Place, Bound By A Circle A Hospice

• Main Author: Purswell, Valerie Gaddis
• Other Authors: Architecture
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: Virginia Tech 2014
• Subjects: Structuralist; Place; Hospice; Soninke; LD5655.V855 1992.P877
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/35412; http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-10172000-19230054/

Death is a profoundly solitary moment in which one faces the meaning of one's existence. Death is an emotional, spiritual, psychological and physical act. For the terminally ill, the hospice is a viable alternative to dying in a hospital. The Hospice can accommodate death being faced intimately amidst loves ones. This emerging institution places new and unique demands upon architecture. Solitude and fellowship have significant implications for triumph by simply dying well. A building's meaning comes from its making, culture, syntax, and from the immutable qualities of humans. Meaning is discovered, not applied. Structuralist architects search for the order within various phenomena. Anthropological Structuralism involves the discovery of the underlying structures found within and between cultures and the human mind. Myths of different cultures address similar underlying questions even if they generate different answers. Linguistic Structuralism studies the role of language and the individual expression of language. Topology, the science of place, is the study of relation and invariance. Structuralism proposes a signification of place and occasion. Particular articulations occur while the capacity to be interpreted is retained. In-betweens are tangible elements that make sense. Moments within the architecture relate to each other as a series of places. In this thesis a hospice and a chapel are designed. Massive walls are carved out to form rooms, subtractive in nature. Series of walls are placed together, additive in nature, to form rooms. Geometric forms are studied for their qualities and are placed according to forged relationships. A travel journal explores the building practices of the Soninke === Master of Architecture