Compressive – A Skyscraper for Abu Dhabi / Sean Stillwell

California College of the Arts, San Francisco

Masters of Architecture: MArch 3

Course: Exotic Variables

Instructor: Thom Faulders

Spring 2011

Title: Compressive

By: Sean Stillwell

As seen at eVolo:

www.evolo.us/architecture/compressive-a-skyscraper-for-abu-dhabi-sean-stillwell/

Abu Dhabi is a car culture. The vast distances between destinations, the extreme heat and sand storms, the quality of the existing public transportation systems, and the current low cost of petrol in the UAE make the automobile the default means of travel.

Compressive looks at this existing condition and more specifically, the car as a representation of human beings’ very worst and very best achievement. The way western society, and emerging societies around the world have implemented the automobile is both irresponsible and inexcusable. While the resources consumed to manufacture and operate the car are astounding, the personal freedom the car affords is something that every society should strive for (personal freedom, that is). The car is an integral component of our existing lifestyle, and one that will not fade without a reexamination of our entire public transportation system.

Compressive reexamines the interaction between the person and the car at various scales and questions the current understanding of the parking lot as a type of “service space.” It looks forward to a time when emissions will be reduced and people and cars may inhabit the same spaces comfortably given that safety, congestion, and the integration of various forms of transportation have been resolved. These “service spaces” that we call parking lots may eventually be seen as destinations in themselves.

By utilizing the car as another form of vertical transportation the building can begin to register occupation by the reacting to the weight of cars parked on various floors. By sectionally arranging the main programs of this mixed use tower, groups of up to 5 floors will actually begin to sag with the weight of cars based on program use at different times throughout the day. The dynamic façade system intensifies this condition by folding out and up when the floors compress allowing for increased ventilation throughout the parking area to counter act the greater number of cars. Whatever solar protection is lost by the folding façade is made up by the new condition of shorter floor-to-floor height of the surrounding parking ramps.

The compression is brought back to the scale of the human where the yellow pedestrian paths make their way from the parking spaces across the car ramps to the interior. When a car approaches a pedestrian path the road reacts locally to the car’s weight, causing an inverted speed bump and ensuring pedestrian safety.

This reaction to the weight of occupation allows the user an intuitive understanding of not only their own impact on the space, but  the  impact  of the aggregated population surrounding them.