The following thesis is a 38,400 word document of a part-time PhD by project undertaken at the painting department of The Royal College of Art between October 2002 and September 2008.

The purpose of this research has been to reflect on how an expansive interpretation of the architectural model operates as a mode of fragmentary thought for dwelling. I extend critical / theoretical approaches to the use of the model within my art practice, and its equivalent, ‘the essay form,’ in the written component of the thesis.

I begin by defining the use of the model within a specific work I made early in the project, and also discuss the model’s ability to operate between more rigidly defined disciplines of knowledge. I use Benjamin’s notion of immanent critique to reflect on the poeticised potential of the model form to unfold information, by probing the rapport between materials and motifs, groupings and spacings and the made and the found. I also show how the process of thought through the material development of the work, informed an equivalent fragmentary approach to writing.

In the four main chapters, I attend to a critical pairing four Bruegel paintings and four particular buildings to understand how both painting and building can be revealed as a thought model for dwelling. The chapters in the following order read Bruegel’s Fall of Icarus in relation to Casa Malaparte, Procession to Calvary with Melnikov's Cylindical House Studio, The Tower of Babel with Kiesler’s unbuilt notion of The Endless House, and finally the two dwellings initiated by Wittgenstein with Hunters in the Snow. I conclude by returning briefly to a recent piece of my own work to consider how the model of thought for dwelling has developed within my current practice.

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