projects /
PorousSpace
Premise
This studio looked at the potential for a project to exist not as a discrete element (building) in a system (city), but as an integrative accumulation of matter and energy in a dynamically changing zone of manufactured landscape and society. Treasure Island in San Francisco is sinking. Constructed in 1939 for the Worlds Fair, the synthetic island was originally intended as a celebration of modernity's technical prowess. It now sits derelict, polluted, and blighted. A carte blanche scheme for densification along the lines of a masterplan developed by S.O.M. proposes to reinvent the location, once again, in the image of our technical ambitions.
This studio looked at the potential for a project to exist not as a discrete element (building) in a system (city), but as an integrative accumulation of matter and energy in a dynamically changing zone of manufactured landscape and society. Treasure Island in San Francisco is sinking. Constructed in 1939 for the Worlds Fair, the synthetic island was originally intended as a celebration of modernity's technical prowess. It now sits derelict, polluted, and blighted. A carte blanche scheme for densification along the lines of a masterplan developed by S.O.M. proposes to reinvent the location, once again, in the image of our technical ambitions.
Strategy
Without offering a direct critique on the specifics of the various plans for the island, this project seeks to conflate the logistical bottleneck of a ferry terminal with the physical bottleneck of a bridge with the programmatic bottleneck of a convention center and hotel.
As an operative spatial and structural agenda, continuity serves as a mechanism to transform the basic diagram of the space-frame and, Buckminster-Fuller style, embed that basic geometric pattern with everything.
Without offering a direct critique on the specifics of the various plans for the island, this project seeks to conflate the logistical bottleneck of a ferry terminal with the physical bottleneck of a bridge with the programmatic bottleneck of a convention center and hotel.
This conflation of programs has the effect of transforming a ferry terminal into a litteral bridge between the historical metropolises surrounding the bay and the projected synthetic metropolis under development. Thus the concept of the project as a bridge is both literal and metaphorical. The connective tissue of boats, cars and program (convention center) seeks to provide linkage and proximity in a situation where threshold and distance are the norm.
ContinuityAs an operative spatial and structural agenda, continuity serves as a mechanism to transform the basic diagram of the space-frame and, Buckminster-Fuller style, embed that basic geometric pattern with everything.