Final Report
Submitted to the Watson Fellowship in completion of a year of movement...
Now that I have returned to the US, it is refreshing to look back at my Watson project and have the distance to process not only the past year and what I learned, but also what brought me to these places. My project sought to examine the relationship that nomadic people have to their natural and built environments and how that relationship, as expressed through portable, domestic architecture, communicates a different understanding of space and place than that of settled people. My methodology was rooted in a belief that architecture functions as ideology in built form. Homes are more than just houses, more than just shelter. Not only do structures shape the people who live in them, but communities use architecture to invent and reinforce visions of themselves. Additionally, structures are powerful communicators of identity and values that one can learn to read.
The project was formulated within the framework of Cultural Geography, or Cultural Landscape Studies, a field that focuses on how people use everyday space – streets, buildings, fields, town squares, parking lots, factories, farms, etc. – to create, support and express the ideas and values of the community. In this case, landscape is more than scenery; it is it is the connection between people and the spaces to which they belong, those from which they derive collective meaning and identity.
I began my project in Mongolia with a long list of questions, but with little intention of doing formal interviews. I was there to live with people, to move with them, to dismantle and rebuild their homes, to try and understand what these structures meant to them and how they spoke through the homes they were perpetually building...
Now that I have returned to the US, it is refreshing to look back at my Watson project and have the distance to process not only the past year and what I learned, but also what brought me to these places. My project sought to examine the relationship that nomadic people have to their natural and built environments and how that relationship, as expressed through portable, domestic architecture, communicates a different understanding of space and place than that of settled people. My methodology was rooted in a belief that architecture functions as ideology in built form. Homes are more than just houses, more than just shelter. Not only do structures shape the people who live in them, but communities use architecture to invent and reinforce visions of themselves. Additionally, structures are powerful communicators of identity and values that one can learn to read.
The project was formulated within the framework of Cultural Geography, or Cultural Landscape Studies, a field that focuses on how people use everyday space – streets, buildings, fields, town squares, parking lots, factories, farms, etc. – to create, support and express the ideas and values of the community. In this case, landscape is more than scenery; it is it is the connection between people and the spaces to which they belong, those from which they derive collective meaning and identity.
I began my project in Mongolia with a long list of questions, but with little intention of doing formal interviews. I was there to live with people, to move with them, to dismantle and rebuild their homes, to try and understand what these structures meant to them and how they spoke through the homes they were perpetually building...
posted by steph carlisle at 9:24 PM
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