los angeles CALIFORNIA
Sci-ARC
Critic: Tom WISCOMBE
suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Jose Carlos GARCIA: This thesis explores the relationship between abstract architectural objects and the possibility of producing an architectural Super-Entity.
- Jose Carlos GARCIA, “Super-Entity.”, Plan
- Jose Carlos GARCIA, “Super-Entity.”, Plan
- Jose Carlos GARCIA, “Super-Entity.”, Section
- Jose Carlos GARCIA, “Super-Entity.”, Perspective
- Jose Carlos GARCIA, “Super-Entity.”, Model Photo
- Jose Carlos GARCIA, “Super-Entity.”, Model Photo
As distinct objects come in close contact with one another, a unique element pops into existence. This thesis bares such tensions by attempting to visualize what this might look like in an architectural scenario. Moments of intense architectural figuration mediate the extreme angles in which the objects meet, enabling empathy and understanding yet avoiding complete integration among the objects.
To contrast with the intensely figured elements. this thesis chooses to use rectangular primitives as the working architectural objects. The mundane geometrical language of the bars enables a form of a common ground among the figures. Through such plane of operation signaling and pronounced features from one object to the other enable a figural relationship only perceivable through normal orthographic projections.
Super-Entity explores such set of relationships in a virtual world where no sense of orientation is possible. In this case orientation is only possible relative to one another. Where the shape of objects here on earth is highly influenced by the gravitational pull of the planet, specially architecture as we know it, this is an attempt to imagine a scenario where architecture avoids being undermined by the primacy of the ground. Instead the rectangular primitives ground one another and therefore the orientation to the world is irrelevant for this thesis.
sP: What or who influenced this project?
JCG: Part to Whole relationship problem, Architectural form making, Architecture + Ground, Peter Eisenman’s theories of ground vs the architectural figures, Lebbeus Woods parasitic project, Morphosis ground models, The universe + Gravity, In-Detail SCIArc Vertical Studio with Dwayne Oyler, Design Development class at SCIArc.
sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
JCG: During thesis prep, I listened to lots of architecture lectures and read a lot of architectural theory. However, I stopped at the beginning of the thesis semester. It was time to produce. I didn’t want to have much influence as I was developing my own work. Instead a listened to lots of space and universe documentaries, Science Podcasts (StarTalk, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Podcast, etc), Movies about space. Interstellar. 2001 Space Odyssey. Star Wars. Obviously, it all influenced my design decision process, and all the research done during thesis prep blends in nicely to the final product.
sP: Whose work is currently in your radar?
JCG: Peter Eisenman, Morphosis, Oyler Wu, Tom Wiscombe, Herzog & de Meuron, OMA, Toyo Ito.
