Ryan Lovett: Thick Skin and Dense Space: A Luxury Leisure Aquatic Wellness Center

Advanced Studio V- Thick Skin and Dense Space:
Critic: Lise Ane Couture of Asymptote Architecture

View From The Water Looking West At Sunset

Conceptual Approach

Through the strategic reinterpretation of the tessellation patterns and geometric orderings originated from the shell of a tortoise, a new dynamic condition unfolds where there is no longer a binary inside / outside relationship but an inside, outside, above and below condition. This new condition stems from the fact that the tortoise is unique in that it has both an endoskeleton and an exoskeleton. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by a bridge.

This symmetrical hybrid system allows for an architectural potential of a series of intricately carved spatial organizations that challenge typical interior to exterior relationships. There is a carved exterior, a figural interior space that is open to the exterior and fully enclosed interior with large penetrating ‘exteriorized’ programmed volumes. This ordering lends itself well to a site, massing, and programmatic strategy that are developed simultaneously and follow the behaviors of the tortoise in its natural habitat.

Site

Situated in Mission Bay, San Diego near world renowned destinations like Fire Island, Scripps Research Institute, and Sea World, the new complex will augment an already well-established network of marine focused destinations. With dozens of luxury resorts and villas sprinkled across the bay and a prominent waterfront site with incredible visibility, the campus will serve as a beacon for tourists, day travelers, and locals alike.

Here the massing is on an edge. Amphibious like its tortoise brethren, the new campus sits comfortably at the intersection of land and water, of earth and sky that converge into a new layering of inside and outside conditions. There is an inherent directionality in its composition, suggesting a balanced but focused emphasis on an exchange of the natural elements. Water comes slowly around and underneath the campus, with pockets of pools found above and within.

Structure & Material

The tortoise carapace has a unique material translucency and structural strength, which has been extrapolated as a strategy for an envelope that varies in opacity, becoming most transparent where areas have been carved out the most. This operation heightens a sense of slowing down, retreating inward, and feeling fully enveloped by a strong warm volume when circulating from the exterior to the innermost spaces. There is a formal and material continuity between ‘glazing’ and ‘mass.’

Experience

Ultimately the goal is to explore how an exterior condition can be perceived as fully enveloped by the interior and vice versa. This inversion of a typical spatial relationship can create a heightened sense of awareness of the moments of transition between interior to exterior and affords the potential of a strategy that exudes a simultaneous heaviness and porosity. Through the strategic carving and nesting of a repetitive form arrayed in series, an intricate system of filtering between fully enveloped exterior spaces and their interior counterparts can potentially be revealed.

This interstitial filtering poche then serves an experiential, programmatic, and potential structural purpose. To create such a condition, the carving and boolean strategy stages both the extent of the envelope and the configuration of the landscape simultaneously, potentially revealing new ways to define the relationship between interior (building) and exterior (landscape) in a wholistic and integrated fashion. The end result is a thick yet porous envelope that filters a hidden light source, serves a structural purpose, and creates a series of spaces that begin to blur one’s bearing and take them outside of their own metaphorical shell.