thesis: velocity terminal: Blurring perception through high-speed rail
Spring 2010
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art + Planning
Advisors | Yani Loukakis + Yehre Suh
Objective: To create an architectural construct that enables an American high-speed train to run through the existing fabric of the Northeast Corridor and expose the pedestrian body to an informational landscape.
Proposal: Identify the landscape high-speed train runs through (urban, industrial, rural, station) to reveal the diversity of the environment the train reads and displays to those outside the train. Reorganize the landscape through which trains pass, and redistribute the collected visual data of that landscape using the proposed construct. Condense the visual experience of the corridor (hundreds of miles long) for those outside the train.
Employing data-responsive technology translates the traces (collected at the train’s peak speeds) of the train’s users and route traveled into a visual representation for the extent of this mediating sensory baffling system. The surface is composed of tabs connected to piezoelectric wires, which self-generate electric current when the wire is bent. Triggered by vibration, voltage is created to read and respond to the data input and angle tabs on the surface. Specialized computer code translates this collected data and visualizes it as images on this motorized 3D surface.
This architectural construct not only allows for a high-speed train to thrive, but it also blurs, heightens, and distorts the users’ senses by compressing and superimposing time and space through the speed of the train. The result is an organism of temporality that warps one’s perception and redefines the surrounding megaregion through the fluidity of kinetic ripples, expanding social and spatial dimensions.
