Nick Mercer

Victoria University of Wellington student Nick Mercer is opening up his sketchbook to share his incredible thesis work with us!

Read on to hear his supervisor’s thoughts, Nick’s creative process and his advice for future thesis students.

“In this thesis, Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" is used as a literary provocateur. Poe's short story describes an allegorical relationship between a decaying house and its dying occupants. Within the house is a library whose books are allegories for the characters who inhabit the house. In this sense, the occupants, the library, and the house are one.

While Poe’s short story reflects on the characters who are the inhabitants of the house, this architectural research thesis reflects on the allegorical books that are the inhabitants of its library. Each of the 'books' is represented as an allegorical context that is occupied by an allegorical architectural inhabitant. The architecture represents, as well as narrates, each book's allegorical tale.

The books from Usher’s library grow out of the marsh, and architecture grows out of the books. Each architectural intervention not only represents the inner theme of the book, but they come together as a greater overall work of architecture to represent the metanarrative of the story. At the same time, the individual interventions act as bookmarks, book ends, etc. Some reach across and enter the theme of an adjacent book, some bundle three books together with a common theme etc.” - Daniel Brown, thesis supervisor

In the final stage of the thesis, the intent is that this will be transposed to a ghost town site within New Zealand with an archive as its program. With shared themes of inevitability, metamorphosis and temporality (among others) “The Fall of the House of Usher” will have been used allegorically to create a unique architecture that preserves and tells the unique story of a New Zealand ghost town. 

Hi Nick! This is such a creative thesis, how would your journey studying appointed you towards this proposal be?

My journey studying undoubtedly paved the way for me to choose this thesis topic. There are a range of papers that provided the opportunity to think about problems in a more lateral way which I really enjoyed. So, in fourth year when more opportunities arose to select more speculative projects and briefs, I took that and ran with it and here I am in thesis exploring that even further.

I have always enjoyed architecture, art and media that get me thinking about what they mean and why they are the way they are, and more than anything have an impact on you. It wasn’t until some of these papers though that I realised I could focus on that and create designs in that vein too.

This strong literacy narrative design for your thesis is really interesting, what driving factor navigated towards such a literacy focused design?

I attribute the implementation of narrative and literature to my supervisor Daniel who introduced it in fourth year, and that for my thesis have fully jumped into feet first. The reason behind using literacy or other media as a provocateur is that they do what they set out to do successfully, so using them to derive a design not only infuses it with those successful elements that align with your problem, but results in an architecture that doesn’t or couldn’t exist otherwise.

I can’t say this for certain, but I don’t think there are many other examples of architecture out there based on the “Fall of the House of Usher'' being used to create a library / archive for a ghost town... At the end of the day, I love creating architecture that has a deeper meaning but also doesn’t necessarily obey the established norms in the field. Ultimately literature has allowed me to delve into this and achieve results that I couldn’t get using other means.

What has masters been like for the duration at Victoria?

I have really enjoyed the journey so far! Compared to the first three year degree you begin to get more freedom with the designs you create and this has really allowed me to explore a range of avenues and find what I am interested in within the field of architecture.

I have really liked the transition into thesis with the focus on a single project and outcome more than anything. All too often in the past you feel like you are just getting in the grove of a project but then it's due and you move on. With fourth year came longer project times and with thesis even more so, and with this a lot more satisfaction from the work I produce. Going into masters and thesis I found the dynamic between student and professor also changes too.

It becomes more collaborative where there is bouncing of ideas off one another to arrive at solutions, which is fantastic when you are both passionate about the project. This along with a lot of the other changes in the transition to masters I found to be an immensely rewarding experience where I have been able to take away a lot.

How do you believe your design process, whether it's the programs you use, or the approach you take, manifests into a design that is you?

I would say the process I use wholeheartedly manifests in all my designs. For example, working digitally with Rhino to model allows me to push the limits that working purely analogue otherwise wouldn’t all. There are things I would be too afraid to test, commit to or that would take too long to produce, whether that’s due to complexity or geometry. Its like getting stuck on wording for a report and trying to make it perfect from the start without wanting to make a draft; my process lets me get all of my ideas out fast and then refine from there. My way of modelling digitally means I can get all these ideas out and in turn infuse the design with ‘me’.

The use of a specific provocateur, in this case literature by Edgar Allen Poe, fully allows me to express myself in my designs too, and ultimately let my imagination run wild. It can also provide grounds for exploration into the unfamiliar and allows me to push myself. A good example being the visual material I am producing for my thesis. It has its own dark atmospheric style purely because it is reflecting the literature within from my process, while in another past project there have been flamboyant florals etc.

Lastly, do you have any advice for your underclassmen, whether they are eager to decide a thesis topic or starting architecture school?

I am reaching a point where my thesis is continually changing and shifting to the point the starting proposition involving ghost towns may merely be used as a starting point. The ghost town element may be dropped entirely, and the focus brought to creating a library for the House of Usher. The point being that ideas change continually and although you may start one place it doesn’t mean that’s where it needs to end. That’s the fantastic thing about thesis, you can test all avenues and use the ones that are working best!

Lastly, the main piece of advice would be to choose what you enjoy doing. It sounds simple but it's all too easy to end up doing something you’re not passionate about. Having chosen a speculative narrative driven stream that aligned with my passion, I can happily say I enjoy almost every day of my thesis. It makes producing work and research enjoyable rather than a burden or simply a checklist to finish. So do what you enjoy!

Thank you so much for sharing your amazing mahi, Nick! All the best!