11th EAEA Envisioning Architecture: Design, Evaluation, Communication Conference in 2013

Track 2 | Experiential Simulation | The sensory perception of the built environment

Boat • Building • Water

Cameron Campbell

Keywords: boathouse; Mississippi river; architecture beginning studio project

ABSTRACT

This paper is about the complex relationship of humans with land and water. This relationship is studied through the eyes, nose, ears and touch of second-year architecture students as a pedagogic approach to sensorial perception of the environment both built and natural. The project is designed to make students more receptive to experiential conditions in the built as well as the natural environment. At the surface, the project is a boathouse but its simple program belies the larger issues of site and experience as design drivers. The power of place and the simplicity of action define the design experience.
The Mississippi River is a river of vast scale and power, but it is also a cultural place in the development of America. To this day it is a conveyor of goods and a respite of unique culture. Its banks receive flooding, drought, litter and pollution. Its bluffs and riverbanks provide powerful edge conditions and form a complex backdrop for the experience of the river edge. The first step in guiding the students to be perceptive to experience is to have them be displaced from their normal behavior and confront the power of the place by immediately engaging water and the culture of the people associated with water. The vessel is key to the students’ connection between land and water and imperative to this experience is the opportunity to directly experience using and manipulating the craft. Being on a boat, feeling the contradiction of energy and calmness through the watercraft makes the student aware of their senses. The canoe, for example, can be crudely lifted, dragged, shoved or otherwise transported across a landscape, in the water it becomes sleek, elegant and silent. Yet the canoe is an elegant form to behold when it is uninhabited, in the water it can be miserable to steer, tipsy and untrustworthy. These acts are the second layer of physical experience for the student.

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AUTHOR

Cameron Campbell

Department of Architecture, Iowa State University, Ames, United States of America

Cameron Campbell became a licensed architect and also apprenticed as an architectural photographer at the nationally recognized firm of the year in 2001 Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture. He pursued his master degree with a specialty in digital media in architecture and created a thesis about interactive space and digital media. Cameron is now a professor at Iowa State University and teaches design studio courses at many levels in the undergraduate program and teaches digital media courses as well as photography courses. Cameron continues to teach, as well as practice making and photographing architecture and creating publications of these endeavors.

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