Speculative Architecture

Proposal for a mixed-income low-rise housing development on an old Chicago Public Housing site on the Near West Side. Plan features 226 units, each with private terraced outdoor space and access to common ground-level green space.     

Floor plan detail, one and two bedroom units.

Parkland redevelopment plan for ex-industrial site in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This parcel is one of about a dozen that were partitioned out of a much larger site (represented above in the street grid and built structure map overlaid with gradients of intended redevelopment activity intensity) for the sake of dividing the workload. The proposal envisions this linear, irregularly shaped area (hard line drawing below) s public space that's conceptually arranged much like a house, with adjoining areas progressing from most public to most private, giving visitors the option of participating in popular civic activities, or finding respite from hectic urban life in more secluded corners of the park. The surface planning suggests elements that encourage flow from one area to another, and ones that are intended to act as loci of cultural or pragmatic activity. The chart and images below detail the long-term ideals of the proposal.

Using atmospheric visualizations and charts to map the proposed development, the designers focused more on encouraging the intended range of moods to be elicited as one progressed through the parkland than on determing every detail of the built environment. Providing visitors and nearby residents only with the means to establish an organic identity to the site, we created a design more of intent than of specificity.

The "Fixed and Fluid" icon proposes an ecological growth model for the site, suggesting a redistribution of biological, environmental, and cultural resources, dispersed in an organic method intended to allow a "natural" progression of development over time. The intent was to discourage the highly determined specificity many design projects produce, and focus the preponderance of specificity on the design attitude, and on research of solutions appropriate and specific to the idiosyncracies of the locale.