Date of Award
2021
Document Type
Thesis
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/32892
Publisher
North Dakota State University
Rights
NDSU policy 190.6.2
URI
https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf
Abstract
How can we, as designers of the built environment, use history as a means of transforming the future, here and now? Rooted deeply within the canyons and mesas of the 1.3-million-acre monument in southeastern Utah, the endangered ruins of Bears Ears hold ancient stories of human interconnectivity with the environment – narratives central to Native American spirituality that unfold the earth as a living, breathing entity with an eternal pulse. In reinterpreting and transforming these stories, can modern visitors reimagine a different place in nature that might even inform the survival of humankind into the future? In response to the current treatment of history as something in the past, this project aims to create a threshold between the distant past and the untold future by framing present experiences with additions to the Bears Ears National Monument. Standing as an architectural repository of many mythologies and narratives about the world, this interpretive center and corresponding observation platforms aim to direct us back to the core narratives and structures of feeling in the universe. The central intention focuses on the visitors’ participation with the history that carries us forward in ways that may benefit us all.
Recommended Citation
Wanner, Nathan, "Staging Relationships With History: The Cultural, Natural, and Eternal Ruins of Bears Ears National Monument" (2021). Architecture Theses. 350.
https://digitalcommons.ndsu.edu/architecture-theses/350