“Dystopian Species” Xlab WS SCI-Arc 2010

Hernan Diaz Alonso / Studio
Benjamin Bratton / Seminar
Nick Kenney  / Teaching Assistant
SCI_Arc, Fall 2010

The official future is dystopian: a world of emergencies layered one on top of another
(ecological, geopolitical, biopolitical, theo-political). Architecture offers multiple projective
responses with unclear allegiances. One response is a renewed interest in the conceptual
megastructure as a medium for investing urban and regional scale sites with a comprehensively
architectural form and argument. These may seen as an overdue disciplinary re-calibration
of scale.

 

The envestigation of the degeneration of a city.
The overtaking of an existing society, the dread of its species , using it as a source of its
existence.
Facing a dense urban condition as preferred residence, it seeks for the nearness of the
inhabitants. It penetrates structures, reconstructs inner organization in various scales
(living space to city traffic to resident’s mind).
The program grows systematically, passing the stages from primary structural framework
to folded enclosures.
The system releases the dystopian city-scheme that was presumed to be an utopian one.

The system itself preformes as cultural filter. in year 2110 Los Angeles downtown has rapidly increased its verticality and grown into Buisness-district. The cultural institutions were pushed to outskirts of the city. The only way back is to take over the inbetween –  leftover spaces. By creating diagonal connection possibiliteis between highrises in times when groundfloor and streets have lost their  capabilities as a linking platform. It creates  “eruptions” in rigid highrise floorplan. The structure seeks for light  in the upper part  and preserves and transfers it in to the lower parts (strating 200m and downwards) to make it inhabitable and avoid vertical layering.

@Southern California Institute of Architecture