in the beginning

So, what am I doing.

The hypothesis of my thesis (at least at this given moment) is that Marshall McLuhan's ideas can be applied not only to art, as he discusses in his writings, but also to architecture.

McLuhan claims that technological innovations change the way we perceive the world. For example, Montreal is roughly 200km away from Ottawa. About 100 years ago, the journey from one city to another would take one or even a few days, depending on what you would take. Now it's 2 hours by car. And so what? Ha! and so now if you take a car, the space between the two cities colapses, while the geographic distance remains the same, and for you as a person using the medium known as 'car', Montreal is actually only 2 hours away (which is not that far, and you take that as a great oppotrunity to go see the city from time to time... and for students it's only $40 bus ride!) Another example. You're at home and really want to wish "good night" to your girlfriend (or boyfriend, just to be politically corect) who moved to another town. What do you do? Most likely you will call... to collapse the acoustic space between you two for at least the length of the words "good night" or even longer if you feel like it, which would probably happen anyway... or you can use MSN and even express your yellow emotions!.. Now, she is just a click away from you.
I remember in the 2dn year of undergad talking to my prof. Suddenly he froze. I asked if he's ok. He slowly raised his head, looked straight ahaid and quietly said: "I'm taking a message." My first thought: my prof is wacked! and right now he's talking to the spirits from my studio chair, opening his chakra and probably is about to send a message himself somewhere into the cosmos, and when he does, I'd rather be somewhere else. And then he actually did! Right in front of me! I saw that! If this hapened some years ago, I surely would've been fueling the fire on the main square just for witnessing something like that... but I'm ok, so far.

I guess, the idea is getting somewhat clearer but you would ask: what does all that have to do with art or architecture?

Valid question. McLuhan would say that this new [changed] perception results in the new way of... making of the world! In his opinion, artists are the people capable to feel this new perception change and project it in their work. And in my opinion, architects are also capable of projecting that in their works; furthermore, I would say that all the people are projecting that in whatever they are doing! But McLuhan was talking about art. He saw cubism with its spatial distortions and multi-perspectival views as a reflection of the spatial condition which has been affected by new technologies of its time, like telegraph, radio, airplane, and so on. Looking at a larger scale, we can trace similar approaches to spatial productions not only in painting but also sculpture, film, photgraphy, architecture.

So, assuming that McLuhan was right, I propose a cese study to explore the relation between technologically affected spatial perception and the space we actually produce as architects.