Entropic Capacities: Networked “Systributions” (System + Distribution)

“Entropic Capacities” focuses in the analysis of the site not as an isolated entity, but as the result of the interaction of multiple networks at multiple scales. The project develops an adaptive network of self-sufficient architectural and infrastructural interventions, which result from a system analysis of the multiple elements that constitute the urban condition. A series of spaces with a high degree of intensity and disorder are determined by mapping the intersection of a series of highly entropic urban conditions and overlapping them with their specific urban and environmental problems. The interventions developed in each space respond to the local set of conditions and relationships. The interventions mediate urban aspects like transportation, energy, public space and ecology, improving the site and the city as a whole. Ultimately, these interventions create a new, multi-layered urban and architectural networked infrastructure.

The project seeks to create a new set of interactions across scales in Salt Lake City, developing a new autonomous site that will coalesce into a highly disperse urban area. Existing at the intersection of cultural, economical, and historical nodes, the site aims to develop a new set of relationships from the existing conditions, augmenting their individual potential. “Entropic Capacities” will augment social interactions across time, transforming and revitalizing urban life in Downtown Salt Lake City.

With the proximity and potential analysis of several programmatic layers, nodes are selected to create new multilayered programmatic interventions. Initiating from these nodes, new social potentials will grow and develop across time. The interventions consist of a new systematic distribution (“systribution”) of the social, ecological and physical conditions of the site and create new program and ecological conditions based on the local obstacles and opportunities.  The interventions include transportation infrastructure, leisure spaces, commercial establishments, food production, artist spaces and more.

A new set of relationships is created between the proposed interventions and the existing buildings. Residential pods for artists attach to the alley buildings, creating a creative colony that contributes to the public space. The increase in social interaction and use of the space across time thus reinvents the sites’ spatial dynamics. Other interventions improve the street and alley accessibility and spatial conditions reconfiguring the relationships within adjacent sites. Targeted interventions promote ecological growth and remediation, providing an ever-changing productive landscape.  “Entropic Capacities” tests a time-based design process emerging from collective interaction, and explores the spatial generation from social and dynamic ecological conditions rather than from fixed physical constraints. By embedding temporal conditions into the design process, the work explores different growth and decay cycles of the architectural system, the creation of new networks of in-between spaces, and their potential spatial transformation across time.


The proposal seeks to create a multi-purpose area in downtown Salt Lake City, differentiating its population, uses, connections, and production.