Reactionary movement: Airport prototype
Spring 2008
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art + Planning
Course | Design 302
Professor | Carla Leitao
Design Partner | Ashley Mendelsohn
We focused on the movement of an individual person in space and studied the reactionary forces that the body imposed on three structured garments. Losing the body and gravity within each garment, we placed these studies into a rigid directional field, creating a ripple effect of displacement on the adjacent garments.
These responsive forces formed patterns of compression and pressure points, or ribs, highlighting the rhythm of swelling and expanding intersections. We deployed a landscape on these ribs to produce a continuous surface made up of a series of aggregated moments collapsed in time. We transformed this surface into the built form of a prototypical roof for a local airport. This airport roof investigates the substructure of the interstitial habitable space and creates a narrative of how individual movement dictates the program within.
