This dissertation provides a brief survey of architectural space within the context of nomadism that intersects with Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (1987). This approach toward space rethinks the presence of improvisational space in relationship with human beings. This research analyzes improvisational space in the domain of forces that spontaneously generate liminal spaces. These impromptu spaces go beyond fixed spaces toward uncertainty, instability, and indeterminacy. This dissertation argues that, although often ignored, space organizes the world mythopoietically. This research examines the foundations of space as a central architectural concept by exploring the mythopoietics of Persian architectural spaces through myth and poetry found in Persian philosophy. This revived notion of space suggests that space is not organized three-dimensionally by length, breadth, and depth, but is also derived from uncertainty, instability, and indeterminacy along improvisational, autopoietic, and mythological lines. In order to elucidate a form of architectural space as autopoietic, improvisational and mythological space, I turn to the theoretical discussion of nomadism as a source of such a thought in both Persian mythologies and Deleuze's philosophy. Deleuze's concept of nomadism as a theoretical ground gives way to the actualization of architectural spaces in numerous forms of improvisation and/or autopoiesis. This process, according to Deleuze, comes through territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization (TDR). In-between and liminal spaces are the result of the intersection of TDR. In this research, I argue that evidence of TDR can be clearly seen in Persian architectural spaces, which derive more from the nomadic Pre-Islamic tradition than from the sedentism of permanent Islamic settlements. Additionally, based on theoretical and historical considerations of Deleuze's notion of nomadism, I show through case studies how Persian architectural spaces both challenge indeterminate boundaries to their surrounding territories and offer an alternative approach within buildings: the liminality within space rather than its relation with exterior space.
ETD Chair
George, Theodore Professor of Philosophy and Texas A&M Presidential Impact Fellow
