site strategy: focus on existing box

Update on site strategy:

"I pretty much know what I am going to do to the box. The motion mapping will
serve as a form generator of an object (dojo) that is set within the box and its grid... I really want to say "to hell" with the larger contextual site and focus on the box and its fascade/wrapper. Some of the feedback seems to point to me addressing the large site... but I don't really care about that actually. It's a parking lot that serves an existing strip mall. Fine it has its use. To pretend that people do not rely on cars in the Midwest and utilize large areas of surface parking seems to be a bit on the utopian side of things, which is a philosophy that is at one point provactive but at the same time limiting.

In reality, to me the box is the site. I think that I am more interested in focusing on this as an installation into the retail fascade. An object form that is generated from its program motion map and injected into the failing big box. Some of the feedback from the intensive discussed the size of program being too small. At that time I saw the point, but now I am thinking more along the lines of it becoming smaller... one room, maybe two or three at most. Sam's point about most martial arts studios being one small space in a shopping mall is interesting... there is a certain power there in the small...exaggerated. The potential to be any fascade with any program.

The wellness kiosks could be other small indoor/outdoor spaces that help to fill out the other edges of the box and become interactive with thepublic. Opening and closing with the seasons.

This focuses everything to the exterior bays of the box grid. The interior then becomes garden ruins by pulling up the concrete slab and removing the roof to allow nature back in, an artificial ruin of sorts. But it becomes an interior backdrop to the program that inhabits the outer ring of use.

study model: v4 panels... in progress

site strategy: progress thoughts

• implemented object (dojo) becomes the catalyst for adaptive change of big box grid...
• transformation of found box becomes catalyst for adaptive change of city grid...
• form generator of motion map is injected into the edge condition of retail fascade and street edge
• wrapper around steel framing of box store and the wrapper of the city block / grid - peeling back of edge condition
• reconnected pedestrian axis that cut across the site; urban grid reclaims what was disturbed by retail strip mall development
• motion map also generate sculpted forms of wellness kiosks that occur at nodes along residential axis; serve as connection of local hospital wellness programs to the residential fabric
• portions of site and edge are reclaimed as green area; removing vehicle and pavement and replacing it with natural grass and urban greenery

motion mapping is...

... a tool for design process, generating a point of departure from which the box grid, fascade, and site are informed... the shape of the recycled form... an ephemral quality of motion that is a form generator...

... the structure must work within normal constraints of program, budget, materials, etc... issues become scale, sight lines, city grid.

crit comments: intensive 6.7.08

Selected comments to work from moving forward...

• More of the point of view of box being efficient in terms of economic model. Big box will not necessarily have a franetic overuse, but one moment that changes a piece of it.
• Solution will be a clever transformation of space in a very efficient amount of steps.
• Relationship of zone of parking? Begin to inhabit those areas? The 15/16ths of the rest.
• Edge condition of the big box? Richard Wilson... something unconventional... study about skin... wrap... edge condition.
• How you can really attack the site is not clear.
• Size of the big box in scale, size and volume is immense... How does this really fit a dojo?
• Big generic space and placing a small program in it and amount of change... insert into small space... then have other use.
• What is thesis about? Big box or aikido?

Now... move forward

motion mapping model

motion mapping

Ai - Harmony, the principle of harmony and integration.
Ki - Spirit, centralized , coordinated energy considered the energu of life itself.
Do - Way, the method a discipline and philosophy with both moral and spiritual connotations.

Motion mapping of technique or teachings to analyze and document the harmony, spirit, and way that embody the philosophy of aikido. Through analysis of the movements of the uke and nage (the person being thrown and the thrower) we start to glimpse at the energy being expended between the two along with the tension, compression, mergence, and resolution of the "space" that lies between the two. The video below is one of three that were studied and mapped, shomenuchi ikkyo or first teaching.

Motion mapping can be extruded from the two figures by following key points of the body through the key still frames in a sequencial order, producing the motion map.

motion map

single frame motion map

other works: matta-clark process, wilson in motion

Here are some links to some film by Matta-Clark documenting the actual installation of this work from Ubuweb.

Splitting, Bingo/Ninth, 1974-76
http://www.ubu.com/film/gmc_splitting.html

Conical Intersection, 1975
http://www.ubu.com/film/gmc_conical.html

Day's End, 1975
http://www.ubu.com/film/gmc_daysend.html

City Slivers, 1976
http://www.ubu.com/film/gmc_slivers.html


Here is the Liverpool project by Richard Wilson in motion - "Turning the Place Over"
Exterior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qh2esOoI1Y
Interior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4ogYjx_GFw&feature=related

other works: richard wilson, gordon matta clark

Work by Richard Wilson in Liverpool where an egg shaped volume is used to puncture and revolve the fascade of this building.



Additionally, the artistic work of Gordon Matta-Clark, is of interest in how he literally cut slices into existing buildings "exposing the hidden spaces within".

study model 02: grid-volume as push/pull perforation

The inherent grid-volume of the big box is extrapolated from the masonry shell and steel structural bays of the abandoned big box. The grid-volume is then manipulated by pushing, pulling, and moving the individual volumetric bays based on the aikido dojo program.

The resultant modified grid-volume is then overlayed back into the existing big box shell where its newly created edges become slice, perforate, and fracture of the original architecture. The resultant perforations and large openings open up the dark interior of the box to natural daylighting and private meditation gardens. In addition, the training rooms and exhibition spaces begin to interact with the plane of the previous retail fascade, thus recreating it and addressing not only the original "front" but also the fascade along Douglas Ave. and its high traffic patterns.

From this point the strategy will be to explore more edge conditions and formalize the newly created building perforations, exterior/interior spaces, and program.

study model: reflection

Okay it's been a little while since I posted the images from the May 9th of a current progress
model. Understanding that there is no text to help convey my thoughts and investigations, here is a few thoughts before I move on...

Study model 01 is as far as I think I am going to take it. The exercise looked at how the programmatic elements formed in somewhat arbitrary individual massing could begin to penetrate/perforate/fracture the exist box condition. The focus was only on two major portions of the program, the meditation garden (green strips that push out into the site) and the training rooms (brown rectanular cubes). The sketch below shows some of the thoughts about perforation/fracture... along with some of the last revisions to the study model.






As I move on to the next study model, I can a take a couple of things from the first...
1. Use a larger prgram. The current garden sizes are too small as listed on the program and need to reflect the larger scale of the full site in order to engage both the interior of the box and the site.
2. Adding more training rooms to the program. Instead of 4 large training rooms, there will be 6.
3. Add a new program piece... an exhibition hall for public exhibitions of martial arts and larger national and international seminars that commonly take place.

study model: current progress