The Identity Frontier

2017

Penn State BArch
Stewardson Competition State Finalist

For centuries, humans have attempted to prescribe meaning and purpose to existence; when this proves fruitless, they look to the stars. This is a common method for defining things: if we cannot describe what it is, we start with what it isn't. This "otherness" has long fascinated humans, particularly in the case of the vastness of space.

“Europe invented 'America' as their future and outside, but America invented the new frontiers — outer space and the insane warp speed that was meant to take them there — as theirs. Speed and space were the new materials of which the future would be made.”

— Sanford Kwinter

Make it

Inventing frontiers involves the construction of the outline of "the other," separating our definable, visible bodies and the unknowable, unimaginable fabric of the wild sky.