PURE FORM STUDIO BRIEF CORNELL AAP NYC FALL 2016

“I am fascinated by a society that is able to construct an artifact which is not an abstraction…I consider the non-referential to be of the highest value…” On the Non-Referential, Valerio Olgiati

In practice and the academy, there is a constant swing between an over-rationalized (didactic) architecture and completely unjustified formal expression. In this studio we will aim for PURE FORM, moving past narrative, past image and past abstraction to experience. We accept the uncomfortable and unresolvable realities of design as we grapple with several key questions: Is it possible to create architecture which is not an abstraction? Is an unselfconscious form possible? Is it possible to make non-contextual architecture?  Can Architecture anticipate a different future use?

PURE FORM - The challenge is to blend ‘poche’ (closed form) uninhabited architecture with a ‘free plan’ (open form) occupied space, focusing the work on the production of architectural form and experience. To that end, we have chosen simple and opposing programs of the ventilation tower and the contemporary library reading room.

CLOSED FORM – The architecture of New York City is dominated by iconic architecture while infrastructure such as data centers, ventilation towers or power plants is largely ignored or made invisible, yet these large autonomous closed forms dominate their immediate context. Structures like this are everywhere in the city, on waterways in parks, some rising as high as the towers around them, marking serpentine tunnels below.

“Libraries have assumed a host of ever-changing social and symbolic functions…The ancient Library of Alexandria was a prototypical think tank, and the early Carnegie buildings of the 1880s were community centers with swimming pools and public baths…In short, the library has always been a place where informational and social infrastructures intersect within a physical infrastructure…”  Library as Infrastructure, Shannon Mattern

OPEN FORM - Libraries have evolved to serve as multipurpose gathering spaces for a myriad of functions. Historically, the library was much like todays data center, a vast storage facility. Today libraries serve as flexible community spaces, the new library represents democratic space (an open form). They are also some of the last free public buildings left in our cities. Examples include the Seattle Public Library and Spijkenisse (“Book Mountain”) The Netherlands.

PURE FORM AT THE EDGE - As in so many other cities, New York’s waterfront, has been partly won over for public parks, bike paths and recreational piers, yet vast areas remain closed to public access, devoted to infrastructure and private uses and its closed forms. The project proposes making public and accessible otherwise ‘off limits’ buildings (think High Line) and is located on the waterfront in New York City.