Improvisation in Public Place

This study chronicled, studied, and reacted to improvisation in public places. In documenting space we learn that by changing their environments, people are telling a story about place, active participants and performers in place-making. In changing the space, they provide a clue to their wants and needs. The site for the proposal is in Kaifan, Kuwait City. It was the site for a neighborhood park that through processes of improvisation, has evolved/devolved.

Paraphrased from Noise Orders: Jazz, Improvisation, and Architecture, David P. Brown:

Improvisation, a negotiation between anticipated and unanticipated phenomena and a play of the familiar within processes of tradition, repetition, change.

The improvisation was threefold: I operated in an improvisational manner (between/across media), studied current improvisations (site conditions), and proposed a framework that allows for improvisation within its boundaries (the project).

The series of paintings are part of my improvisational operations. Painting, designing, and writing all inform and react to each other. I use the painting to test operations of addition and subtraction. I keep coming back these operations to test the current iteration with previous discoveries, keeping a healthy dialogue between the domains.

Bachelor of Architecture Thesis / Virginia Tech / Advised by Clive Vorster