Embedded Architecture

The intention of this project is to generate an operational landscape of site stabilization, where architecture is embedded in a thick system of walls for both hillside retention and stormwater management.  The goal is then to produce a continuous edge condition where circulation and occupation coexist, beginning at the existing roads that surround the area and criss-crossing the site–dotted continuously with points of entry and exit.  After looking at a series of erosion control systems, the hope is to develop a new modular unit that acheives this, one that hybridizes the unique strengths that my partner and I found in some of those systems.

The idea is to build out the site using a large amount of existing material, to apply a cut-and-fill strategy both to the soil and to the remaining materials on site (previous foundations, roof metal, etc) to minimize the difficulties of bringing new material into the area.  Since the site is dominantly clay, it could be a productive landscape of brick or tile production, where perhaps the construction of the cut-and-fill landscape, the modules that comprise it, and the subsequent Community Building, are dominantly the products of a new local economy.  Under such a scenario, perhaps the facilities that are used for such a production are built first, and at the end of the cycle transition their purposes to day-to-day life in the community, where drying and storage areas become open public plazas, bathrooms either harvest the stormwater or dry-compost for landscape, and kilns are cleaned and repurposed to ovens in a community kitchen.