On Becoming Iconic
Graduate Thesis
2016
folly [fol-ee]
3. a costly and foolish undertaking; unwise investment or expenditure.
4. a whimsical or extravagant structure built to serve as a conversation piece, lend interest to a view, commemorate a person or event, etc.
To be iconic is to disrupt the redundancy of the normal. Often this is achieved by inflating scale and rejecting context. This thesis is a series of follies that challenge the modern typology of icon in an urban environment exploring programmatic relationships of existing activity.
The selected site exists between the redundancies of a commercial corridor and a residential quadrant in the neighborhood of North Park. Temporal events and movements are congregated and analyzed to create a snapshot of the context’s character and informing the choreography of folly programs.
From these observations emerged four categories: interval, performance, depot, and thoroughfare. The design investigates these programs through follies in relationship to scale and permanence. The resulting collection of follies add to the shared and projected memory of the neighborhood becoming iconic.
Depot
Interval
Performance
Thoroughfare
