Rethinking Living: Technology + Lifestyle

 

Both Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City and Alison and Peter Smithson’s Future House provide seminal examples of housing due to these positivist approach to the technology of their time. These projects were realizable immediately yet projective in the short-term in relation to the life-style and demands of society. Strangely these 1950s projects continue to be portrayed as radical in 2013. The 1950s saw unprecedented levels of mass production for house-hold appliances and cars that aided a consumerism fuelled from a desire for perceived improvements to individuals and families quality of life. With the introduction of the internet and advances in other communication technologies; society has undergone massive transformations since the 50s. The term the “internet of things” describes how there is soon to be more communication links between objects in the environment around us than there is between people or between people and things. In addition to this shift in communication relations, recent developments in social media allows for dynamic forms of interaction between people that supports various forms of collective knowledge and action in addition to increased possibilities of government oversight and surveillance.

 

The thesis rethinks high density urban housing typology through the removal of lifts cores and corridor circulation by the employment of an exterior decentralized lift system. This results in a topologically complex mixed-use urban networked building typology where building circulation allows for a three dimensional architecture.

 

By implementing the technology of wireless energy transmission and wireless communication, the external circulation system is capable of allowing for spontaneous communication on demands between users. The temporal activity of the lift system also allows for creating spaces on demand and distributed energy system. The energy system is achieved by collecting the solar energy and transferring the energy wirelessly to meet the demand of users.

 

Additionally, the temporal variation in facade transparency and lifts distribution and movement, produces qualitative design affects intrinsic to the building daily cycle.