As part of the thesis prep portion of a research option studio taught by Associate Professor John Shnier this past winter semester, Master of Architecture students were asked to create films as an exercise to explore the subject of their thesis projects. The themes for each video were drawn from the option studio “House for Piranesi at Hadrian’s Villa” which explored such questions as:
 
Are you speculative and subjective or measurable and objective?
How does the theme of Flux influence your work?
Are you interested in “otherness”?
What questions will you address through your thesis?
To what discourse or area are you making a contribution?
 
Professor Shnier describes this assignment as “an ongoing collection; an archive of souvenirs, impulses and data that constitutes the accrual of material that defines each student's discourse. A rich and resonant territory of ideas and inspirations, facts and figures, examples and material that support the students’ theses.”
 
Here are four films from the course:

1. Siobhan Sweeny: All in Good Taste

"My short film explores food culture and it's impact on space. ‎The distribution of food has fundamentally changed from purely utilitarian to a dialogue between people, their city, and their food. The event of food is having a physical, aesthetic impact. I am interested in the immersive quality of food that leaves a city with culturization, snobbery, goodness, polarization, all in flux, and how this manifests itself in architecture."

2. Linda Zhao: Passage

"The world beneath our feet has always been a unique and fascinating realm I’m interested to discover. The film – Passage – narrates a motion, sequence and timeline through an underground space. The film begins in a blurry and dark unknown world. Through the graduate introduction of light, sound, and movement, this unknown space slowly transforms into a more visible and familiar realm."

3. Vineetha Sivathasan: Per-formation

"The intent of this video was to look at form and space based anticipation that is created with the layering of a combination of interests. This combination consists of the idea of a line that forms a body, and the fabric that clothes this body. I wanted to explore how the essence of being clothed could be translated to architectural form making. The interconnectedness of mutilation of fabric to the mutation of space experimented in this video. Furthermore, my thesis research site - the Textile Museum of Canada - played a role in inspiring the content of the video."

4. Jahanvi Sharma: Future Memory Void

"A void is a container for a collection of memories. It carries traces of the past and the potential for an unknown future. It is in a constant state of flux and can be experienced or occupied on several different levels.

The city of Christchurch was struck by a devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake on February 22, 2011. The earthquake took lives and left the core of the city in a state of ruin. The once thriving social hub is now hollow – a series of voids, which represent the memories they hold and will continue to accumulate.

I would like to explore the significance and meaning of memory in Architecture with Christchurch being the case study. The city is constantly changing due to ongoing geological activities and as it is simultaneously being rebuilt. It is also changing in character as old forgotten traditions resurface and are revisited and in a new context.  This is an incredible opportunity to speculate the change in memory’s relevance and relationship to monuments and built form over time – to discover the space of memory. It is a means to question how we commemorate and memorialize events, which are traumatic but temporary and how the permanence of physical architectural objects responds to the fleeting nature of the same.

With this film, I have attempted to create a form and space for memory – a layered palimpsest which alludes to a new world where the past, present and future co-exist."

Check out more films created by Daniels Faculty students.