los angeles CALIFORNIA

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

mikhail GLADCHENKO: The project in this studio looked at current conditions of downtown Los Angeles’s private sector, exploring the idea that more and more high-rise real estate goes to businesses, and less and less to housing development.

The goal behind theoretically proposed design is to act like a parasitic virus by attacking existing prime real estate and ‘give’ it back to the less fortunate people. Plant-like parasitic virus is to be able to attack skyscrapers and reclaim the space from businesses by creating compact living units.

One unit would not be bigger than a typical studio and will contain only the essential to its occupants’ survival spaces such as spaces to sleep, work, and relax. If the family occupying a capsule expands so will the unit by morphing with another capsule. Residents will not have multiple rooms; instead, they will have one space that could change based on their need. For example, during the day it might be one’s office and at night a bedroom. Spatial configuration would always change and adapt based on the users’ need at any given time.”

sP: what or who influenced this project?

mG: Hernan Diaz Alonso

sP: what were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?

mG: Lots and lots of pandora, with hulu in between

sP: whose work is currently on your radar?

mG: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Elena Manferdini, Zaha Hadid