During the trio to New York, I made an observation during one of several site visits, and found an image of our site at the turn of the previous century. it showed the endless rows of the Chelsea piers, which crossed by our site (Hudson yards) at one point. These piers created a life of their own, by creating a transitioning path between the Hudson river and Waterfront, crossing over 12th Avenue and entering the city. Be it goods or individuals their was more presence of happening on the edge of the city. Sadly over time this has all but disappeared, with heart of the city focus on its centre, the waterfront becomes a more abandoned in its use. My project for my fourth year was driven to regenerate this transition, by introducing an appropriate system that would allow me to recreate that movement of people within the Manhattan context of 2014.
Starting of my research, I began looking at the logic of stacking, being able to take a single unit of block or component to stack in a variety of ways. Though I could manipulate the geometry of these units, it did not allow me express a variety of possibilities in terms of spreading in more than one dimension. I therefore looked at Archimedean solids, and the use of their faceted geometry to stack with more possibilities. The reach proved positive, but solid forms lacked depth in terms of their potential as an architectural proposal. I thus merged to use one of the reciprocal stacked structures from my previous exercise, and play with the notion of inserting such a system within an archimedean solid. Thus the reciprocal stacked structure would give more of curious/attractive quality to a potential architectural proposal, whilst the solids would provide the mapping system to drive the reciprocal structure on site accordingly. To give the stacking reciprocal structure more structural integrity and provide the possibility to be hold its position within these invisible solids, they were turned into a tensegrity structure. Strong and simple in their design, they would provide the basis for a system that would allow me to create that transition from city to water and vice versa.
The final product turns into the "The Hudson Urban Pier" A pier that allows residents and tourist to move from city over 12th avenue uninterrupted by traffic and land on the water portion of the poet to enjoy a variety of programs.
Archimedean Solid Stacking
Experimental Tensegrites: Inscribed within Archimedean Solids
Truncated Tetrahedron Tensegrity System (2x Modules to 10x Modules)
Alternating the Geometry of the Compression Struts
Process of Construction: 1:1 Prototype of Single Module (Part I)
Process of Construction: 1:1 Prototype of Single Module (Part II)
Connecting Modules: Joining identical Modules & connecting alternating scaled modules
Hudson Urban Pier: Program Layout
Hudson Urban Pier: Proposal on Site
Experiments into Constructing Tensegrites
A collection of videos that document experiments made in the first term to determine how best to construct a single tensegrity unit more efficiently.