Offener Wettbewerb (auch für Studenten) | 11/2003
e_competition: POSSIBLE FUTURES Bienal Miami + Beach 2003
Lobende Erwähnung
Erläuterungstext
Highway…ing
Elastic Infrastructural Stranding
Incompatibility vs. Integration.
The development of mobility, the increase of sub-urbanization and the extension of the infrastructural network are issues that have accelerated each other’s expansion for decades. However, infrastructural engineering and suburban living are often based on a reduced scope of parameters and encapsulated in tight regulations, segregating the requirement of efficiency in infrastructure from the wider and more complex architectural fields with which they interact: the program of sub-urban housing and environment. In architecture, traditionally the trend has been to reinforce the “purely” disciplinary status of architectural expertise, emptying its techniques from material, tectonic and performative constraints. Systemic stiffness and organizational poverty are the result of this tendency. Conflicts like noise pollution that are emerging from the logical proximity of high-speed roads and remote housing areas are thus often answered by introducing a third element. Also, the assumed incompatibility of speeds in pedestrian and car movements has lead to disintegrated traffic solutions. Highway…ing approaches such tendencies of segregation with a strategy of embracement, of widening constraints and softening margins. By taking the road infrastructure beyond the efficiency of purely car-related engineering, Highway…ing is aiming at the invention of a new typology integrating road and living infrastructure, being capable of taking broader advantage of the potentials emergent from systemic integration.
Research into elasticity.
As a research project, Highway…ing explores a sequence of car-related movements as a base for an integral environmental design. It utilizes the capacities to work with dependencies and motion within computer-aided delineation. Highway…ing introduces elastic design practices into a profession related to static form and geometry. While conceptualizing processes and orders of events rather than objects, matter becomes moldable. This allows for the negotiation of supposedly irreconcilable demands: The given oppositions of different speeds, diameters and scales of driving versus pedestrian measurements are intertwined achieving a greater programmatic and sensual density. An animation identifies the high-speed road as an elastic, changeable strand of potential activities: a sequence of driving, exiting, decelerating, stopping, entering home and going outside into the open landscape is recorded, and its tracings transform the road and become the core of a settlement that combines the advantages of smooth vehicular accessibility with the protective folds of living shielding off the impact of the traffic flow.
Location.
Highway…ing is located in the surroundings of Stuttgart. Due to the topographical setting, the conurbation of Stuttgart is highly fragmented. A dense web of well-equipped road infrastructure is connecting a widely dispersed multitude of villages with each other. The land in-between serves leisure activities: the landscape has become a function of the urban. Due to the way in which Stuttgart’s city fragments, infrastructure, and leisure areas are intertwined, the agglomeration is nicknamed the ‘German Los Angeles’. Highway…ing intervenes along the high-speed road L1180 that separates Castle Solitude, a cultural heritage site and destination of many day-trippers, from its former hunting grounds that have become the ‘outdoor fitness center’ for the bikers, walkers, and joggers of Stuttgart.
Program.
Highway…ing reprograms the road with sports facilities, parking, housing, and pedestrian bridges.
Sports.
Highway…ing allows the leisure-seeking automobilist to exit directly into the forest. The space necessary for the exiting and turning radii creates the opportunity to locate indoor sports facilities right at the ‘way out’. Parking is located on top, and bridges provide access from the locker rooms to the woods.
Dwelling.
Highway…ing features a living in-between coming home and going outdoors. The dwelling becomes a crossroads - a switch of speeds. Each individual house is smoothly accessed from the highway. The private parking is integrated within the typology of a row house. A closed facade to the roadside is shielding off the impact of traffic. An individual pathway connects each house with the surrounding forest.
Park.
The fine grain of structure introduced along with housing and sport becomes the bridgehead for the walkers crossing the highway: a bifurcating bridge gives access to the sport facilities from in-between the split roads and connects the castle with its former hunting grounds. Finally highway…ing develops Solitude’s baroque involvement with the environment further into a contemporary infrastructural landscape event.
http://www.smaq.net/highwaying.html
Elastic Infrastructural Stranding
Incompatibility vs. Integration.
The development of mobility, the increase of sub-urbanization and the extension of the infrastructural network are issues that have accelerated each other’s expansion for decades. However, infrastructural engineering and suburban living are often based on a reduced scope of parameters and encapsulated in tight regulations, segregating the requirement of efficiency in infrastructure from the wider and more complex architectural fields with which they interact: the program of sub-urban housing and environment. In architecture, traditionally the trend has been to reinforce the “purely” disciplinary status of architectural expertise, emptying its techniques from material, tectonic and performative constraints. Systemic stiffness and organizational poverty are the result of this tendency. Conflicts like noise pollution that are emerging from the logical proximity of high-speed roads and remote housing areas are thus often answered by introducing a third element. Also, the assumed incompatibility of speeds in pedestrian and car movements has lead to disintegrated traffic solutions. Highway…ing approaches such tendencies of segregation with a strategy of embracement, of widening constraints and softening margins. By taking the road infrastructure beyond the efficiency of purely car-related engineering, Highway…ing is aiming at the invention of a new typology integrating road and living infrastructure, being capable of taking broader advantage of the potentials emergent from systemic integration.
Research into elasticity.
As a research project, Highway…ing explores a sequence of car-related movements as a base for an integral environmental design. It utilizes the capacities to work with dependencies and motion within computer-aided delineation. Highway…ing introduces elastic design practices into a profession related to static form and geometry. While conceptualizing processes and orders of events rather than objects, matter becomes moldable. This allows for the negotiation of supposedly irreconcilable demands: The given oppositions of different speeds, diameters and scales of driving versus pedestrian measurements are intertwined achieving a greater programmatic and sensual density. An animation identifies the high-speed road as an elastic, changeable strand of potential activities: a sequence of driving, exiting, decelerating, stopping, entering home and going outside into the open landscape is recorded, and its tracings transform the road and become the core of a settlement that combines the advantages of smooth vehicular accessibility with the protective folds of living shielding off the impact of the traffic flow.
Location.
Highway…ing is located in the surroundings of Stuttgart. Due to the topographical setting, the conurbation of Stuttgart is highly fragmented. A dense web of well-equipped road infrastructure is connecting a widely dispersed multitude of villages with each other. The land in-between serves leisure activities: the landscape has become a function of the urban. Due to the way in which Stuttgart’s city fragments, infrastructure, and leisure areas are intertwined, the agglomeration is nicknamed the ‘German Los Angeles’. Highway…ing intervenes along the high-speed road L1180 that separates Castle Solitude, a cultural heritage site and destination of many day-trippers, from its former hunting grounds that have become the ‘outdoor fitness center’ for the bikers, walkers, and joggers of Stuttgart.
Program.
Highway…ing reprograms the road with sports facilities, parking, housing, and pedestrian bridges.
Sports.
Highway…ing allows the leisure-seeking automobilist to exit directly into the forest. The space necessary for the exiting and turning radii creates the opportunity to locate indoor sports facilities right at the ‘way out’. Parking is located on top, and bridges provide access from the locker rooms to the woods.
Dwelling.
Highway…ing features a living in-between coming home and going outdoors. The dwelling becomes a crossroads - a switch of speeds. Each individual house is smoothly accessed from the highway. The private parking is integrated within the typology of a row house. A closed facade to the roadside is shielding off the impact of traffic. An individual pathway connects each house with the surrounding forest.
Park.
The fine grain of structure introduced along with housing and sport becomes the bridgehead for the walkers crossing the highway: a bifurcating bridge gives access to the sport facilities from in-between the split roads and connects the castle with its former hunting grounds. Finally highway…ing develops Solitude’s baroque involvement with the environment further into a contemporary infrastructural landscape event.
http://www.smaq.net/highwaying.html