CONTEXTUALIZED MODULARITY

A PAVILION DESIGN IN LOWER MANHATTAN

Individual Work

This project focuses on the development of a geometric modular system that is capable of creating diverse spatial conditions and urban gestures to negotiate the irregularity of a site in Lower Manhattan. The design employs formal analysis to reconceptualize the irregular site as a Euclidian interface defined by two displacement grid systems, which offers a referential framework for the modular system to operate.

The modular system started with a pair of interlocked conic surfaces twisting between vertical and horizontal plane, and then moved to the development of a formal system that synthesizes structural logic and lighting effect in both cellular and cluster scale; a single conic module performs as a structural joint between verticality and horizontality via interlocked geometry, while its aggregation accommodates various spatial conditions ranching from darkness to light, compression to expansion, opening to enclosure.

The interaction between dual formal systems, contextual grids and curvilinear modules, registers a dialectical relation between site specificity and geometry autonomy and ultimately reinterprets the grid as a regulating matrix for digital geometry.

Conic Modules Geometric Joint

The basic module is comprised of two pairs of interlocking conic surfaces trimmed off each other, creating a twist between a vertical and a horizontal plane through a geometric joint. The modular systems are based on several types of combination among modules; each creates different spatial conditions. The modular system reacts to the architectural spaces by converting between horizontal and vertical direction, articulating different vertical levels, diverting horizontal movement, and modulating lighting.

Dark Room And Light Room Phenomenological Duality

A spatial journey among four rooms is composed, which begins with a small dark room transited people to the interior, moves up to a small exterior lightroom, then move down to a big interior dark room, and finally reaches a big light room with a different orientation. A core geometric module opens up the wall between the large dark room and the lightroom, negotiating the two directionalities of the building.

Aggregation Cellular And Cluster

The modular system started with a pair of interlocked conic surfaces twisting between vertical and horizontal plane, and then moved to the development of a formal system that synthesizes structural logic and lighting effect in both cellular and cluster scale; a single conic module performs as a structural joint between verticality and horizontality via interlocked geometry, while its aggregation accommodates various spatial conditions.

J. Baker house is not only exemplary in its expression of Loos’s raumplan, but also employs a spatialsystem to employ voyeurism. A crossed load-bearing wall system sets up a four-square grid that is fundamentally conflicted in its linear and diagonal qualities.

Formal Analysis

A STUDY ON THREE CANONICAL ARCHITECTURES

Instructors: Peter Eisenman, James Lowder, Elisa Iturbe, Guido Zuliani

Teammates: Tianyang Sun, Kyungmin Park, Marina Akopyan

Formal Analysis priviledges the linguistic coherence and rupture of architectural forms. Material, site, structure, programs are only analyzed if it has a significant relationship to its form. The sacrifice of a holistic diagonsis is in exchange for a deep reading into an invisible logic of composition that can be appropriated into new design work. This specific series focuses on three architects ranging from Early Modern to Post Modern: Loos, Stirling and Venturi & Scott Brown.

While all elements conforms to the orthogonal grid, a tension between the diagonal quadrant placed by the two volumes of skylight/ swimming pool directs the male gaze to trepass between walls and act diagonally.

James Striling showed an increasing interest in bricolaging modern language with historical motifs and actual remains during his three museum competitions in Germany in the 1970s. Duesseldorf Museum of Art is among them. In this rather intense composition, the forms can be either read as a promenade slicing through the block and the builing to make a central court, or four palladian volumes are polarized to favor the north/south pathway.

THE POP-MONUMENT INTERPLAY BETWEEN SURFACE AND VOLUME

One could generalize the house into become either a continuous surface wrapper containing volumes, or a series of displaced planes dividing the interior. But one would soon find that neither tells the whole story. Continuing Stirling’s dillemma, the undecidable nature of whether it is a pure duck or a pure decorated shed is source of Venturi & Scott Brown’s complexity.