Discovering China

An American adopted as a baby from China and raised in Illinois Judith traveled to China on a tour customized for a group of such adoptees along with her mother and fellow adoptee sister. Anticipating a transformative experience Judith set out to examine how these very personal encounters could be recorded analyzed and perhaps mediated through an architectural framework. The aim rather than a study of the building form and fabric was to articulate the architecture of the experience - as both an inner narrative and an external landscape of places actions and events. It was ambitious and risky namely because the degree of personal and emotional turbulence such a journey might evoke was unpredictable. The result is a collection of thoughts artifacts images - a staccato rhythm of elements of calm and turmoil beauty and exposition capture and release. Perhaps one's history is as unknowable ungraspable and inconclusive as any place.