SOCIAL NETWORK IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Project Location: Boston, Massachusetts
The focus of this project is on social, public awareness, connectivity and the playful theme of self expression in a modern world dominated by tweets and status updates. The project utilizes these different micro-community centered services and applied them into creating a new methodology in the building of a community based environment. The program for the proposed community environment involved creating a living, working and public components.
Based in Boston , the location of the building site had in the past divided the North End neighborhood with the rest of the city by the construction of an elevated highway. The elevated highway has since been demolished due to the Big Dig project and as a result, created an ideal setting for this project to examine how such application could help weave the city and the neighborhood in a non-conventional method.
To create a new micro-community centered living, a few existing housing typologies were examined to facilitate this study. The analysis led to finding of a high level of privacy in existing urban houses. In order to achieve a higher publicity of self awareness, the existing typology of a row-house is rotated at a 90 degree angle where the long side creates a wider exposure to the urban fabric. The end result proposes a micro-community that is publicly exposed to a central zone with a series of threshold in between each different activities of living, creating a variation of filtering system based on the democratic control system by the public, playing along with the idea of self awareness and expression in an unpredictable environment.
Diagram 01: This diagram shows and compare two methods of communication system. The system proposed how spaces can be redesigned to accommodate the modern and mobile methods of communication.
Diagram 02: Highlighted area shows the location of the proposed site.
Diagram 03: This diagrammatic plans showcased how the existing building typology could be revised to create a new living system.
Diagram 04: A segment of the project illustrating the live, work, and public spine components and its connection between one another.
Diagram 05: Perspective view from the upper level of the public spine towards the living quarters and incubator spaces behind.
Diagram 06: Aerial view of the building in relationship to the site.