working section and program summary

The motion mapping is generating form and spatial relationships in section. As process, the sections are started first and then a floor plan will be derived from a series of such sections.

The area of the plan will be constrained to one or one and a half rows of the structural bays of the box. Each structural bay is approximately 1,000sf. With the two end bays being slightly larger.

Below is an updated program. Limiting the program size allows the dojo to become a small insertion into the big box grid and serves as the catalyst for re-use. By inserting the small singular catalyst to the strip mall and box store a ripple effect would be created, generating other new uses and recycling of the existing buildings.

As an example of other re-uses that could be possible, the program includes a series of community outreach wellness kiosks that will be orperated by a local health care provider. The kiosks are un-manned information centers that get valuable medical and health information to the community. These will have direct ties to the garden ruin and meditation areas of the dojo, delineating the ripple effect of the catalyst.

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.

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.

motion mapping model