Cornell University * Spring 2020 * Thesis
Blind Spots
The Language of Ambiguity

The thesis investigates what unexpected ways indirect, blurred, and fragmented language places architecture into an exchange of modes of memory that destabalizes an absolute image or remembrance of events or sites.

The project strives to foster thresholds and spaces that fail to fall into clear definitions of classifications, thereby blurring hard boundaries, liberating illusions of stasis, and making room for interpretations, misreadings, unpredictability, and fantasy. 

The lot in Ithaca on the intersection of Plain Street and Court Street is nameless and emerged as an intermediate zone after toxic carcinogens were found in the soil, which was a consequence of the city’s early petrochemical industrial era. It is an example of many intermediate zones, that punctuate the landscape of Ithaca, and exists as a ghost that has embedded previous life cycles that have shaped the contextual fabric surrounding the void.

The plot of land, defined by indeterminacy, reflects Sola Morales “Terrain Vague”, where it’s physical manifestation challenges efficacy and order. The site is a productive case study to explore how residual, unofficial spaces can hold multiple, and often conflicting, memories and perceptions from the public.

Unfitting of the otherwise homogenized surrounding neighborhood, this example of ‘terrain vague’ and its informal qualities not only holds a long history of palimpsestuous narratives, but it also evokes vivid imaginaries and possible situations within the ordinary.