelling itself as well as the relationship between the dwelling and the landscape or context in which it is placed. The ideas provoking the thesis are to a certain extent in response to the mobile home and travel trailer, but more specifically to the ideas and potential of a mobile dwelling which they suggest but don’t fulfill. The thesis is not a re-evaluation of the mobile home as it exists, but rather a design problem which explores fundamental ideas of inhabitation within the discourse of architecture. To return to the seminal ideas behind a mobile dwelling allows a variety of speculations and attendant explorations which are denied by the stigma which the mobile home operates within today. If the dwelling is the place where an order relative to the world is constructed, then the mobile habitat must allow for many constructions. The taxonomy of landscapes can range from singular relationships of machine and garden to the displacement within a built urban or suburban context. Through a plurality of contexts the mobile dwelling confronts its potential: the ability to structure and inform an existence amidst a collection of contexts. The mobile dwelling then becomes a discursive element mediating the individual and the collective, allowing a critical and speculative existence within an interpretive structure. The mobile dwelling itself will provide for the fundamental physical needs of an individual. It will provide for bathing, eating, and sleeping. The articulation and definition of the object will allow an interpretive structure for those needs to be manifest within, as well as elaborated upon relative to the displacement of the mobile dwelling relative to a variety of contexts.

Description
Degree
Master of Architecture
Type
Thesis
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Citation

Snyder, Gregory M.. "A mobile dwelling." (1989) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/104782.

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