Fluxity

Abstract

Linear, static, and monofunctional methods of design have historically resulted in landscapes of permanence, fixity, and immutability, even though they work within dynamic systems. This thesis emerges from the interest of things that move and things that appear to be still, and attempts to unfold their relationship. In other words, this thesis investigates the relationship between form and flow, permanence and impermanence, an in-between zone that is inhabited by a condition coined as fluxity, a hybrid of flux and fixity. Landscape is defined by process and change as a base-line condition. The concept of fluxity introduces a framework of rates or speeds of flux, which allows the differentiation of changes in condition, composition or substance at different temporal scales. For instance, succession of plant communities or the changing of seasons occurs at a much-higher rate contrasted to geological events like the collision of tectonic plates. Fluxity engages the dynamic conditions of the landscape, living material that changes over time. The reference to living material is not limited to plant matter, water, soil, biota, and other components typically understood as landscape, but includes media, information, knowledge, memories, and cultural phenomena. In this thesis, the town of Tallassee Alabama offers a collection of existing conditions to explore. Tallassee itself is a coagulation of fluctuating systems: as Tallassee’s story continues, as do the town’s changes. Through a series of design-based investigations within this context, the adoption of fluxity provides a framework for a systematic response to gradual, cyclical, immediate or violent rates of flux where Tallassee Community Library is reconfigured into a landscape-based system and research station: a Landbrary. The result is a hybridized cultural, technological, and ecological field that promotes fresh configurations of elements emphasizing processes of formation, dynamics of information, and the poetics of becoming.