AGGREGATE

03. THE AGGREGATE WITHIN AGGREGATE

THE AGGREGATE WITHIN AGGREGATE

Second-Year Studio Design Project

Site Plan with Ground Floor Plan.

Designed for the site location of a rock quarry in Syracuse, New York, this project was meant to be a museum specifically for rocks either found on-site or in places abroad. I found the play between the site and program subject to be quite interesting in its parrallelism, leading to my conceptual focus on a building that would make the visitor feel almost as if they were a rock themselves (or part of the greater whole). This would be done through the idea of a rock made up of many aggregates of varying degrees of scale, the human scale being one of them, in order to imply the idea of the visitor themself being an aggregate within an aggregate.

Using varying scales of aggragates within the form of the building allowed for separate functions to be assigned to the differing sizes. To counter this language, a dialogue of geometric void and geometric aggregate was deisgned. The primary function of this geometric void was to create voids to frame views along the building, implying the building itself to be a part of the museum exhibtion as well. The secondary function of geometric void was planar and acted as landmarks to show where a visiter could either experience a certain view or certain artifact.

Study Models for geometric void (top two images). Final Model with geometric void.

Ground Floor Plan detail.

The internal sequence would be organized with a similar languages, geometric floor voids/carvings mark certain things at certain scales. Sometimes this means an area to view an artifact, and other times, a change in floor texture or elevation to make the visitor feel as if they are passing through one space to another. The formal languages of the internal spaces is designed to be in varying scales of aggregates once again; the room being the largest scale, transition spaces being the next largest, followed by the artifacts themselves and finally, the visitor.