Towards a New Monumentality: How architecture can adapt the physical monument for a digital and post-humanist design future

The monument as a physical object has been ever present throughout human history and as a program it oscillates between architecture and art. The motives, messages, and forms of representation found in historical monumentality are longstanding. With the maturation of the digital age in conjunction with post humanist design conditions in the near future, the existing mode of physical monumentality faces an existential crisis. This moment however provides an opportunity for the rebirth of the physical monument. This thesis seeks to explore, develop, and interrogate how new forms of monumentality can be adaptive, flexible, purposeful, and longstanding. Through the use of speculative future narratives, four unique approaches to future monumentality will be developed and followed through five snapshots over a thousand year period. Speculative future narratives will be created using the four future archetypes of Growth, Decline, Discipline, and Transformation as developed by Professor Jim Dator, Director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The transitions between these four archetypes will provide societal and tectonic challenges that each monument will have to respond to. Once narratives and visual representations of these new monuments are created, they will be arranged in an analysis matrix using each of the four narratives and their five individual timeline moments which highlight and examine specific trends of spatial use, human interaction, societal relations, etc. From this analysis, an understanding of what the principles of a New Monumentality are can be determined in order to answer the question, how can architecture adapt the physical monument for a digital and post-humanist design future?