PERFORMANCE TOWER
(RESIDENTIAL DESIGN)
RISD Design Principle
Professor: Hansy Better Barraza
Time: 2015 09-12
A special tower designed for shuttle maker
to live, work and exhibit her works.
In a narrow and windy site, an elegant tower stands in the wind and perform the shuttle falling silently.
Inside the tower, there are various rooms. Each of them has different floor heights. A spiral staircase connects all of them
together.
In such a special tower, a shuttle maker lives there for
experiencing her shuttle movement. When she walks into
the tower along the spiral staircase, she becomes a "live"
shuttle herself. As she moving from one room to another, she
is mimicking the falling track of the shuttle she made. As she staying in the room, which indicates the moment of the direction change of the shuttle falling. She can experiences how the shuttle swings and spins when it falls off as she move inside of the tower. She also knows how the shuttle shape is affected by air friction when she stays in different spaces with different heights. In this unique tower, she has everything she needs such as studio, exhibition place, living room, kitchen, bedroom, restroom. She can test shuttle she made by dropping it from the top floor, and people who walk inside of the spiral staircase could observe the shuttle falling everywhere.
Only in this unique tower, every character of the falling shuttle transferred as architecture language. The shuttle maker could enjoy the invisible but various spaces inside of the "shuttle".
She is performing the shuttle falling while she lives there.
300 lines video
This is a narrow site located in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
It is close to the riverside and connects to the two main roads.
There are three adjacent buildings. The tallest building is 90' high while the other two lower buildings are about 32' and 37'. There is a notable geographic difference from the main road to the riverside. Thus people standing in the side which close to the mainroad could directly see the riverside.
