Princeton University School of Architecture
Announces the Final Public Oral Exam of
Clemens Finkelstein
Architectures of Vibration: Environmental Control, Seismic Colonialism, and Planetary Epistemology, 1898-1928
September 4, 2024, 5pm
Room S-118
Committee:
Spyros Papapetros (Princeton University, Advisor)
Mara Mills (New York University)
Sylvia Lavin (Princeton University)
Georg Vrachliotis (TU Delft)
Olga Touloumi (Bard College)
Abstract
Historically oscillating between intellectual attraction and existential terror, human engagement with the phenomenon of vibration reveals a deep-seated uncertainty toward the defining marker of environmental conditions at the end of the nineteenth century. This dissertation examines the moment vibration’s environmental impact turned perceptible, measurable, and controllable via the entanglements and intersections of modern architecture, science, and technology. Dissecting discrete moments of this epistemic shift as it materializes in the German project of a seismic survey of the world, the study investigates the specialized designs of modern geophysics’ seismic research stations. Creating spatial buffer zones between vibrating environmental sectors, from epistemic spaces of complete isolation to liminal spaces operating as environmental filters, architecture discerned destructive from creative and obstructive from instructive vibrations. Two parts spanning four intersecting case studies examine the materialized cosmologies of vibration before, during, and after a significant epistemic shift that transformed the passive technoscientific approach to the physical phenomenon into an active phenomenotechnique.
Part 1, “Seismicity as Design-Technique in Wilhelmine Germany,” traces the evolving spatial complexity of modern scientific architectures in the recently unified nation, epitomizing the unique German engagement with planetary vibrations as an epistemic carrier, design technique, and industrial accelerator. By inhabiting an intermediary space amid theory and application, architecture assumed a significant role in deciphering Earth and transforming planetary epistemology at the turn of the twentieth century. While German seismicity grounded national identity beyond surficial topography in the subterranean geology of the European homeland, it likewise catalyzed imperial aspirations via a novel form of seismic colonialism that marshaled the geophysical properties of Germany’s dispersed colonies and protectorates to revise geopolitical strategies.
Part 2, “Building a Seismic Colonialism in the South Pacific,” examines the alliance between colonial expansionism and pure scientific inquiry in the protectorate of German-Samoa. There, architecture realized novel alliances of planetary-scale technologies, merging the geophysical reception of Earth’s seismic waves with Germany’s expanding broadcasting network of radio waves. Soaring from the deepest depths to the highest heights of the planet, this Icarian ambition underlined the growing international importance of German geophysics while foreshadowing its precarious standing at the edge of global warfare.
A copy of the dissertation will be available, for viewing only, in the Main Office.
