Elias Kotzambasis

Miguel Guitart
Christopher Romano

Architecture Graduate Thesis
Spring 2019

MArch

Kotzambasis’ initial interest in the transitory qualities of the built environment, specifically the temporality of the building skin, stems from experiences working for his father’s construction company. Working as a roofer and sider for six years, he played a role in the process by which homes shed and accumulate skin layers. This experience greatly influenced his understanding of the temporary reality of the architectural skin.

Removing and replacing temporary vinyl siding every 20 odd years is considered “best practice,” while building up more than three layers of roofing is against building code. Kotzambasis began to question the way the transitory nature of the building skin is typically addressed. Current conventions overlook the use of an additive process.

Architecture is typically represented in its most pristine state, drawn, rendered, and photographed to show the brief moment after its construction in which a building has not been marked by its user or environment. The reality of buildings is that they spend most of their lives in a state that is different from their initial renderings. Though a building is thought to be complete after its initial construction, this is merely the starting point of its longlasting life. Original materials only last as long as the owner and environmental forces allow them to.

Transitory Skin is a participatory built exploration which attempts to understand architecture as the accumulation of layers through the continuum of time and investigate the architect’s role in this process. This phenomenon happens at several scales and timescales, such as accumulation of layers of skin on the body, layers of paint on a wall, layers of shingles on a roof, layers of streets and building foundations in cities, and layers of strata which form the crust of the earth. The focus of the thesis is on the temporal layering process, which takes place in the building’s skin. This process is continually present in buildings, but it is generally concealed and criticized. It is only revealed when the dweller does not have the resources to mask this collected material history. 

This project attempts to embrace this phenomenon, approaching architecture as something that is inherently incomplete and imperfect, a continuous process that is perpetuated by a series of agents throughout the continuum of time.

The project investigated an intensification of the temporal layering phenomenon as a means of understanding its potentials as an architectural strategy. Rather than being a fixed design proposal, it explores a specific process of building that embraces improvisation and the thoughtful negotiation with existing conditions. Participants involved in the built exploration followed an openended set of instructions and design goals that maintained a degree of ambiguity, allowing for agency in making design decisions in response to existing conditions, available materials and tools, and personal interest. .

The implications of this work exist in the physical manifestation of the built experiment and in the process that informed its construction. The construct demonstrates the ability for the temporal layering process to transform the aesthetic, spatial, and experiential qualities of a building as it progresses through time. The building skin has the potential to reach an intensity in which it transcends its planar qualities and becomes volumetric. This allows for building components to respond to new functions of occupancy that may not have been present in their original design. The process of construction used in this experiment promotes a thoughtful interaction with the existing conditions of the building skin, which can amplify the potentials latent within the existing skin materials and creates a dialogue between the many agents acting on the building throughout its lifespan.