Abstract
We are afraid of death. In the biomedical field, cures and preventions are rigorously researched to prolong our human life span, however our bodies are subject to the vagaries of time causing its deterioration and eventual death, just as our buildings are. Throughout architectural history, there is a predominant obsession for architects to design buildings with an ‘unlimited’ lifespan, ignoring its deterioration and enforcing its false permanence. This motivated architects to develop methods of prolonging the lifespan of a building to delay its death. Its life is designed to remain endlessly relevant to its users and to the fabric of the city. However, the needs of our society has continuously changed and evolved at an increasingly rapid rate, leading to buildings inevitable death. Instead of designing against death, perhaps another method of architectural design could be one which embraces the process of death, DECAY, to shape and morph its spaces, programs and circulations to remain relevant to its current context. Its transitional life thus creates a link from the past to the present towards the future. This thesis aims to explore a form of architecture which decays with the continuity of time to transform its architectural compositions to eventually meet its designed death.