Crunch Time

I need to get my act together and start firming up the architecture. Right now, I'm still playing with concepts- some that I like, some that need refining- and I'm still searching for a grid that can organize everything. The long-tong grid is a real Chinese grid, but it is structurally inefficient. The big box in the bottom is now divided into three zones: the grocery store, the technology store, and the home furnishings store. The scale of this project will be around 100,000 sqft times 3. I will probably design the architecture first and foremost, and context will not be important. The roof of the big box will be structured by the gardens and the roofs above. Everything will be enclosed in a permeable membrane.

Worlds

The world of the car, machine-made spaces for machines- everything dangerous, everything safe. All you really want to do is to transcend this space.

The world of the big box- things reorganizing themselves in infinite possibilities, creating new situations, new ambiences, structured for the commercial world.

The world of the village green- light wooden houses with big roofs, some roofs floating away, some roofs peeling off buildings. Festivals in public plazas, trees everywhere, people mowing the lawn.

What If?

What if strata disappeared, and all that is left are surfaces, slightly sloped, slightly out of alignment? What if the aquarium could be viewed from below and was gigantic? What if the building was this big long section that hovered over buildings and even houses? Maybe charter planes can land on the roof? What if trees could be planted above, below, on top, inside, outside, upside-down? What if the roofs could fly away?

New Babylon

Constant's New Babylon was thinking about the city as an entirely artificial construct, based on psychogeography and situationalism rather than form. Architecture does not create atmosphere, atmosphere creates new architecture. This idea opens up new possibilities in architecture as social space, as conventions are thrown out. This cloud that hovers over the flat land, supported entirely on a handful of supports, becomes a playground of situations, no longer bounded by land.

On Tectonics

Michael suggested that I should look into the vertical circulation between each strata of this complex. Vertical circulation consists of atria, elevators, escalators, and stairs. He suggested that the roof of the big box should be this mega-truss, with columns holding up this truss, which bears the buildings. Alternatively, the buildings could act as the structural anchors for the roof. The parking lot would be made of concrete, the big box out of steel, and the buildings out of something lighter. Could the truss taper into something paper thick at the edges? The floor plates do not have to be flat either, then can slope, or even curve. Also, Robert briefly asked what the diagram of my building is. Is it a middle strata with objects above and below? Can there be a way to eliminate strata?

New Inspirations

What if these constructions would somehow be the structural pylons of the whole building?

A Great Lull

These past few days, I've experienced a great lull in design. It seems like there are so many battles to fight, and I don't know where to begin. Right now, the problem isn't program, or site. One problem is articulating the tectonics of the project. How it is Chinese? What exactly am I questioning? It seems like this jump to the tectonic is much harder than I first thought. I knew this from the start, but now it's becoming a bigger beast. Today was a low point- I was etching out parking lines in the form of a Chinese pattern. Although it could be an interesting take on parking cars, it doesn't address anything architecturally. I have this puzzle like model that was the last interesting thing I've done. Even that, as Barbora mentioned, was a result of the bandsaw, not an effect that is realizable in real life. Tommorrow, I face Michael Carroll about tectonics, and I'm actually very unprepared. I'll probably show a section of a Holl building that resembles mine, but I really want to ask him about my problem. AutoCAD's been stifling creative exploration. Viz models have been better, but are still only just study models. I really am uninspired at this point. My roof idea is losing steam. I'm cutting all sorts of roof sections, but none make much sense. Tommorrow, I think I'll just try to ask the right tectonic questions, and hopefully some fruitful discussion will come about.

Meeting with Howard

I started by talking about Gao Xingjian's book "Soul Mountain", and the idea of the myth collector. He mentioned that the idea of the myth and architecture is well studied. Perhaps the myth of the building is created by the programs inside, like the "acupuncture fragment" could look long and thin. Is there a difference between myth and character? Don't write narratives for each fragment- there's too much elaboration. I should watch "Shangri-La." The drawing of lines from buildings around the site is not an entirely convincing one, but perhaps I could merge those lines with a typical Shanghai hutong. So the trajectory could be this: move from plan to narrative to how the building's cultural character engages 2005.

It's been three days since the Friday presentation. This past week has been fairly relaxed. I talked with Lillian, a filmaker, about the cultural identity of Asian-Americans, about looking at culture hermetically, without stereotype or comparisons with the host culture. I looked at the first draft of her amazing film about a child who missed her dad, away in HK to work. I talked also with Cecilia, a Master's 2 student, about Pacific Mall and ethnoburbs, about the relationship between the Chinese suburbs and immigration laws. The critique on Friday centered on the context of suburbs, the myths of living in the suburbs, the need for clarity when critiquing the suburbs, the facts of surface parking, interesting projects that deal with suburban life, the potential for this project to play up Chinatown with all the senses (smells, tastes, sights), for it to be a kind of urban island in a sea of parking, a walled city. The two strata- the big box and the fragments above- allow for a new game to be played, with vertical and horizontal relationships. Falling in and out of reality. A virtual world, except that instead of a TV it is a real place.