MONSTROUS LAND

Program: Alien Creature Asylum Center
Location: Manhattan, NY, US
Summer 2021
Type: Academic Project

Brief

With exuberance, this studio conflates multiple threads of research to propose wild ecosystems for a New York City block. While an urban block could be considered an ecosystem i t’s strict order, rules and organization prevent it from being self-sustaining and it is a far cry from being wild.

We see the wild as an emerging trend for healthy bodies, ecosystems and the planet.. To apply these concepts architecturally we will analyze the relationship between ecosystems and cities and the types of representation that have shaped their aesthetics and management.
By working with theories of rewilding and permaculture we will entangle this history while walking on the wild side of architectural ideas.

Project I

We wil begin by examining the ways in which people have attempted to understand and see the past world. Skating on the edge of the unknown requires one to believe in something that isn't readily apparent, it requires one to speculate on what that other reality could have been and that often relies on learned knowledge. We will do this by studying and speculating on the hidden world embedded in 2d imagery and utilizing translation as a speculative act.

Early depictions of ecosystems have influenced the way that people see nature. What's interesting about these are that in the process of describing complex systems artists and scientists created alternative worlds rooted in the ones being studied. We often see flora and fauna being compressed in space and time and with dramatic aesthetic license to capture climactic moments.
This allows us to see these images as materially rich diagrams and the source material for spatial and aesthetic thinking that can hybridize with architectural production. We want to look past the obsolescence of the content depicted but relish in the simultaneity of time, space and aesthetic composition.

Project II

The captured alien animal-terrain hybrid is imprisoned on top of an artificially
constructed insfrustructure linked to the city.

The Interior Shots

Energy harvesting devices inserted in the upper layers
of the hybrid deliver nutrients down to the interior.
At night, some of the nutrients are converted into fluorescence,
illuminating this microscopic internal ecosystem.

Artificial Ceiling System Formal Strategy

The lower part underneath the artificial landscape consists
of systems of underground circulations(grey), energy
transportation(yellow) and facilities & labs(dark grey).