philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA
University of Pennsylvania
Critic: Cory HENRY

The natural and the artificial are two elements that are in a perpetual state of emergence; but yet one never truly touches the other. Infrastructure has emerged as an element that has begun to overcome the presence of the Penn Museum; technologies are advancing, transportation methodologies are increasing, and the museum is being overshadowed by new superstructures in pursuit of projecting towards the world of tomorrow. But what is to become of the archives? As the artificiality of technology continues to expand in innovations, the museum has become a program that ceases to adapt to a growing infrastructure.
Projected in a hyper-realistic future, the addition to the Penn Museum archives embraces the two forces of the natural and the artificial, the visible and the invisible, through a symbiotic relationship. Computer servers and databases create the core of the design with its intricate surfaces that are able to input and output information in relation to the archives and programmatic space. The overall cavernous form, therefore, is dictated by the intricacies and power of the new archival technologies. Volumes are manifested by existing typologies of the museum and textures are explored throughout the entirety of the surface’s skin. The project becomes a critique into the theory behind the blurring of systems, from the visible to the invisible, the natural and the artificial.