Constructing agency 2017-2019

chrysalis

Studio Patrik Schumacher

Tutors Pierandrea Angius 

Team Caleb Baldwin (United States), Cho-long Baek (South Korea), Xu Yuzhi (China), Zhao Yuxuan (China)

The project is to be an incubator for starting and growing tech companies with a goal of fostering a unique environment for collaboration between new and existing tech companies. Co-living space is included as part of the incubator while public space, such as plazas and greenery, will act as a stitching mechanism to combine the two programmes. While the main drive of this development is in office space, the residential element is to accommodate only the workers. To extend the success of the adjacent Chelsea Market, the development will also offer a variety of commercial spaces to be accessible by the public.

The design was driven by a visual language rationality. To create this language, we studied various visual instructional methods. The instructional method and user experience in the studies of Knitting, schematic map way-finding, Chinese characters, and brail were chosen because they collectively offer a different aspect for the construction of an entirely new language which can be used to systematically design our project.

For Knitting a combinatorial method for space was extracted. The spatial conditions of overlap, attach, merge and include, inform the spatial design. Way-finding provides a location rule which uses individual and transfer symbols to denote commute instruction to a user. The research of Chinese characters gave us instruction in the position of parts, quantity and orientation of elements in terms of furniture in the interior design. Brail is used for a directional rule where its basic elements of 'raised, neutral, and sunken' for paving and lighting design.

The resulting product is a spatially unique working environment defined by overlapping planes and a readable lighting semiology. This living hive of workers is then wrapped in a protective shell which weaves and stitches together all programmes to make it one cohesive but still permeable form: The Chrysalis.