Areas
PennDesign, 2016
701 Design Studio
Critic: Ferda Kolatan
Assistant: Michael Zimmerman
Student Team: Miguel Abaunza, Mark Chalhoub, Ryan Hao, Angela Huang, Insung Hwang, Emilija Landsbergis, Wanjung Lee, Phoebe Leung, Andrew Singer, Lara Steiner, Gesu Almonte Valentin, Zheng Zheng
"Respiratory Object" is the design of a new entrance area into the Battery Tunnel on the Manhattan side of New York City. The project is comprised of a ventilation tower, an office building, a recreational space, and the tunnel entrance itself. In accordance with the conceptual framework, these elements are not viewed within subservient categories but rather as autonomous objects within a larger hybrid. Infrastructure, landscape, and architecture echo the modernist categories of technology, nature, culture, and are reformulated into novel configurations outside of their known hierarchies. The studio is primarily interested in material and formal expression that "disclose" and utilize ordinary objects into extraordinary ones through acts of design.