byron bay: major project

Continuous city for 1.000.000 human beings | Alan Boutwell & Mike Mitchell, 1969

  Planning on a national scale | Utopia

Alan Boutwell became acquainted with the ideas of the megastructuralists during his studies and was particularly impressed by the thoughts and designs of Archigram. In 1965, his first designs of modular building systems were released, in which he experimented with new technologies and materials. The project of a gigantic linear city that he created together with Michael Mitchell caused a sensation. It spanned on hundred meter high pillars straight across the American continent. Its interior combined all classical functions of urban life and was connected by a complex traffic system that was differentiated by speed, transportation and distances.

Alan Boutwell and Michael Mitchell described their project with the self-confidence and urgency that is characteristic of that time: This is our city. We have not sensationalized. All that we have described is feasible today […] If we do not act now, in spite of all the seemingly insuperable difficulties, we shall soon reach a state where action is no longer possible. in: Domus 470; Jan 1969, S. 6

ARCHITECTURE The Museum of Everyday Portland

My previous “recipe” drawing, which can be read mostly as plan, needed a section drawing in order to explore my ideas about these spaces with their heights, thicknesses and relationship to the site’s quarry edge. However, it became apparent that a conventional straight cut section would kill the life in the ideas at this stage, so I imagined the route that someone might take and cut the section along this journey through the building.

Air Ops: A Retroactive Platform for Energy Exchange by James Leng

Air Ops is a project about re-envisioning zoning and energy-use in a post-Hurricane Sandy Manhattan.  The core of the project hinges on the notion that zoning has always been one of the most potent elements in shaping the city, and in order for architecture to tackle the problem of energy at the urban scale, especially as a response to the increasing volatility of the climate, it must bring topics of sourcing and using energy into active dialogue with zoning, real estate, and the public realm.