2 minute read
A Speculative Instantiation
from Orthopolis
by SCI-Arc
Finally, having worked out a rough picture of what our urban intervention is, what it looks like, and how it might function, it came time to instantiate. This was a particularly big step in the process because the shear breadth of this urban intervention makes rationalizing much of the architecture just wasn't an option within the time alotted. However, we prefer to see this as an inversion of the typical architectural lens. When we orient ourselves around clients and the day to day minutiae and try to think on a larger scale, it often comes at great expense to architects. We recognized this was an opportunity to think and design on a scale much larger than we'd probabbly be comissioned after school, and we figure it is much easier to zoom in and work on the architectural polemics down the road as we practice.
Ultimately, we landed on a large image as the kind of universal draw and pitch for our intervention. In the same way that we were incredibly broad in our proposition, we are able to swing the other way and get into a smorgasbord of individual details that might arise from these larger urban forces, and our design proposal in light of them.
We have produced one speculation into a future recapitulation of our traditional urban elements where the street is no longer entirely subdued by transportation, buildings are no longer confined to the needs and resources in which they are built, and humans design their own structures through a democratic aggregation of citizen data. Streets become a place to inhabit, coexist and interact with people, pets, autonomous cars, and any future technological assets. We seek to inhabit the space where modularity and formalism leverage their unique attributes to produce a wildly formal, flexible, porous, and sustainable urban ether. Spaces evolve to accommodate the spatial needs people have as they eat, walk, recreate, and socialize. In this way, our project marks a deviation from the megalomaniacal modernists roaming free, and promulgates a solitary democratic ethos: urbanism should be a reflection and a refraction of its inhabitants.
A zoomed in portion of the action. The previous spread is a zoomed out piece of the image.
64 Allen, Charlie. Thesis Research. Instructor: Devyn Weiser 65 Allen, Charlie. Thesis Research. Instructor: Devyn Weiser 66 Erica Fischer, “Is This the Structure of New York City?,” Flickr (Yahoo!, January 23, 2012), https://www. flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/6747484741. 67 Jennifer Gabrys, “VEGETAL SENSORS: HOW TO CONSTRUCT AIR QUALITY GARDENS,” University of Virginia School of Architecture, March 11, 2021, https://www.arch.virginia.edu/events/jennifer-gabrys. 68 Jennifer Gabrys, “VEGETAL SENSORS: HOW TO CONSTRUCT AIR QUALITY GARDENS,” University of Virginia School of Architecture, March 11, 2021, https://www.arch.virginia.edu/events/jennifer-gabrys. 69 Jennifer Gabrys, “VEGETAL SENSORS: HOW TO CONSTRUCT AIR QUALITY GARDENS,” University of Virginia School of Architecture, March 11, 2021, https://www.arch.virginia.edu/events/jennifer-gabrys.
