| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores how architecture can redefine the
human relationship to consciousness and how we experience
consciousness itself. Specifically, this project will address
different ways to bring participants face to face with our
growing disconnect between perceptual experience and what
we call reality. In other words, the Cathedral of Consciousness is
a place for meditative thinking, showing how our current culture
is headed down a destructive path, discounting particular
modalities of perceiving a highly externalized and vision
dominated world. Our reductive school of thought has changed
the way we think and act, especially in terms of dreams. We
have become a society that wanders through life, seemingly
sleepwalking from one place to the next, never fully aware of
what is going on. Here, major programmatical elements will show
a physical depiction of the different levels of consciousness.
Furthermore, dreaming has been categorized as irrational,
construing them as secondary, or less real, to our waking
reality. Through carefully orchestrated architectural moments,
symbolism, and messages, the project will embody modern
and mythical precedents, resulting in a representation of the
labyrinth of the mind. These ideas will culminate through
an exploration of the duality of the dreaming/waking or
conscious/subconscious states of mind. By exploiting the
minimal difference between the two, this project intends
to make participants question whether we are ever actually
awake or if we are only living in a dream. Each space within
the project will correlate to a specific state of consciousness,
providing a tangible representation of the intangible, showing
an inverse relationship of being more awake while asleep.
To summarize, the project aims to demonstrate how architecture
can redefine our current relationship of what it means to be awake
and what it means to dream. The intent is to start a conversation
about how we experience the world in a culture that has chosen to
ignore one of the most fascinating biological functions, dreaming.
Research will be conducted by means of careful analysis
of dreaming, as well as the topic of consciousness through
philosophical literature and other resources. The historical
discourse on phenomenology and hermeneutics will provide an
extensive basis on which this project rests on top of. Examinations
of the depictions of the dream worlds in surrealist art and films,
such as the work of Salvador Dali and other influential characters,
will also be used. This will be contrasted with current neuroscience
in order to understand dreaming from a different perspective. | en_US |
