Permanent Ephemera - Outdoor Classroom

[Mings]

Hey guys, the first week of my fourth straight semester with studio has come and gone. For the first week the entire school participated in a design competition for an outdoor classroom/projection space on Tulane's campus at a site of our choosing. I was walking around and sat under a 100+ year oak tree on the engineering quad and decided to work with that. It became a juxtaposition of permanent and ephemera though use of concrete and light and shadow. I'll get a pic of the board tomorrow (it was partially hand drawn).

I ended up with an honorable mention, with 4 out of the 5 jurors voting for mine.

Here is the write up and images:

Simultaneously both destination and fleeting moment along an implied path, a new classroom/project space creates a new destination within the background space underneath the large oak tree on the Engineering Quad. The concrete form that provides permanence through its mass becomes ephemeral through use of translucent concrete (embedded with optic fibers), allowing light and shadow into the space dictating passage of fleeting moments of time. The bridging form creates a juxtaposition of movement and destination, ephemera and permanence.

View from Engineering Quad

Classroom/Projection Space

Morphology/Conceptual Diagram

Click here for the project page on my website.

Let me know what you think!

Josh

[chuckymack]

Holy crap. I wish I had something more enlightening to say, but damn. That is cool. I didn't even know transparent concrete existed.

[Puck]

Holy crap. I wish I had something more enlightening to say, but damn. That is cool. I didn't even know transparent concrete existed.

Didn't humanity learn Transparent Aluminum back in 1986?

I mean it's RIGHT THERE!

[Mings]

Nice man. That made me laugh.

Actually they mass produce translucent concrete now, but not exactly in the way i rendered it in my images. Its actually a precast block that has optic fibers embedded in it, and it is formed with a much finer aggregate. This one was an ideas competition, but the way I rendered it is actually possible now, just extremely expensive. The blocks are much more budget friendly.

[Puck]

Nice man. That made me laugh.

Actually they mass produce translucent concrete now, but not exactly in the way i rendered it in my images. Its actually a precast block that has optic fibers embedded in it, and it is formed with a much finer aggregate. This one was an ideas competition, but the way I rendered it is actually possible now, just extremely expensive. The blocks are much more budget friendly.

In all seriousness, I thoroughly enjoyed and fascinated by your portfolio pieces. The only concern I had is how well is the ceiling going to hold up a very old tree like that? I wish something like that could exist in Arizona but it'd be a very tough sell. But, please, please keep making these pieces!!!

[Mings]

Thanks Puck. The oak tree actually informed the form of the classroom. All of the lower branches on this one end up touching the ground, and withstood Katrina. I made it so that the roof follows the heights of the lower branches but they don't touch.

Edit: Here is the board I submitted.

[Puck]

Jesus, I saw that as it was all underground. Wow.

[Mings]

I'll go ahead and give this a bump for some more comments.