Title of the research: Architectures of Secondary Life. A Symptomatic Atlas of an Ideology of Nature in Quebec: A Process of Surveying and Unveiling Through Research-Creation.
under the supervision of Dr. Thomas-Bernard Kenniff
Abstract: This research-creation project proposes to define the architectures of “secondary life” as a theoretical category encompassing various forms of housing associated with an escape into nature: villas, cottages, hunting and fishing clubs, summer camps, and other related forms. Beyond the desire to escape the city, it posits the hypothesis that these architectures are symptoms of an ideology of nature, sustained by a collective imagination in which nature is fantasized as a place of transmutation: the setting that allows one to imagine and enact the ideal of a second life. The research proceeds through an inventory, involving three processes—documentation, representation, and projection—that enable the collection, comparison, and interpretation of architectural, iconographic, and discursive traces drawn from archives, cultural representations, and fieldwork. By surveying, assembling, and arranging these fragments in constellations, the research seeks to reveal their recurrences, resonances, and resurgences in order to gradually construct a theory of this imaginary.