Between Architecture: Section and Elevation

The stacked section – mute, repetitive, indeterminate – has been the foil against which many architectural projects have positioned themselves. As the primary object of study, this studio is concerned with the capacity of the section to move beyond seriality to develop complex spatial propositions. In an effort to challenge and interrogate the limitations of the stack the studio proposes to nest together a parking garage and a gym. While at first glance the organization and circulation of cars in a parking garage may seem a banal coordination of metrics, there is a great range of logics to be gleaned from this choreography of ramps, slabs, spirals, and staggers.

At a large scale, parking provides a coarse sectional strategy that dislodges the serial plane as the given datum of building, while remaining adherent to the necessities of circulation and movement. Against this sectional ready-made, the gym provides a more pliable counterpart, whose specificities derive as much from sequences of use as from dimensionally defined volumes and surfaces of action. Finally, while the section remains the site of much architectural concern, this focus nearly always finds itself hidden, wrapped, and closed – the insistent visibility of the elevation eclipsing whatever lies within. In this way, the studio problematizes the section – both as an orthographic abstraction, and as a spatial medium – by setting it into tension with the demands of the elevation.