Learning into a groundless architecture

The geological activity of earth has always resulted in climatic conditions that are inconstant. However, as earth transitions into the Anthropocene epoch, the speed of change has moved beyond humanity’s ability to respond to its compound complexity of crisis. The discipline of architecture is highly exposed to this reality and has focused on technological and fortifying operations as a response to rapid climatic change. These operations distance architects and architecture from experiencing climate; they force an objectivity onto a relation that is, in fact, experientially dynamic and groundless. A continuing reification against climatic change will inhibit experiences that can afford an embodied apprehension that can afford increased capacity for adaptative modalities. This thesis communicates processes that accounts for the groundless experience of living and observing environmental disintegration. Moreover, the process is also one of examination and inquiry for overcoming a reified settler-colonial conditioning. This is constituted of an embodied and dialectical method of experiential observation. The observation is registered through a generative process of writing and drawing in a disintegrating coastal environment. The research design is a method focused on gaining an embodied understanding through disclosures, conscious of the construction and destruction of ideas and narratives about place, home, and experience. Through critical practice and theorisation, the thesis addresses the understandings of climate, place, and the ontological foundations of architectural practice. It raises epistemological questions and offers experiential and existential alternatives.