draft proposal

Ng Yan Kwan 2008092542

Thesis Topic Proposal

1. Marxism and Architectural Space Evolution

From the Marx’s known writings, people found that there are full of suggestive architectural, spatial and bodily references. Marx suggested that an architectural form is closely related to human consciousness.  How is the human production at certain period, a particular environment or historical form is produced. Marx start develop it from the early 1840s with the publication of German Ideology (1845) and Manifesto (1848) which dealing urban subject matter and commenting on the process and effects of industrial urbanisation.

The human history starts in the Southwest Asia over 10,000 years ago, there are a ‘spatially specific’ urban forms found in the Jordon Valley and Catal Huyuk in South Anatolia as a result of the development of pre-agricultural urban settlements. It is assumed that the biological species only becomes human when it begins to produce its own environment through social cooperation.  The architectural space changes with the human sense perception. Therefore, when we look back to the history, human interaction with environment is ever-shifting at different period of time. Starting from analysing the architectural space generated in the capitalist modernity, I would like to study the development of capitalism in related to the evolution of architectural space and so as to propose a new design strategy for the future economic system suggested in Marxism.

One of the examples representing the communist society in Soviet Russia is the Narkomfin Building, which provide not only an inhabited place but also a living pattern for workers in the 1920s. The architects tried to control the tenants’ activity by offering kitchens, crèches and laundry as communal facilities in the block as to transform them to be more socialist. I suspect that it would a top down strategy to creating an architectural form to fulfil a socialist city. Apart from it, I would also like to investigate other more spontaneous spatial form reflecting the changes of human sense of perception as a start of my thesis research.

2. Palace vs Tourism

The word “palace” comes from Latin Palatium, the name of one of the seven hills of Rome. The original “palaces” on the Palatine Hill were the seat of the imperial power while the “capitol” on the Capitaoline Hill was the religious nucleus of Rome. “Palace” meaning “government” can be recognized in a remark of Paul the Deacon, writing c. AD790.  In modern times, the term has been applied to large structure that housed combined ruler, court and bureaucracy in “palace cultures”. (explanation from Wikipedia)

Palace is the most important and secure site for a country governed under a constitutional monarchy where the head of state living. It normally situated at the higher part of the city or inside a large garden to show the imperial power.

In contrast, tourism is a travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. As to become a tourist spot, there are certain criteria to fulfil as to attract people from other country.

I would like to take the Principality of Monaco as a start to study how tourism incorporates into a functioning palace without disturbing its royalty.

Then, I would like to investigate on how tourism can incorporate into another type of architecture and develop a strategy to boost tourism in a particular country.