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Co-Adaptation 15
The third hurdle is the architecture contractual apparatus itself. The architectural contract, perhaps ultimately derived from Alberti’s notions on the division between thought and action, can only deliver a static object. A fi nite set of documents in fi nite delivery time, garnering a singular decisive act.
To be able to truly author processes, the contract must be drawn out to allow for future infl uence, operation, or even revision. This entails an increased intimacy between client and architect. It means a higher level of trust, and a prolonged relationship, the ideas of which most on both sides would probably blanch at. However, clients would benefi t from increased attention and higher quality of service, and architect’s would not mind the more stable work. Of course, this entails that the architect is capable of making and admitting mistakes, which can be precarious in the current model. However, altering the contract means that both the client and architect know more about the other’s intents and are therefore on the same page and ultimately the same team. A symbiosis rather than a partnership based on necessity.
Conventional professional relationships and traditional ideology have left us with a spatial construct many have dubbed ‘suburbia.’ It has become fashionable, or even traditional, to deride suburban sprawl as inherently evil, but there is a darth of constructive thought and intelligent action aiming to ‘fi x’ it. We all know what the problems are, but few have posited viable solutions. Could it be that this is a problem that architecture, urban planning, and landscape design are too small to address? If ‘suburbia’ is outside the jurisdiction of those most suited to ‘fi xing’ it, then who is responsible?
Rather than utopian pipe dreams, or yet more negative cynical ‘junk-theory’, a series of intelligent, non-biased, design-as-research based projections could fi ll a void and fuel architectural thought for the next fi fty years.
Co-Adaptation 14
Viability
Given further economic development, detail refi nement, and some thoughtful value engineering, this project could be entirely technologically possible.
However, due to current thought processes, design methodologies and legal constructs, it is unviable under the current status quo.
What needs to change in order for liminal space to be dramatically reconceived from waste to opportunity?
One issue is the differentiation between design disciplines and the categorical mindsets that differentiation breeds. This project is not a work of architecture, landscape design, urban planning, agriculture, real estate speculation or civil engineering. Rather it is a confl uence of these disciplines interrelated in a tightly woven and perhaps inextricable way. To begin to think of the built environment as an ecology in dynamic equilibrium rather than as a series of adjacent plots, we must begin to author processes rather than design objects. This frees us from tired debates of style versus substance, utility versus poetics, and ridiculous and false dichotomies between art and science or pure and applied teleogies. It allows us to activate and evaluate built space in a more objective fashion, based on performance and reason, rather than on style or subjective opinion.
The second criteria is notions of ownership. Whether the area in question is owned by the municipality, the government, commercial or private enterprises, the owner must cease to conceive of these sites as their backyard dumping ground and be willing to exploit their potential. This is in no way antithetical to real estate speculation or economic use patterns, rather it is the exact opposite as it opens up new and fertile ground for economic endeavors. This is the ‘waste equals food’ mantra applied spatially. The real estate crisis, coupled with rising costs of transportation and infrastructure means that a more dense urban space model is perhaps more economically sustainable.
Co-Adaptation 12
Site plan / Phasing
Perhaps due to Alberti, perhaps due to gross misinterpretations of Modernism, the contemporary
architecture contract is always delivered as a fi nite product. As a break from this, iterations are
proposed to enable dynamic responses to changes in program. This is less architecture as product
and more architecture as ecological process. Being able to surgically alter, amend and adapt tectonics
allows for massive increases or decreases in program over time, ensures a very limited waste of
material and engenders architectural awareness.
Conceived as a fi fty year project, the system allows for increases of housing as more workers and
researchers are needed, and, reciprocally, more growing space to shelter the houses. The system
and its output, trees, “grow” along the highway, in either direction. Essentially, domesticating plants
and planting the domestic.
Co-Adaptation 11
Structure
Geodetics as both a tectonic system and organizational logic, are perhaps the most effi cient means
of achieving our aims. Standard stick frame construction, using slab, column and beam, is simply
too clumsy and thick to engage the complex geometry of the site. While monocoques, though seemingly
dynamic, are actually too static to change over time. Geodetics are built with standardized
members using designed fl exibility at the joints. Depending on assembly, the same pieces might
serve intermittently as wall, fl oor or roof.
Here we see this at work in two scales: the roof is comprised of a standard, ‘rod and ball’ system
[with acrylic sheets stretched over it], the torque provides rigidity. At a larger scale, the ‘truss web’
works in a similar manner, wherein each truss performs as a rod. The roof provides protection for
the young plants while allowing sunlight, and the truss web supports the topographical and topological
surface upon which events play out.
Co-adaptation 10
Distribution
A commercial distribution center serves as the counter point to the cultural center. Since it is too dangerous, potentially requiring more on-ramp than is possible in the site constraints, trucks access the site from local streets rather than highway. This has the added benefi t of serving as the entry from the local neighbourhood, which nullifi es the separation between distributor and consumer. The system of the tree farm is organized radially around the distribution point to optimize transfer of material over area. The trucks align on an over large cul-de-sac, that staple of residential planning, to facilitate ease of access.
Co-Adaptation 09
Retail
Not unlike the Italian ‘Autogrill’ the center, situated along the highway like a rest stop, provides an unexpected point of entry. Comprised of the research laboratories, a cafe, retail and education displays and a product collection point, the center serves as the public face of the site. It is here, along the highway, that people engage in social public space. One can park, tour the laboratories, pick up a young tree, sip some fair trade coffee, or venture further down the site to investigate the growing trays and a fi rst hand experience of the process. Juxtaposed with eighteen wheelers rumbling by at 65 mph makes the center’s civic and cultural role more pertinent and poignant. It allows one to access, inhabit and escape from a ‘concrete island.’ An urban space that is most typically invisible.
Co-Adaptation 08
Housing
Prefabrication is not a new model, but its opportunities and limitations have yet to be fully explored as either single or multi family housing in the American market. The benefi ts of pre-fab are that as it is assembled in a controlled environment it can be constructed in a quicker, more accurate process, ultimately yielding a higher quality product for less investment. Detractors often cite it as a totalizing, one-size-fi ts-all construct, allowing for limited options and permutations. However, thought of as a range or class of designs, a typology, pre-fab can create different organizations for specific conditions.
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