Critic: Lise Ane Couture of Asymptote Architecture
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| View From The Water Looking West At Sunset |
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.
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.
Keywords:
Symmetry, Mirroring, Boolean, Carving, Two Halves, Nested Geometry, Series,
Array
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