BoomBox

University of Pennsylvania: Master of Architecture

ARCH601: Design Studio III

Instructor: Brian Phillips

Location: Philadelphia, PA

BoomBox is a contemporary artist residence that serves as a container in which artists from different backgrounds can share a creative space, fostering collaboration and inspiration through architecture. Privacy is in the foreground, presenting an ominous mass of unknown contents. It elevates the container, but not the contained. However, music emanates from the space, radiating and influencing adjacent spaces through various interactions.

The residence’s dynamism manifests itself in a core that transitions through the building, shifting the program within it. Layers are formed as private or quiet spaces shy away from this void. The transition between spaces creates opportunities for the interaction of various disciplines, programs, and experiences. BoomBox treats these transitional moments as the veil between the inside-outside, loud-quiet, public-private. These spaces possess a duality in which order can not be ascribed. They are neither one nor the other and thus can change in a moment as the user interprets its function.

Opposing dualities (blue & yellow) repel each other as the core transitions through the building. The resulting gap (green ) represents transitional space which can occupy traits of either element.

The resultant form cosists of a double core, piercing two separate vessels that host the building's program.

A point cloud is used as a means of representation, rather than a surveying tool in order to illustrate the intricate relationships within layers. Narrow passageways and openings are exposed and understood as part of a continuous whole. This new tool is useful in illustrating complex spaces resultant from non-Cartesian design methods, as well as inside-outside relationships.

On the ground floor, public space becomes interior as the mass creates a subtle interruption in the rigid Cartesian boundary.

Layers formed around programmatic interruption serve to create spaces for circulation. A shared amenity space exists between the building’s normative boundary and the void created by a shifting acoustic core.

Residential units adapt to transforming volumes, creating multi-use spaces to bridge the transition of spaces.

Building instrument creates openings in plan which serve as spaces for making music.