Current
Partner: Lorraine Ziegler
Professor: Matt Shea
Spring 2020
Press: dezeen, "University of Colorado students share architecture projects in the Rocky Mountains", more...
As a thesis for the studio, we asked how spatial form could be leveraged to facilitate lingering by engaging and redistributing the flows of the automobile and the individual. The architectural devices, coined "Programmatic Volutes", pre-cast concrete forms housing cultural and utilitarian infrastructure, are clustered in different configurations to guide movement, generate in-between spaces for “impermanent” program, and reframe the surroundings to situate the user within the context. The inquiry was propelled by the assumption that emerging technologies surrounding autonomous vehicles would be leveraged as a means to explore the moments of separation and reunion between the car and the individual within the architecture.
A prototype for Tesla, brand recognition and translation across differing contexts necessitated the development of a kit of parts. The series of concrete panels and fins in their differing additions with one another yield a multiplicity of programmatic volute shapes, allowing for contextualization of the concept to occur as the prototype is adapted across environments.
The volutes, in their adjacency with one another, cradle active open spaces that foster the ability to house ever-changing program and gathering. In addition to occupying the volumes’ contents, their slope grants users an invitation to situate themselves on the infrastructure itself, and in the curvilinear’s clash with the orthogonal (the grid of skylights above), threshold moments are then generated to allow for cars and individuals alike to pierce through the concrete.
(Above) Exploring the prototype necessitated an understanding of the concept’s mechanics regarding the parti and kit of parts within other contexts. A suburban application was studied to show how alignment of the “people program” and “car program” could be leveraged to generate a focal point for a neighborhood and a buffer for the neighbors’ backyards respectively. Further, an urban application displayed how contextualization of the concept could be treated similarly to how it was executed in Green River - instead of activating a body of water, it became about activating the lineage of a street.
Final review zoom presentation, May 7th, 2020.