Bubble-Cut

CORE I—HARVARD GSD
​FALL 2019
INSTRUCTOR: SEAN CANTY

This project calls for the interpretation and reinvention of a building from two seemingly incompatible section drawings, which were given in the brief. In this scheme, it is imagined that Section A and Section B existed first as separate buildings with opposing formal agendas that are compromised by their union. One formal agenda was that of the continuous, both in facade treatment and circulation strategies. The other formal agenda was that of the discrete, both in facade articulation and spatial division. Upon collision, the meeting of tangents allowed for the generation of bubbles which infest the project to produce a new formal logic that helps to morph the two entities into one unified whole. These bubbles act as agents for an exchange of qualities between the discrete and the continuous. Some bubbles help to generate circulation of vertical continuity through the introduction of a spiral staircase while others activate the delamination of floorplates into one continuous and connective circulation strategy—the ramp.

The exchange of qualities between the “continuous” and the “discrete” manifest at different scales throughout the project as they respond to the section requirements in the prompt. For example, the vertical compounding of space for continuous open to below moments, the tangents spinning off of the core to produce continuity through soffits, the discretization of space along tangencies in room divisions, and discrete facade paneling that produce continuity through a rhythm of apertures.
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