Brooklyn, NY
We have become obsessed with two things:
- Digestion Procedures &
- Anthony Perkins
We also want to rethink the notion of lifespan in architecture. An apartment building made 50 years ago has not followed the rhythm of society. The prototypes of the 60’s, original from long past Fordism to Modern Style architecture generated standard dwelling units that could be homogenously copy along horizontal slabs. While we enter in a Network Culture, architecture expresses a need to develop new living organization systems with care on uniqueness, individuality and peculiarity. We have designed a machine that eats these existing reinforced concrete building braking the rules of an orthogonal organization and demanding a spatial change as Anthony Perkins exemplifies in this scene of The trial by Orson Well. The machine treats the substances existing in a building made in reinforced concrete generating an active process of elimination and creation simultaneously. The evolution in the project changes the configuration of the perpendicular ordinary structure introducing voids, surfaces, connectors, elimination of corners, etc. The machine places itself in different areas of the building. Grid A (feeders) of the machine points process the existing parts of the building. Grid B are points involved on the creation mechanism. Both grids are connected with pipes that are interchanging information and fluids. The machine makes powder out of the concrete, generates mortar from it and projects it against a newly configured (by the machine) reinforced grid. The machine deals with the structural symbiosis between the old and the new. The former program is invaded by the introduction of a new morphology producing a new program. The machine does not stop after the original program disappears; on the contrary, the machine develops another program starting a new metamorphosis process. And not even close to ending its capacity to develop itself; the machine connects different grids in the city expanding the transformation endlessly.
Status: Unbuilt
Location: no specific location
Firm Role: Architect
Additional Credits: Xiang Li