Urban Rhapsody

URBAN RHAPSODY A rhapsody in music is a one movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations. A. INFORMATION Urban Rhapsody is an urban music space created on the basis of a series of mappings following in depth studies of different parameters found within the plaça space. Digital three-dimensional information layers construct the driving parameters progressing the design process in different levels of implementation ordered to construct surfaces directly corresponding to the local conditions of Plaça Lesseps. Dissecting the site elucidate a clear image of an urban void wrapped in asphalt, accommodating only CO2 producing traffic movement within an important urban hub creating atmosphere on two perceptive levels: a visual: the traffic, the speed, the unbreakable flow of cars and a non-visual: the CO2 polluting in the air. Focus on ground conditions translated by explicit traffic data combined with CO2 emission data into an informative surface map describes the physical and phenomenological impact on Plaça Lesseps. Aiming to create a better urban zone for both transit and stay, a pedestrian map is rendered based on explicit movement of people, elucidating the flow of people exposed to the CO2 at different times of the day to enable a future stitching of the dislocated sections of the placa. Creation and modulation of the membrane is hence a direct, retraceable response to the spreading of CO2 gasses and the movement of people through surface alteration rules. B. OPERATIONAL SCALES (URBAN AND STRUCTURAL MEMBRANE) The project is divided and joined in two scales of operation, through: 1. urban relations, urban and internal programme, urban negotiation; 2. structural membrane constructs, geometrical relations, adaptation and organisation. These are interwoven concepts in a procedural path from information to form, constantly separated and joint to evaluate and synthesize potentials progressing a successive form-finding process. C. MORPHOGENETIC STRATEGY Crocodile skin studies show highly differentiated networks constructing 3 dimensional geometrical varied patterns according to functionality from flexible to hard and rigid. The same material is deployed in different densities and stratified structures in order to perform these ornamental conditions. The translation of these condition undergoes the study of a multi-performative system. Both scales of operation are responding to the informational layer through a morphogenetic strategy responding through porosity of the structure to either capture the CO2 or to allow daylight to penetrate the structural membrane (created through the local scale/system) and the space it frames by volume and orientation (created by the surfaces - global scale/system). Geometrical changes in both scales are thus reflecting contextual conditions and eventually internal programme mirrored into a differentiated organisation addressing pollution capturing and internal spatial conditions. D. FORM FINDING PROCESS Departure in two scales as parallel form-finding paths creates a non-hierarchical open process structure based on information to create form. Overlaid maps construct a hierarchical information model across the entire area according to which the structural membrane is organised. Applied rules to the generation of surfaces construct the organisation as direct explicit response to data valued through hierarchies between pedestrian flow and CO2 capturing. A second information layer is implanted through a cultural and social internal programme being a musical centre housing concert halls, rehearsal facilities and spontaneous musical events, which restructure the surface organisations, intersections, ground connections, urban negotiation and spatial performances to...