stab #1

At Alan's prompting, I took a stab at it. 3 of my initial ideas for thesis topic below:

1. relationship of water to housing typology in waterfront informal settlements, particularly low income communities within urban context (ie. mumbai, thailand) espeically understanding how people form a lifestyle around the water, ie. how it presents hardships, enriches their lives, provides economic opportunities, etc. how infrastructure of canals, linear land strips are embedded in history of country (irrigation, cultural method of dividing land to sons in will). not sure exactly how to take a stance on this...

2. sense of community in informal settlements; DIY construction methods, materials, structural integrity of homes in informal settlements; how much planning/how vibrant are they are communities? esp, compared to govt planned or private designed home. is community vibrancy designed or intuitive? can vibrancy be designed?

3. legitimacy of christopher alexander's pattern language; are places experienced and understood through certain distinguishable elements?

At this point, I am most partial towards #1, mostly because I have the trip to Bangkok fresh in my memory and I still am thoroughly amazed at the way people live because they have to. Architecture aside, there is plenty that I am intrigued and humbled by.

Anyway, it was mostly agreed upon in class that a blog might be a convenient way for us to organize and archive our development process. So I'll be posting musing, links, images and hopefully some legitimate ideas here from now on. To start with, some of the more interesting questions from the 10 minute discussion in class today:

• What are the ways in which settlements encounter water? Also, does the type and/or size of body of water matter (ie. river, lake, ocean, etc)
• How does the relationship of the water to a community change as the community develops or matures? Is there a pattern that can be recognized?
• What sort of role does water play in a particular settlement or community (including economic, social, religious, cultural, etc)? Are there similarities or differences regionally?

Anyway, I hope to have some relevant answers to those questions for next time. Thanks for reading and remember, comments/criticisms/suggestions are always welcome =)