1 minute read
Retail Units & Storage
from XinweiGUO_Portfolio
by Vicky Guo
Milestone Victoria & Albert Museum Wuhan Branch “It exists; at most, it coexists; Its subtext is f**k context.” L Bigness
120 years ago, a generation of conceptual breakthroughs and supporting technologies unleashed an architectural Big Bang. By randomizing circulation, short-circuiting distance, artificializing interiors, reducing mass, stretching dimensions, and accelerating construction, the elevator, electricity, air conditioning, steel, and finally the new infrastructures formed a cluster of mutations that induced another species of architecture. The combined effects of these inventions are structures taller and deeper – Bigger – than ever before conceived, with a parallel potential for the richer organization of the social world.
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“Bigness is no longer part of any urban context.”, indicating something revolutionary occurs in bigness. Milestone, Victoria&Albert Museum Wuhan Branch, acquires the properties of Bigness. In "Delirious New York“ Theory of Bigness” is brought up: Big Buildings acquire autonomy for distance between core and envelop increases to the point where façade can no longer reveal what happens inside, causing doom of expected “honesty”. That’s why I dismantle Milestone layer by layer, skin, flesh, bones, veins. Apart from a sense of nostalgia flashback to prosperous Industrial Revolution Age, reobtaining “honesty” in a Big Building is what I want to achieve. When people walking through the sculpture-like milestone on rusted copper grids, will there be faintest hint of “another” Big architecture?