cultural concentrator . teaser

Once I manage to get this project fully incorporated into the "work" section of the site there will be a more thorough post, but I wanted to get something up as quickly as possible.

Here is an animation from our final presentaion for the London Urbanism studio.  You can also find a project description below. There is another animation of the effect of the dynamic canopies on the "video" seciton of the website. I need to of course thank my partner Amanda Morgan for everything, this project would not have turned out as well as it did without her. And as always, comments please!

Cultural Concentrator - Overal Site Organization from Mark Nicol on Vimeo.

Project Description

As currently envisioned, the cultural olympiad exists as a series of disparate events spread around London in time and space.  Our response functions as a system for deployment and concentration of these events.  

By designing in a capacity for dynamism we were able to create an adaptive system that can respond to a variety of influences.  In addition to the ability for individual boats to migrate around the city to support various events and concentrate in different densities and configurations on the main site, each boat is equipped with a dynamic canopy capable of shifting its form.  These canopies can negotiate climatic impact by responding to sun, wind, and light, they can act as cultural amplifiers by responding to human activity, or their behavior can be choreographed to support the specific design intent for a cultural event.

These behavioral capacities exist at the unit level, but also take on entirely new aggregated effects when the units group together in larger configurations.  The result is a constantly fluctuating landscape, able to support a dynamic and varied array of events and activities.  This fluctuating landscape gives a presence and identity to the London Cultural Olympiad.  By concentrating dispersed events in one location it allows for a vibrancy that would otherwise be lacking.  The reverse is also true.  At times this landscape breaks apart and disperses around London utilizing the existing network of waterways as a tool to stitch together the cultural events which comprise the Olympiad.

Moving forward this system will remain vibrant because of its capacity to synergize cultural events.  It will exist as a series of ebbs and flows - fluctuating daily, weekly and seasonally as concentrations of cultural events taking place in London shift.  In its scale and composition the proposal blurs the lines between urban design, landscape, and architecture, while its dynamism, which is driven by human cultural interaction, blurs the line between the static built environment and fluid cultural actor.