CONVOlution
This project served as an introduction to architecture’s relationship to the city. Its aim was to establish the city as a primary area of interest central to the architectural discourse and design both now and throughout its history. By working at various scales and on various urban issues, it makes the claim that the urban issues in architecture are fundamentally not about the size of its forms or the programmatic specifics. It is through a careful study of connectivity and its relationship to infrastructures that we will begin to understand how architecture engages problems of the city.
City as Line/ City as Volume
Lines exist in nearly every form in the city. From linear entanglements of the freeway systems, to the flows of infrastructure between sites, to the structural systems of individual buildings, there is an inescapable linearity to the urban environment. At the same time, much of our programmatic needs result the seemingly contradictory form of volumes. The duality recognizes the virtues of both and seeks to find a dialogue between the line and the volume. This project is interested in the intersection of the two and aimed to promote the design of the systems and volumetric enclosures that have a similar set of ambiguity.
The manipulations to the volume by the line and the relationship they later formed was used to design the American Apparel Warehouse. The warehouse was located amongst the sixth street bridge, where downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights connect. The sixth street bridge was also meant to be redesigned. This project tries to show how the lines of the bridge and the structure can intersect with the volume of the bridge.
The arches where turned into a more delicate shape. Not purely aesthetic the arches held the bridge and intersected through the warehouse allowing it to play as structure for the bridge as well as the warehouse . The arches were no longer arches they lopped in and around the volume of the warehouse. There were multiple intersection with the volume and the structure of the bridge as well. The structure forced pressure on the skin of the building. Where the loops went around the exterior surface, the volume formed a tension with the structure and the skin, it formed indentations in the surface.
The sixth street bridge passed through the volume of the American Apparel warehouse. It was a way to connect the site to the new design. The site is a dead zone. When the bridge intersected through the volume it formed a new type of connection. It allowed for more foot traffic in an area that was not only for the warehouse. The bridge allowed for certain areas of the warehouse to be occupied. It also allowed for loading zones that were directly connected to the bridge and multiple access points to the warehouse from the upper levels.
The program made need for a simple spaces. There is main open warehouse space on the lower levels. On the upper levels there are showroom, a retail, and offices. These spaces were not separated by the normative wall. It instead being an open concept was separated by the directionality of the structure of the bridge, the loops. The warehouse itself followed the direction of the bridge. It acted as a tube that surrounded and enclosed part of the ridge. The structure of the bridge was in an opposing direction and allowed for the interior spaces to be separated in a conceptual way.