The Pilgrim Brewer
Summary
By acknowledging and investigating the poetry of brewing, an architecture with a greater depth of meaning can be developed. This thesis has demonstrated how an abstract Passion Play can be remade into a pleasant, engaging form, featuring tectonics that are layered with meaning. It supports the idea that craft can be exalted as the work of the hand, which in turn lends value to products and places.
To order spatial ideas, a three-way spectrum between process, expression and community was developed, which helped to define boundaries and goals for this thesis' investigations.
The deliberate execution of all of the drawings and models in this thesis to show the marks of their creation—pencil smudges, registration lines, saw marks—was a purposeful demonstration of the acceptability of such artifacts of creation, and that these marks impart value to their objects. They are like the unavoidable variations in a favourite craft beer: noticeable but reassuring, rarely diminishing.
One rich field of future investigation would be the application of the conclusions of this thesis to existing breweries, testing their applicability to retrofitting. In this way, the application of the poetic interpretation of brewing can ameliorate the experience of all types of breweries, resolving the original complaint of this thesis: pedestrian beer from forgettable sheds.