SHATTERED

Project Credits: Alberto Alfonso, Juan Gabriel Benavides
Advisor: Marcelo Spina, Andrew Atwood
Institution: ESTm, The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles

//  While taking on the combination of the seemingly disparate notions of MONOLITHICITY and MOTION, the project purposefully creates (mis)perceptions and (mis)representations of solidity, joinery, texture and building typology. Through the means of a series of operations at multiple levels, this project investigates the mystification of the dualistic correlation between inside and outside, addresses the issue of part to whole relationships and probes the tenet of stability in architecture.

The integrity of a boulder-like mass is violated by shattering this piece and allowing for the resulting “solid” components to move and allowing for manifold configurations.  The shattering playfully applies a fictional materiality to the overall form and how it is put together, choosing to break the “boulder” along fault lines that allude to stone material behavior.  Interiority, function, morphology and type are dynamic allowing many possible configurations.

The limits between interiority and exteriority are decimated once the integrity of the boulder is destroyed by the act of shattering.  The perception of these limits is misled by combining relief treatments on the surfaces of the shards that come into contact with gradient application of color across each shard. On closer inspection texture and color are perceived as part of a continuum in which the typical readings of part to whole are confused, not being quite a field condition nor clearly tectonic.

The different placement configurations of the moving parts create multiple instances of permeability, promenade and porosity.  Likewise, Interiority is affected by the different placement at any given point of the separate pieces of the composition.  Spaces can expand and contract, suggesting different configurations of the sequencing and programming of activities inside and out of the project.  //