Structural investigations

Triangulated framing plan and cloud shell

Section showing differential girder depths and cloud supports

Scripting Regenerative Terrains

view across remediation terrain

terrain plan

systematic process diagram

The landscape of the Crane Cove site is a layered set of constructions and disturbances lead by a marine industrial logic.  Requiring extensive remediation the site requires the treatment of a constructed terrain that frames and allows for the understanding of the natural and cultural process at play on the site.  A parametric system is used to generate a functional landscape plan that responds to densities of habitation and voids of contamination.  An intermediate landscape between path and void forms interstitial sites of engagement with the ground beneath.

Interwoven Elements

Development of the programming and activation of the ground plane and land/water interface has been prioritized through sectional exploration and concept rendering.

The program has been broken down into three areas.
Public Exhibition: aquaria and educational interface
Internal Investigation: computational and dry laboratories
External Exploration: remote sensing array, submersibles lab and boat launch

These areas are deployed in each of the three historic slips which define the site. Three sections have been developed for each program area that satisfies programmatic and environmental requirements. The ground treatment within each slip is differentiated for these uses. The first (public) is largely park-like with open circulation paths leading to waterfront views. Second is a constructed ground of rehabilitation and study pools for marine specimens with public viewing platforms. Third is a landscape over structure with the submersibles lab housed beneath it and connects by below grade corridors to the service blocks of the laboratories to the south.

To avoid the separation of each program slip into differential forms and divided spaces, a transverse study of a sequence of sections develops strategies for connecting across the slip walls and joining into the vertical building masses.

Program + Building Form

concept process series

This initial concept development strategy explored and expanded upon a notion of gradient space and the  semiotic relationship between space and geometry.  

Umwelt: Architecture, Habitat, and Environment

The capability for modeling and understanding our environment through technological means has reached an apex such that it is now possible for humans to have an instrumental understanding of the feedback effects that their means and methods of habitation have on ecosystems and other organisms.  This is evident in current debates around climate modeling and the political, economic, and cultural responses it elicits.  Architecturally, the implications of this technological capability lies in the formation of buildings that respond to varied and localized conditions at a range of scales and are able to respond to the needs of other organisms which share our habitable territory.

This project will be explored through the design of a NOAA Marine Environment Institute at the Pier 70 Redevelopment in San Francisco.  This facility is an environmental biology research laboratory devoted to the study of marine life in it’s interactions with the human environment.  To satisfy the importance of the technological intention as it pertains to the Institute’s mission the building itself will be a test bed for the kind of built environment that results from deploying technology as a component of nature.  Sited on a heavily constructed site that consists of fill and infrastructures for ship building over the last century, the facility must utilize its own building as an extensive measure of control and repair on the site.  The constructedness of the site will also be used to create habitat areas for native marine life as well as containing pools for marine animal rescue and research undertaken by the institute.

Thesis Abstract PDF here