Adrift on the Pequod, Space out of Time: A Trappist Monastery off the Coast of Santa Barbara

Abstract

This thesis proposes a Trappist monastery on an abandoned oil rig in the year 2087. Its starting point is a set of dialectics drawn from the character of its landscape and program: sea/sky, earthly/spiritual, space/time, surface/depth, horizon/well. The thesis thus asks: what happens when architecture occupies the liminal space between two qualities? How do we design spaces that play, drift, and meander on the edge, in the edge, existing in between to become a bit of both but fully neither? The design of the monastery seeks spatial and experiential richness found in interpretive in-exhaustiveness and an opening into dialogue between space and person. It explores the hypothesis that an architecture drifting in a constantly changing relationship between two sides of a dialectic is a way of creating this enduring dialog.