DESA1002 'Nine Quarter City' - <Victor Au>

Abstract

This semester, my group was allocated the city of New York. A scenery filled with skyscrapers and high rise buildings. The streets are lined with typical skyrises, in uniform shapes upon a grid format, a clustered yet organized context. For my particular design I wanted to develop a building that would house the art world, and thus I came to the conclusion to design a multi-functional building that consists of three main purposes/structures: art gallery/museum, art studios as well as accommodation for the artists. The name derives itself from an inverse of structural order in which my project first began, and the three functions I included. I wanted my building to emphasize the gallery and how people would interact with it if they were walking down the street. This gives birth to the concept that the gallery should overhang the street with the long elevator shaft descending straight down to the ground. The piece comprises mainly of a dark-pigmented concrete & glass and metallic steel structure similar to that already in existence in New York. With the gallery and elevator shaft clad in raw exposed metal to introduce an industrial style and unique appearance. The two main highlights in structural beauty would be the skywalk feature on the gallery levels, made purely of sturdy glass, people can venture forth hovering above the streets, the other would be the glass rampway between floors of the studio. This allows not only for light to shine through to the studio, but for the artists to communicate with one another, experience and learn from one another, as well as exposing some of an artists job to onlookers. My building shows how artists correlate with their artworks and furthermore with the community, it is all one continuous interplay between artmaking, lifestyle and the society. Triverse basically defines an artists world through the experience of a building.