Diana Fang_Campus of the Future

IMMERSION

The campus framework must always be an incubator for relational human narratives foremost, while accommodating the potential for present and future devices and objects as augmenters of experience within the modern age. We shouldn’t loosen our hold on the physical realm as particularly meaningful and containing unrealized configurations for happiness and inspiration. The key to successful spatial reasoning is the interface of sensory needs and desires through nuanced building prototypes Can a studio be full of textured walls instead of desks? What is the role of furniture? Should rooms exist as is or tend toward nebulous pods and cavernous wombs? This proposal for a new campus begins with surface prototypes for each scale of experience, ranging from surface to object, from room to building..

A major shortcoming of contemporary design is a lack of unification between business-minded design economy and client-centered comfort and actualization. Disparate components, overseen by individual designers and engineers, do not always collude into an immersive final experience, because the formal process compromises its own cohesion in the process of value engineering or other problem-solving biases. The aim for this project is to bring a wealth of character and idiosyncrasy back into space; to reconsider the comforts that have slipped from consideration and to color the academic surroundings with topographic devices that will foster more humanistic learning. Beginning with topological schemes found in nature, we can design a surface, a piece of furniture, a space, and finally an overarching network, through repetition of formal gesture with increasing scale.

Two formal typologies are being investigated in this proposal: flowing/linear forms such as canyon striations and bulbous forms such as balloons, are of particular interest in this proposal. The crispness of former brings about a sense of psychological clarity and flow, while the softness of the latter facilitates womb-like warmth and enclosure. These two simple forms can easily replace bulky, complicated objects within a room, and can be formed into the structures. Chair surfaces can be the interior of a sphere. Desks can be notches cut from striated rock, which the walls within a room are formed from. Expanding into circulation, flowing tunnels leading into bulbous pods create the perfect dynamic of journey and arrival. At the larger scaled spaces, the typologies must manifest more in the overall shape of the space, with specific purposes available for interior elements as well, though not overbearing.

There are psychological investigations afloat within this project, particularly for younger students who are integrating the sensory experiences of their everyday environments and interactions into their evolving worldview and emotional palette. The linear, disjunct, banal shape of current campus spaces begs the question of how classrooms, lecture halls, and other spaces can be improved for the individual narrative, and stretching the imagination may be a critical tactic through which answers may be derived - designing organic spaces for our anthropic needs, inviting biomimicry as a technique is an exploration into comfort and desire.  Instead of fascist cages and corridors, we can better network the passages traveled through many distinct spaces as directional, exhaling, lively organs that exist with intention, forming a narrative trajectory for the passengers of our reality.

Yet fully realized devices of the future are game for integration into a speculative physical space - with added topologies comes the potential for new orientations of technologies and interfaces. Given that infrastructure is meant to house the tools of our time, the meaning of a room or a building toward its devices is to act as portals of augmentation into the human experience itself. Thus, the gateway between the physical and the digital realm must be a perfect formal liaison, as suggested by these topological reworkings of contemporary building.