Landfall

Landfall considers the arbitrariness of our attachments to both people and places, while at the same time marveling at the inevitability and necessity of those attachments. The importance of place in these poems, most prominently that of southern Louisiana, is pervasive, and the insistent description of landscape becomes inextricable from an interrogation of personal and familial relationships. The power of such bonds seems to defy any satisfactory explanation, but by drawing on personal narrative as well as on the natural world, these poems begin, cautiously and in fragments, to approach and confront that power.

Dwelling Beyond: Sustainable Design On Mars

In 1620, over the course of 66 days, 102 passengers called the Mayflower their home before arriving and settling in Plymouth, New England. In the years following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 nearly 7 million people traversed extreme wilderness in covered wagons to found and settle the American West. This year, 2015, the first spaceport has opened in anticipation of sub orbital space flights in 2017 and manned settlement flights to mars by 2026. This thesis explores the questions: In this next phase of human exploration and settlement, what does it mean to dwell beyond earth? What are the current architectural limitations regarding structure and material sustainability? And, How can architecture elevate the traditionally sterile environments of survival shelters to that of permanent dwellings?