M.Arch. Thesis Honors Projects 2013
Greetings from Nebraska: The Form of the Territory by Dan McTavish
The United States Land Ordinance organized the land into a system of square townships and 160-acre tracts of privately owned and cultivated land with the intention of organizing social and political utility. The figure of the yeoman farmer embodied the values of agrarian Jeffersonianism, combining the right to property, individualism, and republican values. Today, high-yield mechanized agriculture is synonymous with farm consolidation, depopulating towns, and the reframing of subjectivities from farmer to farm-operator and urban dweller. In 1971, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz infamously urged farmers to plant commodity crops “from fencerow to fencerow.” The “Get Big or Get Out” agenda of land consolidation further equates the space of mid-America with a productive landscape, fixed in our spatial imaginaries—a homogenizing space that is simultaneously totalizing and fragmented.
Through the case of Nebraska, the state most heavily settled by the 1862 Homestead Act, the thesis proposes differential forms of imagining and settling the territory. Against hegemonic views of space as abstract—empty, quantitative, innocent, or in some way fixed—“Greetings from Nebraska” hypothesizes that the form of the United States territory is in constant reformation, whether consciously or not, whether in the public’s best interest or not, and that architecture as a representational practice, has a role, as Cedric Price affirms, in projecting “desirable conditions and opportunities hitherto thought impossible.”
The contradictions between the abstract space of Nebraska and the differential, historical, and everyday spaces in the state are hightened. New multivalent readings of the territory emerge through the juxtaposition of specific past, present, and future spatial conditions within the territory, including historical postcards, quantitative cartography, personal travel documentation, and discrete architectural projects. These projects are characterized by three discrete spatial strategies, Figure, Frame, and Form, which reference existing conditions within the state while challenging the status quo and projecting different desires.
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During their final year – known as the thesis year – architecture graduate students research a topic that culminates in a design project. The projects are exhibited just prior to graduation and reviewed by a panel of outside and faculty experts. One project from each studio is identified for Honors; these projects are on view over the summer in the College Gallery.
2013 Thesis Honors Projects by:
Megha Chandrasekhar, Pooja Dalal, Brittany Nicole Gacsy, Emily Kutil, Christopher Mascari, Dan McTavish, Hans Papke, Ariel Poliner, Nick Safley, Anna Schafferkoetter, and Brandon Vieth
Photo by Alex Jacque, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
M.Arch. Thesis Honors Projects 2013
Greetings from Nebraska: The Form of the Territory by Dan McTavish
The United States Land Ordinance organized the land into a system of square townships and 160-acre tracts of privately owned and cultivated land with the intention of organizing social and political utility. The figure of the yeoman farmer embodied the values of agrarian Jeffersonianism, combining the right to property, individualism, and republican values. Today, high-yield mechanized agriculture is synonymous with farm consolidation, depopulating towns, and the reframing of subjectivities from farmer to farm-operator and urban dweller. In 1971, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz infamously urged farmers to plant commodity crops “from fencerow to fencerow.” The “Get Big or Get Out” agenda of land consolidation further equates the space of mid-America with a productive landscape, fixed in our spatial imaginaries—a homogenizing space that is simultaneously totalizing and fragmented.
Through the case of Nebraska, the state most heavily settled by the 1862 Homestead Act, the thesis proposes differential forms of imagining and settling the territory. Against hegemonic views of space as abstract—empty, quantitative, innocent, or in some way fixed—“Greetings from Nebraska” hypothesizes that the form of the United States territory is in constant reformation, whether consciously or not, whether in the public’s best interest or not, and that architecture as a representational practice, has a role, as Cedric Price affirms, in projecting “desirable conditions and opportunities hitherto thought impossible.”
The contradictions between the abstract space of Nebraska and the differential, historical, and everyday spaces in the state are hightened. New multivalent readings of the territory emerge through the juxtaposition of specific past, present, and future spatial conditions within the territory, including historical postcards, quantitative cartography, personal travel documentation, and discrete architectural projects. These projects are characterized by three discrete spatial strategies, Figure, Frame, and Form, which reference existing conditions within the state while challenging the status quo and projecting different desires.
- - -
During their final year – known as the thesis year – architecture graduate students research a topic that culminates in a design project. The projects are exhibited just prior to graduation and reviewed by a panel of outside and faculty experts. One project from each studio is identified for Honors; these projects are on view over the summer in the College Gallery.
2013 Thesis Honors Projects by:
Megha Chandrasekhar, Pooja Dalal, Brittany Nicole Gacsy, Emily Kutil, Christopher Mascari, Dan McTavish, Hans Papke, Ariel Poliner, Nick Safley, Anna Schafferkoetter, and Brandon Vieth
Photo by Alex Jacque, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning