EXPLORING & EXAMINING
ARCHITECTURE
THROUGH THE SENSES Shawnya Meyers In summer 2019, just before his final year in the architecture program, David Sweere spent 100 days traveling abroad and researching the spiritual and emotional responses that architecture can evoke in people. He had won the 2019 Aydelott Travel Award, a $20,000 award for travel-based research, which enabled him to conduct an in-depth analysis of four buildings in Europe and Asia that summer. Following his research, he was selected as the recipient of the 2019 Aydelott Prize, the top honor in a four-university travel research program. Sweere, also an Honors College student, graduated in spring 2020 with a Bachelor of Architecture. For his research, “An Emotional Reconstructive Architecture,” Sweere focused on the interior sensory experiences of architecture that is derived from place, and how these spaces have the power to move people on emotional and spiritual levels. Sweere chose four buildings for in-depth analysis: Therme Vals in Vals, Switzerland, designed by Peter Zumthor; Steilneset Minnested in Vardø, Norway, designed by Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois; Can Lis in Mallorca, Spain, designed by Jørn Utzon; and Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka, Bangladesh, designed by Marina Tabassum. Selecting which four buildings he wanted to analyze came naturally through the course of Sweere’s research. He started with Zumthor’s “Atmospheres” lecture, and from there decided to look at the two Zumthor projects, the Therme Vals thermal bath complex and the Steilneset Minnested memorial. He chose the Can Lis house after noticing its window detailing and reading about Utzon’s work in Kenneth Frampton’s essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism.”
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David Sweere
He’d decided on the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque after remembering Marina Tabassum discussing the project while giving a lecture in Shollmier Hall as part of the Fay Jones School’s fall 2017 lecture series. “I’ve never felt Shollmier just drop, like its gut just drop to the floor because of how moving a space
ReView: Spring 2021
