Yi Sheng Peng - ERODED MASSES

[ Collective Assemblies / Post Familial Domesticities ]

Our project pays homage to the crack condition in the natural world, the interstitial space that occurs from the erosion and fracture of masses. Much of our natural landscape is created through the process of glaciers carving their ways through sediment. The glaciers are in danger due to anthropogenic climate change, and they are rapidly melting rising sea levels around the world. Our site uses the example of the glacier as our key generative driver. Our site orients around a central programmatic zone (the glacier) which flows into a continuous ramp condition (acting as the runoff of the glacier) that cracks the site and carves the shapes of the unit masses out (the canyons). These ramps contract and expand, separating the masses based on programmatic spaces, and diverge/fracture allow in a similar way to the natural counterpart in order for light to seep down to the ground, feeding our bioswales. We are talking a stance on the state of the urban context and of climate change as one of constant change, dissolution, erosion especially going into a new unforeseen age. Our cities are changing and our site aims to represent and manifest that shift over time. We have elevated the site in order to accommodate the estimated 9’ of sea levels rise, along with adding in copious amounts of bioswales and greenery to anticipate and mitigate that shift. Our programmatic spaces additionally are made of Hempcrete, allowing these masses to absorb up to 13 times their weight in water. In addition, the material that we have chosen to use, rammed earth is one will erode and fracture, very much like a glacier, to take on a new form. We have added an additional 4 inches of thickness to the exterior walls to anticipate this shift. The result is that over time, the building will take on new forms guided by the process of climate change and changing weather patterns, cracking and disintegrating in parts, creating a more natural and expressive exterior quality that constantly presents new experiential moments to be activated by the user.