Swarm Stadia Midterm

This is a graduate architecture studio project at SCI_arc in 2007. Hernan Diaz Alonso, and Benjamin Bratton were the instructors. The stadium is an attempt at undoing the interiority of the traditional stadium and using the building as an ornamental framing mechanism for a sport. By deterritorializing the stadium and using the building as an ornamental device, our stadium is able to expose the playing field to the terraced parking and tailgating areas. The decomposition of hierarchy between the ticket holders and tailgaters enables us to use the American tradition of tailgating as a device to introduce soccer as the new American pastime. As American spectators grow accustomed to the sport by developing team rivalries and favorite players, the desire to purchase seats closer to the action will develop among the spectators, therefore drawing people into the stadium.
In addition, the site acts as a transitional zone that unites the formal logic of the stadium with the city grid of Los Angeles. Within the site, the city grid takes on a new identity as entrance by opening up the entire stadium. For example, the dissolving of conventional architectural elements like skin, enclosure, and the single designated entrance areas, resulting in the exposure of structure and revealing the playing field. The city grid transforms from street surface to volume in one swift motion, transferring visitors from the city into the game.

The intension is to use extreme scalar differentiation as a method to produce a formal discord that can be introduced as a new aesthetic of beauty. Using an aggressive micro-scale texture as ornament unifies the macro-scale structural logic of the system. Ornament and multifaceted color are not only used as methods that unify the separate structural components, but they also present opportunities for the materialization of functional behaviors. For instance, seating, stairs, and railing emerge from the ornamental morphology of the building without breaking the aesthetic dynamic of the overall composition.
Circulation is an additive element to the overall structural logic and ornamental morphologies. The stadium assemblage becomes a conglomeration of self-similar but differentiated parts, much like insect swarming behavior. As one system alters in form, an emergent formal reactionary affect is created throughout the entire assembly. Circulation responds formally to the shape of the structural logic of the building, while also behaving as ornament.
The end result of the stadium is achieved through the manipulation of the basic morphology of a generic cell while using extreme variations in scale as formal ornament to contradict the massive scale of the structure. The outcome is a painterly aesthetic, used as a framing device for the playing field.

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Education

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• Ai Sato