Graduation Year

2001

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.Arch.

Degree Granting Department

Architecture

Keywords

MOSI, Science, Technology, Virtual Museum, digital, architecture

Abstract

Civilization seems barely able to keep up with the new information technology. Therefore, I propose a place where the technologies of the future may be interacted with like the comfortable knowledge of the past. I propose a place where technology may be interacted on as in the realm of the past with the doors of the future ahead. The Museum of Science and Industry, where the grasp of our technological history is displayed, would be an ideal site for the creation of a Prototypical Computer Museum. With its close proximity to the University of South Florida, resources and participants would be abundant. The Prototypical Computer Museum will be a place where the education and explanation of new technology is continued.

This would also provide an arena for the development and interaction of state-of-the-art computer technologies and will be considered the cultural centerpiece for the new millenium. Activities at this Multi-Media Center range from basic explanations of initial computer inventions to on-site research and development of future technologies. Permanent and traveling exhibitions would attract and expose people of all ages to the new waves of technological devices and inventions that engulf our daily activities. This simple ideal is blanketed with a variety of complicated sociological issues that will be addressed throughout the thesis research and its fruition. The fundamental paradox is the borderlessness of the technology, which is continually at odds with the structures housing and exhibiting such technologies. Another major concern is the development of virtual reality and its dwindling necessity for the development of the architecture that contains it.

This is a technology that is accessible anywhere but located nowhere. As Otto Riewoldt states, "By reacting to the digital dematerialization of the world, architecture becomes increasingly individualized."1 In the words of American architectural critic Herbert Muschamp, "subjectivity takes command. Like surrealists these architects seem determined to blur the border between waking reality and the dream state."

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