los angeles CAlIFORNIA
suckerPUNCH: describe your project.
philip KNIGHT: This Project investigates Type becoming Species. The extreme building in the civic building type: the county jail is being used as a case study.
County jails in cities around the country are specific in their aesthetic, symbolism’s and even in their presence. The county jail as a Type does not offer anything to the external context nor to the public itself. The ability for the public to interact with its own civic buildings is becoming more and more an issue with the increase in densities within the urban context. Buildings are becoming the parks, the outdoor / indoor experiences, and the interaction with the environment. Species mutate and evolve there aesthetic as they work to survive the urban context.
The Jail is working with a mutated-evolved cell that is functional as a holding cell and allows for the aesthetic to take control of the program and context. The cell becomes its own species and is not confined to the parameters of the building walls. It is able to move about and create new programs not associated with the original species as a function, only associated through aesthetic.
sP: what or who influenced this project?
pK: Buildings as pieces, Insect structures, Jail cells
sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
pK: DD-05-Corrupted Biotopes (by R&Sie), Deconstructivist Architecture (by Johnson and Wigley), A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson), Puscifer, Pink Floyd, Pan’s Labyrinth
sP: whose work is currently on your radar?
pK: Hernan Diaz Alonzo, Morphosis, François Roche, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelblau
Additional credits:
Hernan Diaz Alonzo, Tristan Brasseur, Pil-Sun Ham, Luis Corona, SCI-Arc
March 24th, 2011 at 7:36 am
this jail definitely is punishment 😉
March 24th, 2011 at 11:37 am
this work means nothing. SCI ARC is a circle jerk with hernan diaz alonso in the middle.
March 24th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
sick
screw you rubert, and im sure its only a matter of time before art v says something stupid
March 24th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
so i am glad you have strong feelings for something Rupert. it may be that this kind of work means nothing now, but it will in some (possibly small) way or another. this project is art more than architecture, but concepts are transferable from art to architecture to any design discipline. besides all the shit, it was fun to design!
March 25th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Great work Phil and Tristan. This would fit right into the SW waterfront context. Love it!! Keep killing it!!
Kyle
April 14th, 2011 at 11:33 am
“Creative” is not just scripting a blob and putting flat floors in it
I agree with rupert
October 2nd, 2011 at 9:29 pm
You know the exterior really doesn’t bother me, its fun and interesting, what kills it though, as um said, the flat floors, there is so much more potential here for interesting interior volumetric play, But somehow translation is lost between exterior and interior, I think the flat floors justify it as just art, aesthetic, almost a modern romatic style, if the exterior informed and created the interior, then we have architecture.