Enclosure As Metaphor

The dominant architectural response to the ecological dilemma has historically relied on a progressive process of technological innovation to mitigate the adverse impacts of growth. At the legitimate technical vanguard is the high-performance enclosure, which, since at least the 1973 oil embargo, has prioritized reductions in operational energy consumption and concealed its ideological substrates. Evoking Marshall McLuhan’s notion of the invisible environment, this thesis reads the history of the enclosure through the lens of three substratal themes: enframement, opposition, and mediation. It takes the position that through the fortification of a series of binary conditions, the high-performance enclosure is ideologically subversive to the project of sustain-ability. The design research, as cultural practice, employs an analysis of ten historic and speculative enclosures and aims to theorize relations across the boundaries of their perceived binary conditions.