Site – metamorphoses/
 
 

Approaching Wellington Tunnel from Wellington Street

Across the canal looking back at the bridges.

Look west from the Wellington Bridge.

Rotating bridge and the CN bridge.

Thesis Analytique 3 – Clepsedrae of Karma for The Lachine Canal continues the phenomenological findings from Dial of Life and Karma.  Discarded material is salvaged, recycled and reused in putting together a Clepsedrae for the proposed Thesis Site near the Lachine Canal as a Horologium for its metamorphoses, keeping time-passed, collecting memories for the regeneration, and at the same time reflecting consequences of prior actions and violence done to the both the constructed object and proposed site.

Clepsedrae of Karma behaves closely to natural bodies in keeping time, requiring a source, water, (which is obtained from the Canal) to generate its process and a device that keeps the regular and repeating cycles in perpetuate motion.   Time-passed of the Canal is not lost but narrated as the displacement of volume in the transparent vessel and kept for the regeneration process of the Clepsedrae.    Yet each cycle will amount towards the eventual consequences, which shall be collected in the final copper vessel.
 
 
 

early mockup Clepsedrae	mechanics of overflow-regulating device	salvaged material for construction of Clepsedrae; copper sheet, steel/aluminium pipe and sheet, plastic tube	the input vessels
water flowing into the regulating vessel, the overflow device regulates the water-flow into the indicating vessel below	transparent indicating vessel, collects time-passed before overflow to end a cycle	copper tray, collecting the time-passed of all cycles	Clepsedrae as a natural body, requires a source, regulator, indicator, and final collector

The memories that the Clepsedrae keeps give rise to the theme of Apokalypsis at the proposed site, in which its original physical form and intention decays through stages of metamorphoses and is left now to be accounted for.  Actions done to the site have transformed and manifested their consequences to the present condition.  Perhaps now the time-passed that is collected both in the Clepsedrae and in the making of it can allow for the transubstantiation of Karma to take place.
 
 

Wellington Bridge

Existing bicycle path along Lachine Canal

Close-up of tunnel interior

Tunnel wall detail

Site location is the empty parking yard on the corner of Wellington Street and the Lachine Canal.  Since the birth of the Canal, this site has been violently scarred by the infrastructure that has been integrated into the surrounding area.  The CN rail bridge, the rotating bridge, the Wellington tunnel as well as the new Wellington bridge have all left unforgiving traces resulting in fragmentation, contamination, and disconnection from the original intention and form of the site.  As such elements lose their function and degenerate overtime due to social and urban metamorphoses, the consequences of their actions have been left abandoned, unattended, and decaying.
 
 

The existing parking space, proposed to facilitate a  large part of the Thesis program area.

In Astrology, man’s Program, or his fate in the next form of existence is constituted by the idea of Karma, in which his former actions will have direct contributions to the conditions of his next state of life.  In retrospect, with regards to the proposed site, Karma will be taken through architectural programming to fulfilling its present life and at the same time collecting Time-passed.