immersive ground
daniel kim
What is ground? How do we acknowledge the presence of an underground existence below the surface?
What is the aperture for connecting the above and below and to what extent do we say that we are below rather than within?
We come from the earth, and the earth holds our past.
10.15.14 We come from the earth, and the earth holds our past. I will unearth and uncover the unknown underground and discover artifacts and opportunities for redesigning, reconstructing, and erecting understandings of the underground fabric. The initial studies come from unearthing of a time period when society depended on transportation systems. Not only did these systems impact urban and suburban development, but also more importantly designed infrastructure that held the city together. A gesture and mechanism lies within these systems. The origin of urban sprawl branched from businesses finding opportunity in benefiting from the trolley system. Quick movement, cheap fares, and city slums allowed investors and realty companies the tools to create a foretelling economic, social, and political demise. The ground has a symbiotic relationship with architecture. Without grounding, architecture cannot exist. The ground’s ability to contain, to hold, and to preserve artifacts, offers potential construction of urban growth. The ground also holds time. The project revolves around understanding how our past is rebuilding our present and projecting our future. The infrastructure, artifacts, and history of the underground are holding up the city and laying the foundation for future growth. The infrastructure and new emerging civilization is erected and emerges from the earth. When meeting the surface, a charged conversation develops. There is a collision of context and initial impulses, political and social controversy, and structural impact within the city. How do we make the underground speak to the surface? How do we acknowledge the presence of an underground existence? I am an architect first, then an archaeologist.
24” x 36” digital media
First, I must become an archaeologist. Then an architect.
30� x 7’ digital media
Excavation into the Unknown We come from the earth, and the earth holds our past.
10.30.14
I will unearth and uncover the unknown underground and discover artifacts and opportunities for redesigning, reconstructing, and erecting understandings of the underground fabric. As we uncover deeper, away from the surface, we find knowledge and existence. We uncover our past and where we come from. We extend our knowledge beyond the limits of written record and test our abilities against limitations. The ground has a symbiotic relationship with architecture. Without grounding, architecture cannot exist. The ground’s ability to contain, to hold, and to preserve artifacts, offers potential construction of urban growth. The ground also holds time. The project revolves around understanding how our past is rebuilding our present and projecting our future. When meeting the surface, a threshold is created as a charged conversation develops. There is a collision of context and initial impulses, political and social controversy, and structural impact within the city. How do we acknowledge the presence of an underground existence below the surface? What is the aperture for connecting the above and below and to what extent do we say that we are below rather than within? Who has the authority to determine what is above and what is below? First I must become an archaeologist, then an architect.
30” x 7’ x 3” plaster, pvc, steel rebar
30” x 7’ x 3” plaster, pvc, steel rebar, printed drawing, wood
IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENT
“By changing space, by leaving the space of one’s usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is physically innovating...For we do not change place, we change our nature”
-Gaston Bachelard
“untitled” rhino, vray
24” x 36” projection on paper
immersion, emergence rhino, vray, photoshop
Immersive Environment: Underground
02.15.15
From hyper stimulation to immersion to the removal of stimuli, the thesis explores the latent potential of a particular immersive space and its relationship to time: the underground.
Visual stimuli, incorporated with an aspect of speed, engage our sense of gravity, how we are grounded, and blur the body’s sense of presence and time. This embodied experience of immersion in visual stimuli does not guarantee immersion into their content. The immersion remains in one’s imagination. Underground space has accumulated layers of infrastructures, unable to keep pace with the changing needs above. Our connection to the underground infrastructure is implicit. Infrastructure is the root system of human society. Experience and understanding of one’s built environment aggregates over time such that the present moment results from a remembered past and imagined future. Each moment is therefore new.
Historically, Cincinnati has been a city in flux, both kinetic and static. The abandoned subway infrastructure offers a latent space where immersion and movement, the static and kinetic, and the history and present might interact.
15’ - 8”
13’ - 0”
1’- 0”
5’ - 6”
CL OF TRACK EX. 48” WATER MAIN W/ SADDLE SUPPORTS
1’ - 4”
1’ - 0”
1’ - 4”
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OH
The idea of opening a subway transit system was first illustrated in 1884. It imagined subways running under the Miami and Eerie Canal. The canal allowed trade but consequentially brought mosquitoes, disease, and was an eyesore for many in the city. A plan was made in 1912 to built a sixteen-mile rapid transit rail system in a loop around the city, with a branch going underground and heading downtown. The plan was to drain the canal, cut and cover, and construct part of the transit underground. Unfortunately in 1927, the project finally collapsed. The subway was built and owned by the government however a private party, the street car company, owned the tracks, cars, and electric work. The canal was just wide enough for two trains, but new boring and construction had to be done to reach downtown. The plan proposed that the trains to never terminate in downtown, so for the downtownists, the center of the city would shift. Fear of decreased real estate values, the street car company was pressured to not finish the project, leaving numerous underground tunnels abandoned.
HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OH
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
Cincinnati is growing and building on con The existing infrastructure lifts and holds accumulates layers of infrastructure that w to keep pace with the changing needs ab
A collage studying the relationship of a informative architecture, and a platfo w
TYPICAL SECTION CHARLES ST TO LIBERTY ST
15’ - 8”
13’ - 0”
1’- 0”
5’ - 6”
CL OF TRACK EX. 48” WATER MAIN W/ SADDLE SUPPORTS
nstructed ground. the city together. It will soon be unable bove.
an immersive space, orm for imagination within a built image.
1’ - 4”
1’ - 0”
1’ - 4”
DOWNTOWN CINCINNATI EXISTING SUBWAY TRANSIT HIGHWAY ROADS PROPOSED TUNNELING / CANAL PARKS / GREEN SPACE
ABANDONED STATION
MAP OF CINCINNATI
Bibliography Beckmann, John. The Virtual Dimension - Architecture, Represen tation and Crash Culture, Princeton Architectural Press (1998). Berman, Marshall. “Notes from Underground”, Harvard Design Magazine, No. 15, (Fall 2001). Grau, Oliver. Digiral Ground - Architecture, Pervasive Computing and Environmental Knowing, The MIT Press (2004).
Rowe, Colin, and Robert Slutzky. Transparency. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1997. Williams, Rosalind. Notes on the Underground, MIT Press, (1990).