Cube Museum I – Museo Cubo I

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This exercise focuses on transformation and how a cube grid can house a transformative system. The Cube is present with a 3d grid and a series of “bars” composed of 3 cubes 80cms in height. This bars slide and become stairs, benches, exhibition surfaces etc. this bars can slide form 3 sides of the cube to change the space inside.

To test this three-dimensional gizmo, it needs to be inserted and proven with an open and free flowing functional program.  

Thus a museum was chosen to use the gizmo. Several cubic gizmos where arranged in a linear fashion to create a linear path to exhibit the works. The gizmo can be changed so the exhibition space can change depending on which type of exhibition is chosen. The gizmo is open so an enclosure needed to be designed in order to make a semi-dry space.

The resulting design is a museum open space that can change depending on the exhibit. It is a free-flow transformative form and space.

IL Narrow Building - Edificio Angosto IL

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Can one design a housing building in a lot barely 7.5m wide? Can it be done?. This was the challenge for this commission.

The father had a lot with an incredible panoramic view towards the sea in the Miraflores District in Lima, Peru, and he wanted to design a building for him and his 03 kids (04 apartments).

The challenge started by trying to make a livable apartment unit within that extremely narrow space. In order to make it, the units had to become duplexes since part of the idea was for the apartments to have 03 bedrooms each.

The massing and form for this design started form a grid that followed the functionality of the apartments to make way for a very dynamic façade. The massing was enhanced by the linearity of 03 structural walls that became the datum for the project.

Sadly the owner finally sold the lot and this design never became built.

Design Strategies (Time based strategies and flexible organizations), by Diego del Castillo

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Image from Infosthetics

Image from Infosthetics

Until modernism, time and space were conceived as static, linear, but nowadays, time and space are differentiated, subjected to interpretation and continuous revision by the user. Organizational forces act as a force field that models the space “containing” it. Thus new forms of organization that relate to our contemporary condition have to be researched.

Architects find relevance in organizational structures such as the school of fish or the swarm or the flock, which are specific forms of order but allow flexibility; this allows fast transformations within a explicit array. These different ordering systems relate to how rapid changes occur in our society, but why society has to be referred? why not use it as an organizational feature? One can surely talk about a swarm of human beings (ever been to a rock concert?). So one must question this decision to choose a system that represents our sociological condition while our society is full with examples of new forms of time based organizations. Not only society itself is interestingly enough but also the different forces that shape it are filled with interesting relations. By making a diagram of an economic analysis or a sociological one, one will undoubtedly find new and hybrid relations. Our society does not need external referentials to be analyzed. In a way this is what Jon Jerdi does, he analyses human and urban relations.

According to UN Studio, the new contemporary method of organization consists of a “seamless organization of disconnected parts”. He relies on computer methods, specially the morphing technique to produce hybrid forms that generate from diagrammatic analysis of programmatic relations. The diagram has replaced the plan as a condition that generates architecture.

“The diagram becomes the architecture. ”

The object is not relevant in itself, it has to carry in itself this analytical data. In fact one of the programs is used to generate forms according to a certain data input (literally).

The architect in this case is the researcher that recollects the data and decides which data to input. The architects (according to this philosophy) have to disengage themselves from any iconographic or subjective ideal. But then, what are the design decisions one is allowed to take, without undermining this experimental data input approach? Then with this tendency, the role of the architect is redefined, transforming us in mere investigators or data collectors. Architecture in the end is about materiality, the way it is conceived is irrelevant as the final product, that is why one must balance a subjective approach (aesthetic) with a scientific approach.

Architecture weather we like it or not is aesthetic.  As designers we have to take some control over aesthetics, it is unavoidable.