Amy Greaves

Embedded Hortus Conclusus: The Maker and The Other

Architecture - MArch

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

amygreaves12@hotmail.com

Masters Thesis

Academic Portfolio

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The Perfumer at Work in the Mixing Workshop

The Mixing Workshop Perspective Section

Project description

Embedded Hortus Conclusus: The Maker and The Other

The Embedded Hortus Conclusus explores an architectural landscape of atmosphere in efforts to address issues relating to insularity and place-making within the context of Córdoba, Spain. This project challenges our awareness of ‘otherness’ within the city fabric, seeking to express and incarnate layers of architectural ineffability. Throughout this exploration our pre-existing notion of architectural space is inverted to present a new topographical plane of existence situated within the distortions of dwelling: The ShadowSpace.

The shadowspace is considered here to be a heterotopic third space which exists alongside architectural measured space. It is the realm of experience and atmosphere situated between the body and the world, and created through their interaction with one another. Like the shadow of a woman cast onto a stone floor, the shadow belongs neither to the world of the stone, nor to the world of the body, yet it is both. It is through this shadow landscape that this thesis is able to explore the cultural and historical setting of Córdoba, extract layers of unfamiliarity, and present to the Patio de Los Naranjos a perfumery and sunken rose garden that is made of and by the Mezquita-Catedral. In doing so, it also draws from the city’s rich botanical history and, by extension the cultural markings of colonisation.

Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba

The city on which this thesis focuses its’ thinking around is Córdoba in Andalusia, Southernmost Spain. Here we are introduced to the unique multiplicity of the architectural landscape of the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba. Throughout history the Mezquita-Catedral has undergone many transformations, originally a Roman Temple, in 784 it was replaced by a Great Mosque on the orders of the Emir Abd al-Rahman, and finally in 1236 was altered to the hybrid mosque/cathedral as it remains today. This dynamic chimera building offers, not only, an interesting insight into Córdoba’s history, culture and religion, but it also offers a unique philosophical perspective on topics such as co-existence and place-making.

The Embedded Hortus Conclusus Aerial Photograph

Mapping the ShadowSpace

The shadowspace (as termed by the author) is a heterotopic third space which exists alongside architectural measured space. It is the realm of experience and atmosphere situated between the body and the world, and created through their interaction with one another. It is through this shadow landscape that this thesis is able to explore, extract, register and map the atmospheric properties of the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba and its surrounding parterre without compromising its sublimity. The Plane Table (a mapping device) is used to chart interactions with otherness experienced within the virtual world of the Mezquita-Catedral. This device was derived from a study I conducted of the small cracks within Edinburgh’s city fabric. The cracked paving slabs represent something which is familiar presented in an unfamiliar way, as something other, a parallel space born out of interaction. The Plane Table developed and implemented throughout this thesis attempts to compress and gather together the perceived deformations of architectural measured space and provide a surface upon which the other and I may come into a condition of with-ness (i.e. a shadow- where the body and the world meet as one surface).