Transcend

Studio Pierandrea Angius

Tutors Tina Tsagkaratou, Angel Tenorio

Team Karim Hallak, India Baz, Noa Guy, Behice Ozer, Yujie Wang

Our proposal - entitled Transcend - stems from the exploration of a hybrid design space at the intersection of mobility and livability, favoring a multidisciplinary approach across the fields of architecture, automotive, and aerospace design. 

It is contextualized on a projection of a near-future of emergent concerns around humanity’s ecological footprint, where population is rapidly expanding and cities are becoming over-saturated, raising the need for new strategies towards provision of space and resources. 

Transcend tackles those concerns by looking at mobile living as a means of detachment from the traditional rigid urban infrastructure. One of our main aims was to achieve an adaptive architecture as a self-sufficient system of a soft-infrastructure.  

Our explorations started with the notion of minimal space with a particular attention to proxemics and ergonomics, and the dialogue between the human body and its immediate surroundings. Those ideas were translated spatially by looking at programmatic overlays, reactive surfaces, and transformable functions within a limited space. 

This minimal space encompasses the scale of a “macro-suit” or a “micro-architecture” as an apparatus that extends from the human body. This spatial device is able to shape-shift in response to different environmental and functional conditions, enabled by the actuation of deployable structural systems and flexible materials.   

The goal of this transformational capability is the adaptation to hybrid environments within which the system is contextualized. The units engage in on-ground and in-air mobility as an emphasis on the notion of a resilient, off-grid, and migratory form of living. Gliding is seen in Transcend as an energy-efficient medium of passive mobility, through which energy harvesting is enabled as the system is directed by the dynamic rhythms and flows of nature. 

The aim of mobility, in this context, is not limited only to achieving resilient living, but also, to open new horizons of opportunities in transportation. This would allow temporary settlements in desirable uninhabited locations, augmenting the relationship between humanity and nature. Architecture, in that sense, becomes ephemeral, engaging and enhancing an interplay between direct human experience and the intact natural environment.