philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA
Penn Design
Critic: Nate HUME
suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Carla BONILLA and Yi LU: This project studies the program of the greenhouse and the urban eatery as an opportunity to study the relationship between the “natural” and the “man-made”.
- Carla BONILLA and Yi LU, “Living Thresholds.”, Elevation
- Carla BONILLA and Yi LU, “Living Thresholds.”, Elevation
- Carla BONILLA and Yi LU, “Living Thresholds.”, Unrolled Section
- Carla BONILLA and Yi LU, “Living Thresholds.”, Plan
- Carla BONILLA and Yi LU, “Living Thresholds.”, Section
- Carla BONILLA and Yi LU, “Living Thresholds.”, Model Photo
“Living Thresholds” exists within the boundaries of both. It defies to be considered one or the other. Its greenhouse is composed of a grid matrix that contains within it a series of planters. This scaffolding like structure, allows the vegetation a volumetric nature, which lets it purposefully bleed into adjacent spaces and at times to overtake the exterior facade. Within this grid, a series of bubbles contain the restaurant facilities. This layered space, broken through by this vegetation poche, blurs the thresholds between exteriority and interiority.
The vegetation, bleeding through the facade, creates a mossy surface on the concrete at the bottom of the structure, and pieces of pink figural mesh conceal windows. The concrete gradually disperses into shingles towards the top of the building mass, completing the monolithic quality of the building while adding delicacy to the building envelope. Its calculated interference between geometric and textural qualities this project produces uncanny states of heightened awareness. Being a piece of landscape at times, changing with the seasons, and an architectural monolith at others.
sP: What or who influenced this project?
CB & YL: The studio started off with “Complexity and Contradiction” by Venturi, and “Art as a Technique” by Shklovsky, which set the mood for the design of the project. Most importantly, the strangeness born out of casting 3d models in materials we had never cast before, as well as the architectural misinterpretation of the results.
sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
CB & YL: CB: Dirty Money, Santa Clarita Diet, Black Mirror, The Office, and listening to Soffi Tukker, Beach House, Crystal Castles. YL: Sherlock Holmes, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Guardians of the Galaxy, Annihilation, Maze Runner, Maze Runner 2.
sP: Whose work is currently in your radar?
CB & YL: Penda Architects, their work has a similar philosophy to ours in that “architecture serves as a bridge to connect nature, culture and people to strive for a better quality of living”. Their work “Gardenhouse” was one of our key precedents, which also makes use of a modular planter system as architectural structure.
October 2nd, 2018 at 3:43 pm
Feels like a contemporary Arcosanti and would be interesting to see it working at a larger scale like Soleri’s arcologies - does the figuration turn into a field or is the figure populated by a field (similarly to the treatment of the drawings)? Beautiful work - cheers to you!
October 9th, 2018 at 5:35 am
Hi PM, thanks for your comment. Whne we were designing it, we were thinking about it as a series of infill spaces floating in the figure, creating interesting fusion between rectilinear field and figural shell 🙂