ABSTRACT

An Architecture of Total Loss: Building Learning Communities, Growing Learning Spaces

This document voices the story of siting and constructing a hidden, 'squatted studio' space within a bridge superstructure over the White River in downtown Anderson, Indiana. It includes interpretations of this 'build-design-build' project; a field study (CapAsia) in Sri Lanka with faculty and students from the University of Moratuwa; and the author's work alongside undergraduate design students and faculty colleagues at Anderson University, Anderson, Indiana. The project documents and extends occasions of experience that inform a pedagogy of total loss teaching. The 'squatted studio' is presented as architectural form and practice congruent with a total loss approach to learning understood by these statements: there is nothing to gain by total loss teaching and there is no profit in it -- waste nothing, and make use of everything at hand. The subversive transformation of materials and space by communities of learners illuminates the affects of total loss teaching.

Creative Project Committee: Dr. Wes Janz (chair), Professor Kenton Hall (Department of Art, Ball State University), Professor Jason Knapp (Department of Art and Design, Anderson University)