Brad McKinney
Educator
Anderson, Indiana, U.S.

Submission:

The thesis, “An Architecture of Total Loss: Building Learning Communities, Growing Learning Spaces,” voices the story of siting and constructing a hidden, 'squatted studio' space within a bridge superstructure over the White River in downtown Anderson, Indiana. It includes interpretations of this 'build-design-build' project; a field study (CapAsia) in Sri Lanka with faculty and students from the University of Moratuwa; and the author's work alongside undergraduate design students and faculty colleagues at Anderson University, Anderson, Indiana. The project documents and extends occasions of experience that inform a pedagogy of total loss teaching. The 'squatted studio' is presented as architectural form and practice congruent with a total loss approach to learning understood by these statements: there is nothing to gain by total loss teaching and there is no profit in it -- waste nothing, and make use of everything at hand. The subversive transformation of materials and space by communities of learners illuminates the affects of total loss teaching.




"Every day 200,000 move to cities, worldwide"
Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities (New York: Routledge, 2005).