sculpture
skylight
tables
Design Level Six, University of Central Florida
Instructor(s); Kourtney Baldwin
Alexandria, Virginia - Founder’s Park located along the Potomac River, is a neighborhood park in a mixed-use area. Abutting it's green to the west are historic neighborhoods, while to the north, a variety of warehouses exist. This collection of work dissects the anatomy of park by disrupting a public garden through a building placed (east, west) in the center of Founder's Park, scrutinizing a new blend of park and structure. The facility, a center for animal endangerment issues and research delivers to the community a permeable public barrier between industry and residency, marking this transition along the Potomac.
While developing this facility, understanding the dual purposes and connections that needed unification between residents and researchers, the porous nature of the building yielded to the prospect of educating the community through opposite user occupations interfacing in lesson/teacher environments. Investigating animal degradation and decline, humans throughout the world, inherently commodify species in many situations for the production of goods, entertainment and testing. As a result, they disintegrate what was once viewed as a harvest-able "commodity". Challenging this practice through an architecture that was aware of this degradation but promised hopeful solution, forged a tiered edifice forming lowly at the street gaining momentous height towards the Potomac. As a user ascends the internal paths of the building, the outer shell sheds, revealing more and more light towards its top floor atrium.
Using this building as a permeable barrier between neighborhoods, spaces of viewable research, in the forms of a laboratory and greenhouse interplay with visitors through the cross-pollination of research methods in communal spaces. A restaurant, elevated park at mid-level, a below grade track and exhibition programming allow residents to interface with the work of researchers at the center. This new boundary adds a specificity to the park, while positioning itself as a pivotal identity for the area.
Disintegrating Commodity
Disintegrating Commodity
looking west
park entry
site; Alexandria, VA
Model looking east
Below Grade
1. Entry
2. Maintenance
3. Electrical
4. Storage
Grade
5. Entry
6. Restaurant
7. Kitchen
8. Office Entry
9. Lab One
Level One
11. Lab Two
12. Open Park
13. Lab Office
Level Two
14. Greenhouse
15. Storage
Collage Alexandria
Early Sketches
Early Sketches
Below Grade
Upper Volumes
Alternating Interiors
Alignment to Street
Conceptual Sketches
Section looking north
Section looking west
Section looking west
Restaurant Level
Restaurant Level
Park Level
Model looking west
Model looking south
Detail Above
Detail Above
Detail Above
Above
Park Level