DIRT & The Prison of Stained Acceptance

Abstract: Studying the societal and spatial implications of dirt and its inherent out-of-placeness brought forth a heuristic exploration of heterotopic spatial qualities within the realm of architecture. Taking on the metaphorical role of dirt, the prison is juxtaposed with its societally defined counterpart, the museum. An architectural form began to take place via the implementation of interpretations and a general ambiguity derived from the strange merger of the two ‘counterparts’. The Prison of Stained Acceptance questions and tests boundaries of acceptance within societal stigmatization of otherness, furthermore, inquires the efficacy of out-of-placeness on humanity indoctrinated into a defined good/clean and bad/dirty. With a focus on humaneness and egality, the prison tests the possible outcomes within the occurrence of power shift – from a governing/guarding body to the inmates and architecture. The heterotopic nature of the proposal perhaps raises more questions than it answers, however, it became imperative to sprout a debate within its eclecticism. Rather than defending a direct conclusion this thesis focuses on provocation and thought.