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The traditional post office is a confusing and lost character within our urban fabric . Once a central part of towns both rural and urban it is now ignored by the communities it once served, a stagnant figure as communities struggle to figure out what role it still holds. This shift in its role raises larger questions about the shift in the way we view and use communication to express identity. Present day communication is largely conducted over the internet, and we primarily do so through our personal devices. Yet this is not a stagnant shift, with modes of communication evolving and multiplying ever more rapidly. It is through this aspect of speed that begins to address the complexities of this shift.  Paul Virilio’s writings on dromology discuss the connections between communication, geography and the virtual world. It offers a framework through which this shift can be viewed, looking at how these ever increasing speeds lead to a collapse of distance both temporally and physically. This results in a geographic disconnect that erodes our ability to engage in place identity. Architecture offers a way that this shift towards a virtual identity can be re-spatialised and authenticated, acknowledging the fractured identities we now hold in geographic and virtual realities.  To address this dromological shift this thesis looks at aspects of authenticity and performativity within the post office, investigating how they might offer a way to explore the intersection between old modes of postal communication and new ways of communicating through our cellphones. Through these architectural interventions the new post office is found, one that grounds modern communication within the wider chronological narrative of the post office.

Intangible architectures: The post office in an age of speed