Whether perceived as familiar backdrop, quirky scenery, or tasteless eyesore, this personification intensifies our relationship with architecture. This perception of character can impose upon the practice of architecture, as in neighborhoods deemed to have historic character, where architecture of a different style is unwanted or even prohibited. Furthermore, these impressions are often created within a preconceived collective architectural imagination - the house one imagines has the character of a house.

Today we are working in an architectural afterlife, everything we built must sit within the context of what was built before. We are demanding longer lifespans from our buildings, yet architectural fashions go in and out of style quickly. What role does human craft play in this future? Artist Do Ho Suh, while crafting sewn architectural sculptures from fabric, has compared clothing to architecture. Both are habitable spaces formed, in some way, around the human body. What might it mean for buildings to be like clothes? What might it mean to wear architecture the way we wear clothing? While clothing can be folded and transported in luggage, might we carry buildings with us in the container of our memories?

This thesis asks if we can transform our buildings the way we transform ourselves from day to day - by dressing up in different clothing. By imagining the space around us as a body that can be wrapped inside and out with different patterns, textures, and materials - might this flexibility allow us to form longer-lasting relationships with architecture?