URBAN VIBRATION: MASTER'S THESIS

URBAN VIBRATION

ABIGAIL JONES_DEGREE PROJECT_SPRING 2014_PAUL DONNELLY

The research began with investigations into the spatiotemporal aspects of occupation and movement within urban streetscapes in metropolitan St Louis. This study led to an understanding that within the larger framework of the city, very few streets experience consistent activation between day and night or throughout the seasons of the year. Those streets which do have higher occupancy levels emerge as nuclei of activity which leads to further development of those specific neighborhoods, further defining them as important urban hubs in the city.

Daily Occupation

Annual Occupation

The focus then became to take a neighborhood on the rise and build off its existing momentum to in turn distinguish a new urban destination which can have a radiating impact outward into surrounding neighborhoods.

A

A

B

B

C

GROUND LEVEL PLAN

C

SECOND LEVEL PLAN

A

B

C

THIRD LEVEL PLAN

The site is on South Grand Boulevard, several blocks south of Tower Grove Park. It is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city, with a broad mix of cultural backgrounds, family typologies, and economic status. South Grand is currently known as a sort of restaurant row, but there is not really anything to keep people in the neighborhood after meals. The site is currently home to a successful international food market, which is incorporated into a new mixed-use, highly flexible building.

SECTION B

SECTION A

The building is both programmatically and formally a series of stacked, overlapping bars which draw from and reach outward to the surrounding context. The basic conceptual idea behind the arrangement of the building pieces is that the pieces of program are “plugged in� to the larger grid of the building, and can be turned on or turned off to create a constantly changing dialogue between program and user.

The building’s occupation moves upward from day to night, with all the program pieces interfacing around a central courtyard and lobby space. This central space sets up a place for spontaneous interactions, for unexpected fusions of program, for a centralized meeting place for the community.

The ground level houses the expanded market, main lobby entrance, and a retail component.

The second level has a coffee shop off the main lobby, a gallery for work by local artists, and a small gallery shop where local handmade items would be sold. The third level becomes a hub of nightlife for the neighborhood, with a central bar space, a lounge, and a discotheque.

All three levels incorporate outdoors spaces which begin to blur the distinction between building and urban realm as the streetscape moves upward and into the building.

The cantilevered pieces also begin to redefine these urban boundaries as they dissolve the layers of street, public plaza, and building interior and create a sense of fluid, flexible space.

In terms of the way in which these separate pieces interact architecturally, each piece maintains a distinct identity while becoming part of a larger architectural dialoge. The approach then became about interacting surfaces, and the way in which these surfaces can affect visibility, or light, or the way in which the user experiences the space.

The materials are wrapped, overlapped, and integrated around the framework of the architecture to create a formal composition unifying the distinct elements and to provide a diverse experience for the user as they move through the building.

The combination of the materials, program and form creates a building which is in constant interaction with its urban context, consistently changing the relationships between user, architecture, and city.