Weak material: light, time, location and the stuff of architecture

In the 1987 essay Weak Architecture the Spanish architectural theorist Ignasi de Sola-Morales asked the question “what role is accorded to architecture in the aesthetic system of contemporary weak thought?”(de Sola-Morales, 1996 [1987], p. 57). Given the increasing contemporary influence of weak ontology (thought) within the discipline of philosophy and the resulting spill over into architectural theory, this thesis asks a similar question repositioned from the viewpoint of the designer: What impact does the philosophy of Weak Ontology have on the design of contemporary architecture? By questioning the objective relationship between person and architecture (the ontological and the ontic), the plurality and incompleteness of architectural experience must be addressed. The project uses the relationship of light and architecture to reevaluate three foundational architectural elements: its materiality, its linear existence in time, and its fixed location. The role of light within architecture becomes the focus not of the investigation itself, but a demonstration of the accumulative and pluralized influences that overlay the Euclidean underpinnings of architectural tectonics.