The Archivist

This thesis, The Archivist, is a speculative exploration of architecture’s role in the preservation and reconstruction of history in the face of environmental collapse. Inspired by the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959, ACFL), written by Walter M. Miller Jr., this thesis examines the role of the archive in acting as a threshold between history and its collective memory. It is an exploration of the forces at play within this transition, with architecture being the core medium of investigation. As in ACFL, this thesis builds up a fictional story that, together with the literature review, will investigate a metaphorical response using architectural design and representation.

The thesis follows The Archivist, a character that exists after our society collapses due to climate change. His main role is to try to build up the history of the city which, like past civilisations, collapsed leaving only fragmented pieces as testimonies of the society’s development, struggles, and collapse. His work is to compose these fragments into his interpretation of the past, which acts as an allegory for the complex process archivist historians undergo in making sense of our past history. Disparate fragments are collected and organised into neat stories that tell us where we came from and why things are the way they are. The learnings gained from the Archivist’s interpreted compositions are then implemented in the design of his archive, the site of transition between history and collective memory. This Archive, focused on rebuilding after a civilisational collapse, mirrors the intricacies of the process of this transition. The Archive becomes an allegorical exploration of the complexities of archival process and the ways in which we understand our history.