Transitional Space

This was the final project of the semester, and the first architectural environment we designed at human scale. we were given a hypothetical site 36' long by 24' wide, with a  6' by 24' by 1' plane elevated at one end of the site 8' off the ground plane. At the other end of the site, there's a large monolithic mass 18' by 18' by 6' thick. 

The assignment was to design an environment that would facilitate the passage of person travelling through the space from the elevated plane through an opening in the mass, or vice versa. At first I wanted to approach the project as if I was designing a temple, a type of space that often places an emphasis on passage or transition. the problem was a church, temple, cathedral, etc, is usually symmetrical in both plan and elevation along the building's main axis. Symmetry expresses a kind of stillness or quietness that helps the space feel sacred or holy, but the symmetry trick is hard to pull off. I decided instead to do something asymmetrical, in order to make specific moments in time as one follows a path through the space become more important, and to ensure the experience of the space constantly changes as it is navigated. 

When our studio instructor was further describing the requirements for the project. I should mention here that we were also given a "kit of parts"-- specific sizes, shapes, and numbers of parts of pre-determined dimensions. Of course, the first thing we do when we get a new assignment is thoroughly read through the guidelines looking for any useful loopholes in the wording. In this case, the golden loophole was a line saying, "you may combine or divide pieces from the kit of parts so long as you use a consistent method of addition or division". At some point someone asked how we were supposed to treat the surface of the site. Our instructor told us our hypothetical people couldn't walk directly on the surface. 

"So it's like lava?"

"well, kinda--but it won't necessarily kill you..."

"So, like water then"

"Yeah, think of it as water."

So here I am, thinking "I'm building s structure to facilitate the transition of a person from a long narrow raised platform over water to some other object. I'm building a dock."

I couldn't get the dock idea out of my mind, so I went with that. My first study model was a fairly abstract interpretation of a dock (I thought) but my professor took one look at it and said "that's a dock. Make it more abstract). What I ended up doing was building something dock-like, but using a system of interlocking unit modules, that combined in different ways to form pathway-platforms. I stuck to a strict set of rules as to how I joined the modules, so that my project sort of fell into order according to the extra rules I had made for myself. This was very helpful: it's hard enough to stare at a blank 2D canvas and decide where to go, let alone a 3D one. Near the end of the project, it ended up almost designing itself, and stood by to help it decide what to do now and then. according to the architecture students' bible, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, "Properly gaining control of the design process tends to feel like one is losing control of the design process."

left elevation

right elevation

plan

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