Folded Space _ Experiments Towards A Vertical Public Realm

Folded Space Experiments Towards A Vertical Public Realm

Architecture and Society 18/19 Kieran Qiren Lu

Contents 01

Research Question

13

Theory

25

Programme and Project

53

Reference and Bibliography

Research Question

Research Question

The thesis is to explore the possibility of creating a new type of hybrid high-rises with series of experiments of folding city public realms into the building but more responding to the urban context and relationship between high-rise and the city.

2

Background And Histroy

fig.1, fig.2 Photographs showing the devastation of Mainz after WWII (Heinz Leiwig, 1945)

3

Background And Histroy

Mainz is a city located on the River Rhine, where the site of the project is set. Mainz’s location not only serves as one of Germany’s main trading cities along the Rhine but also as a city for neighbouring smaller towns and villages to commute to for work and leisure. It also serves the major financial city of Frankfurt as a commuting city.

Over the centuries the Roman Empire and various foreign occupiers have made Mainz their home and changed the formation, size and culture of the city. It has been due to Mainz’s strategic position along the bank of the Rhine, as a means of transportation, the network for trading and as a natural form of defence. After being a garrison town during the Roman era, a center of the Holy Roman Empire and at the heart of the Thirty-Year War, the city of Mainz was yet to experience the most pivotal point in its history, which led to the tug of war and occupation between two countries and up to 80% of the city was flattened during the Second World War.

fig.3 Up to 80% of the city was flattened

4

Marcel Lods’s Planning: Reconstruction After WWII

fig.4 Lod’s pictured together with his wife fig.5 Lod’s propaganda, the New in contrast to the Old (Marcel Lods, 1946)

5

Marcel Lods’s Planning: Reconstruction After WWII

For reconstruction, the French military government set up a working group which was led by Marcel Lods, a pupil of Le Corbusier. As part of the wider spread of Modernist ideas at the time, he wanted to make ruined Mainz the “most modern city in the world”. He proposed that the urban functions (housing, trade and commerce, administration) should be spatially separated and, parts of the old town on the south of the cathedral could be a traditional island. After the demolition of the partially destroyed Neustadt, a new residential area would have emerged from the Rhine to Hartenberg. Green spaces should be created between the ten-story glass houses, and road traffic was planned underground.

However, Lods failed with his vision primarily due to the occupation of the ruined buildings, and neither the Mainz citizens nor the city administration found understanding for this radical break. Moreover, his planning also split up the context and needs of the city.

fig.6 Lod’s reconstruction planning of Mainz

6

Ville Radieuse

fig.7 Le corbusier's “Ville Radieuse� (Le Corbusier, 1935) fig.8 High-rise - Folding of space (Le Corbusier, 1935)

7

Ville Radieuse

As a pupil of Le Corbusier, the shadow of “Ville Radieuse” could be easily found in Lods’ planning. Corbusier suggested that a house is a machine for living, emphasising to move the public services related to the family’s daily life such as community centre, nursery, and public realm into each residential unit. Moreover, he also set the public service centre including market, restaurant, barber and so on in each of residential high rise, making them a small society.

However, the concept of Ville Radieuse has been criticised by New Urbanists such as James Howard Kunstler for its lack of human scale and connection to its surroundings. It is, in Lewis Mumford’s phrase, “buildings in the parking lot,” and “The space between the high-rise floating in a superblock became instant wastelands, shunned by the public.” (Kunstler, 1995) Neither in Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse nor Lods’ Urban Planning of Reconstruction in Mainz after WWII had the context and relationship between buildings and site or in other words, the city. “As one stands on the Plaza itself, there is an eerie feeling of detachment.” (Martin Filler, 2013) Excessive functional supremacy makes them ignore the unique personality of people and the unique character of the site.

On the other hand, although there were disadvantages, their theory did make a significant contribution to urban modernisation. Comparing with the simple repeating and piling of the floor slab in most of the high-rises today, Corbusier put public realms and services into his high-rises, which was kind of hybrid use and vertical urban theory, reducing the feeling of social isolation for the people who live in these high-rises.

In our early history, it can be easily found that most of the high-rises or towers were built as spiritual symbols, such as the connection with God, the closeness to heaven, the religious sustenance or even the showing of power. It is more like a yearning for the sky, but not a lifestyle that has to be sought as today.

8

High-Rise - Folded Space

fig.9 The Tower of Babel - A spiritual symbol (Athanasius Kircher, 1679)

fig.10 Tower building - Folding of space

9

High-Rise – Folded Space

Moreover, although high-rise has changed to kind of a forced lifestyle to some extent, we haven’t stopped imagining and exploring this new lifestyle.

With the growth of offices in the core area of the cities, it comes the need for more residential apartments within walking distance, which helps reduce the pressure of the transport system. There is an urgent need for people, especially for “dinkies”, who have a dual income and no kids that prefer the buzz of the city core rather than peace of suburb, and, the amount of “dinkies” are growing. So, people have started to combine the office development with other use types like apartment, hotel or workshop. In Benkei in New York, a one-volume manga written by Japanese writers Jinpachi Mori & Jiro Taniguchi, they described an Office-apartment-workshop mode lifestyle in the residential high-rise. (Jinpachi Mori, 1996) What’s the essence of a high-rise? As we all know, the destinations of building high-rise are different between ancient kingdoms and modern society. As for ancient time, making high-rise is more like a seeking sublimation of personality, getting closer to the gods and heaven. But for now, it became a forced survival method, more or less, affording tremendous population pressure.

Rem Koolhaas has talked about high-rise and high-rise as a repeating of the ground floor, or in other words, creating dozens or hundreds of virgin lands in the same places. (Delirious New York, 1994) Thus, it can be said that highrise is the folding of plane space. The original ground, its functions, and the activities that happened on are cut into pieces and put on “multi-story shelf ” made of steel or concrete frame. So, the question is how will different spaces such as residences, public realms, service areas go when they are folded into towers? And how the activities change when they are moved into the sky?

10

Physical Isolation To Mentally Social Alienation

fig.11 Stacked plates

fig.12 Newton Suites, Singapore (WOHA, 2007)

Most high-rise today are nothing more than stacked plates one on top of the other, which leads to the social isolation

11

Physical Isolation To Mentally Social Alienation

Looking at the high-rise today, we might find that many of the high-rise s are like series of chopped-up compartmentalised spaces, or vertical stacking slabs. High-rise’s designers consider carefully about the price, the structure, facilities and even façade, but they do undermine the potential for the diversity and richness of urban life in the buildings. What we have in these buildings today are spatially noncontiguous and physically segmented-off floors and isolated homogeneous enclaves, which are devoid of the diversity and richness of life on the ground plane. This isolation exacerbates feelings of social alienation in its residents and does make the high-rise an unsatisfactory built form and unpleasant environment. (Ken Yeang, 2002) On the master plan of cities or communities, the theory of urban planning guides creating order and reasonable place that carry abundant city life. For instance, in urban planning, we manage the traffic circulation to shorten the time of traffic jam and reduce the usage of private cars; we insert courtyards and playground in communities for social activities as well as communication; we create thresholds to smooth the feeling of travelling experience; we design parks for improving the life quality. Hundreds of methods are used on horizontal ground land to create a better life and, can these theories be used on vertically folded lands – high-rises?

12

Theory

Feeling Of Isolation And Social Alienation

Isolation and alienation are the essential weaknesses that follow the building form of the high-rise. For instance, a piece of ground land with 40,000 square meters (50*800 meters) has four edges on boundaries with the length of 1700 meters. Then we cut it as 50*80 meters and fold them up as a ten-story building. There are 40 edges on boundaries with the length of 2600 meters. When the tower goes higher, the difference between these numbers will be bigger.

Edges mean inaccessible, non-contiguous and segmented-off, and this might be the root of the social alienation feelings in high-rise’s inhabitants. For instance, imagine that decades ago when people lived in the house, they met each other in opening courtyards around their houses, chatting and exchanging the news that they knew, and the social relationship built. But nowadays, for the flat residents in a high-rise, they meet their neighbours in a small and crowded enclosed metal cabin (the elevator car). How can they communicate happily, building a social relationship?

Another reason for the feeling of this kind of isolation might come from the inaccessibly far distance to the ground. The human had lived on the ground for millions of years before high-rise appeared. We have an instinctive feeling of safety to the ground, which is wide and stable. This inaccessible height makes people subconsciously disturbed when they are looking out of windows, with the vertical curtain wall as a cliff.

To break this isolation, the building form of high-rise should be rethought in a new way. Volume (or void) space can be inserted in the building to avoid the compartmentalisation, which breaks the small and regular stacking slabs to some extent, providing space as nodes where people gather. Another way is using bridges and ramps, or elevators and opening stairs cases to connect and detach different floors. When people travel between floors, it provides a continuous spatial experience and weakens the feeling of the boundary in different levels. Moreover, a set-back form might undermine the sense of unsafe height, which provides stable “grounds” and shortens the distance of human’s eye contact, and also break down the regularity of the form.

14

Folding Public Space To Three-Dimension

fig.13 Different kinds and characters of public space

fig.14 Different modes of public space between eastern and western countries

15

Folding Public Space To Three-Dimension

The concept of vertical high-rise designing is like urban planning on the horizontal ground, but it is within a three-dimensional matrix. So, the principles of urban design and high-rise design are similar. Each city has its characteristic. When designing a high-rise, the framework of the locational city which adapts to and evolves from its characteristic for hundreds or thousands of years could be a strong reference. These frames of cities reflect not only the characteristic, but also the culture and requirement, and there are vast differences between cities, and between countries.

Take the comparison between public spaces of western countries and eastern countries in history as an example. As for western countries, citizens are relatively freedom, taking an essential role in the state. From ancient Greece to ancient Rome, to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the square is the most crucial element in their public space. In ancient Greece, it was an opening life that everyone had the chance to attend the sports competition, poetry concerts, speeches, religious activities and even participation in politics, which accelerated the development of the public space. A typical example is the Miletus, which had a central square in the city, reflecting the coexisting between human and god as well as the free and open political system. In ancient Rome, because of the need of celebrating the worship of the monarch, big scale and symmetrical square was still widely used in city planning.

Trajan's Forum is a good example of this period. When it came to the age of the Renaissance, the human had back to be the centre of public space, which changed from servicing for religion and imperial power to servicing for citizen’s life. Therefore, public space in ancient western countries was more like a top-down designed square and opening space, which was static space and serviced for religion and imperial power.

16

Folding Public Space To Three-Dimension

Folding of Paris

Folding of Manhattan

Folding of London

Folding of Beijing

fig.15 Conceptual high-rise design based on the urban characteristics of cities (Ken Yeang, 2002)

17

Folding Public Space To Three-Dimension

However, as for eastern country like China, the characteristic of public space is different. The people in ancient China were deeply influenced by the Confucian ritual. Most of the plans of cities in ancient China started from the purpose of political governing, strictly following its social class system. There was no real public space in cities before the Lifang Planning was broken in the Song Dynasty (AD 960). (Lifang Planning was a city planning that divided cities into grids, controlling the movement of personnel and materials, and things could only be bought and sold in one specific grid in the city in the afternoon.) When the life of the citizens is restricted to the Fang (grid), most of the squares, and streets serviced for specific groups of people, emperor and army. Then after the Lifang Planning was broken, Street Market, the primary type of public space of ancient China finally formed. It was a breakthrough in the top-down ruling system of citizens. It was mainly the extendable linear space, existing with the type of Street Market, which was dynamic and did not reflect the class rule. But the public space in ancient China was in subordinate status in the spaces of the city.

Therefore, no matter the western cities dominated by square space, or the eastern cities by street market space, the forms of frames of the public space in the cities are the precipitation of their history and culture. It was born simultaneously with the city and has run in with it for hundreds of thousands of years, knowing what citizens need. Although it may be not the perfect choice of the public space for it, we still cannot ignore the importance of this strong reference when we are doing vertical planning for a high-rise.

18

Live In The Sky

fig.16 Office-apartment-workshop in the residential highrise (Jinpachi Mori & Jiro Taniguchi, 1996)

fig.17, fig.18 Hybrid functions in modern high-rise - Cafe & gym (alessia,2019) (besomebody, 2019)

19

Live In The Sky

As for urban life on the ground, the void part of city, which we consider the space that is not occupied by buildings, take the role of the place where series of social activities happen. But the fact of the appearance of high-rises forcibly removed some of the community activities into the sky, though the space in the sky is so regular and isolated that cannot meet the requirements of these activities perfectly. So, it led to the situation that the original life on ground land was destroyed more or less. Its essence is destroying the integrity of the space and its social function, which make human feel more unpleasant and unsatisfactory to the life in high-rises.

Unfortunately, although there are many weaknesses of high-rises, we still have to live in the sky because of the serious populational problem until we find a better new solution. But what we can do and change right now is to explore a new form of high-rise that try to avoid or reduce the unpleasant and unsatisfactory of its users.

20

Social Condenser

fig.19 Poster, “Electrification of the entire country!” (Gustav Klutsis, 1921) fig.20 Workers’ club (Alexander Deineka, 1927)

21

Social Condenser

Before talking about a new form of high-rise, we can look back to the concept of “Social Condenser”, which was first raised by Soviet Union architect Moisei Ginzburg in 1928. After then, this word was repeatedly mentioned, without any clear definition, however. The term was used in quite a broad way, often as something of an umbrella term for the “new type” of post-October architecture.

In its various articulations, the Social Condenser was a proposal for a type of architecture that would serve as a tool for the construction of radical new kinds of human communities: communities of collective residence, work, and public culture, in which the alienation and privation of bourgeois or peasant life would be overcome; and communities of equality and empathy, in which the old hierarchies of class and gender would be designed out of existence.

(Strelka, 2017)

Social Condenser is designed for the essential requirement of social life, but there is an attempt to create a new lifestyle at the same time from the very beginning of designing. The designer imagines this kind of lifestyle and describes it with the form and designing. Therefore, the new form of high-rise we are exploring has similarities of characteristics to Social Condenser somehow. They both aim to contain various activities in buildings, to explore a new lifestyle of the human community, to weaken the boundaries and isolation and emphasise public and collective existing. Or in other words, we can even metaphor the new high-rise as a kind of Social Condenser.

22

Social Condenser

fig.21, fig.22 Sky Hook (El Lissitzky, 1923)

23

New form of high-rise

EI Lissitzky’s horizontal high-rise proposal, the Skyhook, which stands on grand elevated piers above intersections of radial and ring roads in Moscow was considered as Social Condenser. Everything delivered to the building by horizontal traffic is transported vertically by elevators and then redistributed in a horizontal direction. In EI Lissitzky’s imagination, the horizontal (the useful, office) is clearly separated from the vertical (the support, the necessary). Compared with the prevalent high-rise system, this kind of innovation was able to maximally concentrate both “useful” and “necessary” space. It allows for clarity in the interior layout, which is essential for office structures and usually predicated by the structural system. Moreover, this kind of concentration does bring condensation effect. It transfers pedestrian’s walking, to horizontal – vertical – horizontal, and it transfers the horizontal space as an airway parallel to the street, making the semi-private office coincide with the imagery of public street to some extent.

The social condenser contains functions with geometrical form, guiding the user’s behaviours to produce a cohesive effect. Skyhook maximally separated vertical and horizontal spaces and functions, which in turn to create a coincidence between private and public space. Similarly, how if we maximally mix vertical and horizontal spaces in the new form of a high-rise?

High-rise must maintain its character as a compact, high-density building form, which keeps easy and close accessibility to users’ destination. Meanwhile, it should be part of the urban streets that take part in the community life, providing urban diversity and richness of public realms to inhabitations.

It should also connect urban space seamlessly and keep the visual as well as mental coherent when travelling in the internal space. These kinds of public realms can also avoid finding the existing public space in the urban streets, which might be in low quality or wrongly designed.

As for the project in Mainz, it is exploring this new type of high-rise. It is creating a collective landmark which strengthens citizens’ ownership of the community through visually flipping up of the green park and, breaking the feeling of social isolation in traditional high-rises through the vertically folded lands.

24

Programme and Project

Site Of Project

The site of the project is located into the new town (Neustadt) of Mainz, Germany, which is next to a central green park of the community on the south of the Rhine River. It’s primary school to the south-east of the site and residential building to its south-west. The site is a significant node to the serial views of the main route from the waterfront, which is more like a logical end of the long green park. As for the community, it can be said as an essential control point for gathering people and providing public services to citizens who live in the new town of Mainz.

Moreover, according to the study trip, most of the buildings in the new town are residential, and the part of the waterfront is under construction, which will be modern residential buildings and designed landscape. However, commerce including shops, restaurant and other public services are not enough for the residents. Under this circumstance, many residents are forced to transport to the old town for recreational life.

fig.23 Site of the project

26

Introduction Of Project

Site

fig.24 Long section of new town of Mainz

27

Introduction Of Project

The project proposes to build a hybrid commercial complex as a landmark of the site and a vertical city subcentre in the new town. To respond to the city context as an end of green park and serial nodes, the first concept of the building is “Flipping Up” of the green park as a “Green Hill”. In a section cut from the waterfront through the site, a new green bridge crosses the highway before passing a residential area, through an underground landscape into the park. This is a newly defined outdoor space for the Neustadt that encourages people to gather before venturing into the mountain.

In the old town of Mainz, there is a series of symbols and landmarks such as The Mainzer which identify the city to strengthen the citizens’ ownership.

Such collective landmarks with a long history help citizens to understand the place better and mark places to gather, enhancing the cohesiveness of the community. However, in the new town of Mainz rebuilt after WWII, most of the new buildings are mediocre and undistinguished so that a collective landmark for public use can be hardly found to identify the new community.

Thus, the “Flipping Up” of the green park as Green Hill in the project creates a strong visual identity, emphasising its attributes of a landmark building.

Moreover, the continual connection between the green roof and the park provide a high-quality gathering space to strengthen the ownership of the new community.

fig.25 Flipping up of green park

28

Form Finding – Version 1

fig.26 Mass components

fig.27 Mass and combination study in two parts

29

Form Finding – Version 1

fig.28 Elevation scale study

30

Form Finding – Version 1

fig.29 Draft section of form version 1

31

Form Finding – Version 1

The second concept of the project is that it is an experiment of folding space toward a vertical public realm. Le Corbusier raised to set the public services in the hybrid high-rises in his Ville Radieuse, which lacked the human scale and ignored the characteristic of the city. Thus, the project is studying and exploring the public realm and space in the centre of old town experiencing historical sedimentation, aiming to find out what people need and how can these functions be transferred into the project as a vertical subcenter through series of tests.

Following the function, the mass of the building is divided into two parts: one facing the green park and another facing to the urban.

The part next to the park should be more opening and livelier that most of the public activities happen in this area such as high street, market and sports courts. The citizens come from the green park are led to going up naturally through the smooth tangency between the park and the building. Escalators and ramps are used in this part to keep a continue visual experience when people are transferring between the floors.

When it comes to another part, office and education space that require a quiet environment and isolation are set here so that there is clear vertical functional partition. Lifts are the main transportation between the floors in this part, which can send people to their destinations in the shortest time.

32

Form Finding – Version 2

fig.30 Mass and combination study in two parts

33

Form Finding – Version 2

fig.31 Mass Models

34

Form Finding – Version 2

fig.32 Concept Drawing - Flipping and Folding

35

Form Finding – Version 2

However, after in-depth study and review of relevant sunlight regulations of the country, it can be found that enough space around the high-rise is needed to avoid blocking the sunlight of neighbours. Moreover, according to Prof.

Heribert who comes from Germany, he mentioned that the citizens in Mainz are opposing the construction of super high-rise. In addition, a new supertall building extruded from the ground as original design with more than one hundred meters height may lose context with the urban city and its landscape.

Therefore, the project has been cut down as half of the original height and deformed to more respond to the context. A longer section of the landscape and typography is considered to find more context with the city. From the waterfront to the south-west of the city, it can be seen that there is an approximately 30-metre height difference of typography. So, the project building can be designed as a landscape or green hill, to respond to the green bridge in waterfront and mountains in the south-west of Mainz.

Form finding started from sketchy section drawings and mass models. Basically, the north edge near the green park follows the concept of flipping up, creating continue surface and the south edge makes context with urban city as hard edge. According to the typography, the form which is higher on the south and lower on the north could be more responsive to the long section of the community. Moreover, as for the location of the tower building, southwest corner of the site near the main road is the best place. According to Jason’s project, the courtyard to the north-east of the site would be designed as playground and sports courts so that a lower height mass and soft edge would maintain the spatial as well as functional relevance between the site and the project. Thus, the option with sloping roof starting from north-east to south-west from bottom to top was selected as building mass.

In the sketchy section, it shows that the form with a tangent ramp connecting the green park and the roof greenery, and the cliff on the backward responds well to both the natural park and urban city. It creates an outdoor and continual public realm for the citizen as a hidden edge, extending the central green park in a vertical direction. On the other side, glazing and steel frame structure are used on the cliff, which shows the flowing and folding of space and floor slab clearly in the building. This hard edge is responding to the block and figure-ground plan of the city.

36

Space Folding Experiments

fig.33 The old town of Mainz analysis

fig.34 Folding of city public realms

37

Space Folding Experiments

From analysing the centre of the old town in Mainz, the functions that meet citizens requirements and the character of the city can be found in its organisation of space. There is a clear axis in the old centre, which the most important events happen here. Mainzer Dom is the most recognisable landmark on this axis, and it’s the symbol of the city. There is a weekend market in front of the Dom surrounded by bars, which provides rich food as well as the fresh vegetable, and the place for recreative life. Series of spaces can be abstracted from the axis: river, green belt, commercial complex, market, cathedral, high street, landmark, public and private space. The sketchy model made by paper with the map of Mainz’s centre shows the outline of its spaces and their organisation if the realm is folded into a vertical direction. How to create a smooth traffic connection vertically and contain these functions with continue space would be one of the primary questions.

fig.35 Folded space - Functions in the building

38

Vertical Market

fig.36 Vertical market - Borderless

39

Vertical Market

The market is commonly a big square which can be called “free travel space” on the ground. People in the market spot their destination and can walk to any direction, through many parallel staggered walkways. So, the keywords of market space are “freedom” and “multi-directionality”.

When it is folded into the vertical space, the primary problem is boundaries that the limit of structure and prize cannot afford such a large floor floating in the air. It must be cut into serval pieces piling up layer by layer, which break its continuity and multi-directionality. Thus, breaking the isolation and connecting the floors, or in other words, creating borderless vertical surfaces is the key to realise the vertical market in the air.

fig.37 Concept paper models of vertical market

40

Vertical Market

fig.38 Vertical market - Option 1

fig.39 Vertical market - Option 2

fig.40 Vertical market - Option 3

41

Vertical Market

Market option 1: The concept started with paper cutting. Papers that represent the floor slabs are cut in the middle, pulled up and down respectively and connected with others, which form a kind of “endless” and “borderless” surface. From concept to architectural form, the cut edges in the middle develops as traffic space with stairs and escalators so that the users can naturally travel up and down without sensory boundary. Market stalls are set on different high platforms on the other side to meet the functional needs. The weakness of the option is its lack of “free travel experience” between different platforms that user who expect to go to stalls on other platforms should go back to the main stair to access to their destination.

Market option 2: Option2 develops from the form of option1. It inherits the concept of paper cut and connected in the middle, but it flattens the edge of each slab, which creates more abundant vertical spatial changes. Moreover, the main stair is broken into many small stairs connecting different platforms, providing a multi-directional traffic experience closer to the market on the ground. The flat platforms on two sides of the floors provide the space for dining and bars, which refers to the spatial functions around the market in the old town.

Comparing with option1, option2 is more holistic and uniform and provides a spatial experience closer to the old market.

Market option3: The concept of option3 is a continuous surface as loops in a vertical direction. The platforms and stalls are arranged along the long edge of each slab, with small scale stair connected. It is worth mentioning that the slopes are different between stair in different positions, which provide more choices for people. For example, users who have specific destination can use the innermost stairs to go up in the shortest time, while who prefer hanging around can use the outermost one.

42

Vertical Market

fig.41 Vertical market - Option 4

fig.42 Vertical market - Option 5

43

Vertical Market

Market option4: This option develops from option3, and it is more like the pixelated surface looping and going up from the bottom. It changes the huge flat platform on the sides as small platforms for stalls. The slope of each point on the same radius of the surface is equal that provides various possibilities for the users to experience the vertical market. This option has higher space utilisation and contains stalls as much as possible, but it lacks the area of dining and bars for users that may not inherit all the functions of the market on the ground.

Market option5: The option develops from a single component as a twisted slab. From the diagram, it can be seen that the flat platforms for dining and bars are set on one side of the form, and the other side is used by stairs, which may have lower space utilisation. However, the travel experience in this option is still free and multi-directional for the users because of its decentralised stairs.

44

Vertical High Street

fig.43 Vertical high street - Loops

fig.44 Concept paper model of vertical high street

45

Vertical High Street

Travel experience in the high street on the ground floor is commonly called “linear travelling”, which mean a tandem walkthrough between stores. People usually have two route choices to visit a high street. One is walking on the main road, reaching the shops on two sides, which always happens on a narrow pedestrian street. The other is walking on one side of the main road and going back on the other side as an enclosed loop, which commonly happens on the broad roadway. Thus, the keywords of characters of high street space are “linear” and “directionality”.

When the high street folded into a vertical direction, it should be a similar kind of linear travelling experience in the vertical dimension. So, the loops that combined with vertical traffic (stairs or escalator) on it could be the representation of its form.

fig.45 Vertical high street

The concept comes from paper cutting. Stepped back floor slabs connected with stairs and escalator in the same direction create a loop in the vertical dimension. Visitors transfer to the floor by escalator, going into the main shopping area which is in a linear organisation, and then come back out to the vertical traffic system to transfer to other floors till they finish a complete walking loop. Not only the option reinterprets the spatial experience of travelling on the high street on the ground in the vertical dimension, but it also breaks the limitations of the two-dimensional high street that creates communication between different segments on a linear tour through the stepped back form. Its spatial experience is undoubtedly extended.

46

Vertical Playground

fig.46 Vertical playground - Cut & pulled

fig.47 Concept paper model of vertical playground

47

Vertical Playground

Vertical playground The concept comes from paper cutting. The playground on the ground floor is cut and pulled up like a paper, forming continue stepping back platforms.

Public service and playground such as café, skateboard courts, children playground and so on can be arranged on these platforms. It combines the vertical traffic and public realm. Moreover, there are also entrances to indoor space on each floor for the users who travel to a specific destination.

The stepping back form and continue ramps provide visual communication between floors and shorten the visual distance, which can break the isolation of the edges of the slabs. However, it cannot provide enough flat ground for sport courts because of its large ramp so that the basketball courts are arranged on the courtyard to the south-east of the site.

fig.48 Vertical traffic The concept comes from minimal surface, which is like a “Wormhole” connecting spaces of different floors into one. The minimal surface creates a wonderful space experience of “Floor-Wall-Floor” folding and transferring, which can break the hard edges of the slab and weaken its isolation. Moreover, this “Wormhole” can be the internal vertical traffic system. When people are travelling in, it provides a strong visual cue of “Wormhole” and “Space Jump” with the continued surface that strengthen the relationship between floors.

48

Conclusion

fig.49 Section

fig.50 Isometric drawing

49

Conclusion

fig.51 Materials rendering test

50

Conclusion

fig.52 Renders

51

Conclusion

In the final design of the project, some functions such as stepping back outdoor playground and wormhole traffic system have to be cancelled to meet the actual site scale and urban context. As for the vertical market, Option2 is selected in the final design because it inherits the free travelling experience on the ground and creates a smooth borderless surface. Moreover, comparing with Option1, Option2 is more spatially changeable so that Option2 is selected to be arranged in the north-east part of the tower building, which has a large area of entire space. The vertical high street is set in the south-west part of the tower building, where there’s a sloping roof following the form of stepping back floors. Shops are arranged according to the traffic loops system.

In addition, the function of education is set on the south-east of the building near the existing primary school. Education is a semi-public function that needs an isolated, quiet environment so that education spaces are still like piling regular cubes – the traditional classrooms.

On the top of the tower building, a small protestant church with four-floor height is set here, providing residents with a daily religious venue in the community. The form of the church is designed as cone according to the shape of the corner of the tower, with a low and narrow entrance and steeply rising sloping roof, enhance the grand sacred visual experience in a limited space.

As for the northern façade, the project is trying to respond to the urban context and meet the character of “Green Hill”. The façade gradients from grass to glazing from bottom to top to continue the green park and the random glazing visually connect indoor and outdoor space. Moreover, there are stairs as the paths on the hill behind the façade. People in the park can see the pedestrians through the random glazing, which seem as walking pedestrians who are blocked sometimes by trees and rocks on the path of the mountain.

Therefore, the project creates a critical experiment of folding different public realms of a city into a new form of hybrid high-rise, trying to break through its social isolation, as well as making more context with urban landscape of Mainz and its typography, providing a collective landmark that strengthens citizens’ ownership of the new town.

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