Imago Mundi CITY OF INFORMATION
The project is to design a complex urban architecture by interweaving four blocks of Manhattan from the Grand Central Terminal on the 42nd Street to the Helmsley Building on 46th Street that faces Park Avenue. Right next to the Grand Central and the Metlife building. As it stands, the four blocks are ill designed for the pedestrian traffic and created an urban disjunction in the part of the city. The plan is to make all four blocks into one urban ensemble that is architecturally unified into a single project: Imago Mundi. Apart from addressing urban issues of the site, the intention of the project is to deal with fundamental problem that exists in the logic of formal construction: the dialectics of the discrete and the continues, often expressed as the antagonism between polygonal geometry and topology. Correspondingly, the program for Imago Mundi is bifurcated into two programs that are expressive of the conceptual schism:
- The Verlab: The design of the vertical library that is organized as a vertical topological labyrinth. The concept of the library is to be redefined and the newly proposed building be situated where the Helmsley Building is currently located.
- A digital media center called Planet Inc. will embody all sorts of digital information content from big data to gamefying reality . The Planet Inc. will constitute the renovation of the Metlife building into a new media center.
- In addition to these two programs a cultural program that connects the mediates the space between the Verlab and Planet Inc. plus commercial facilities and parking for the project. The top-level open space between the Verlab and Plant Inc. will be a topological plaza to mediate the two buildings.
Midterm Work
Final Presentation Work
Planet Inc. / A HUB FOR DATA ACCUMULATION AND RETENTION
[Plausible affects of data modification in altering futuristic outcomes]
THESIS:
Counter-factual Affect (Parallel Universe): Will alter the future based on counter-factual statements posed by the individual. The occupied space will alter topographically projecting holographic images of what the plausible outcome “would have been” based on the “what if” statement.
PROGRAMMATIC POSSIBILITIES:
The altered space can allow for a dynamic approach for constantly changing spatial elements. A place for total data modification with reacting topography. A space used for complete enjoyment in satisfying ones curiosity.
PROGRAMMATIC POSSIBILITIES:
A space for total recall, used as a newly developed judicial system for prosecuting by factually exposing the crimes of the individual committed in the past.
THESIS:
Factual Affect (Actual Universe): with no posed counterfactuals, the universe of the individual will not be altered. Nonetheless, the space will take on spatial deformation based on the time of asked projection.
PROGRAMMATIC POSSIBILITIES:
A space that is developed to explore merged universes of occupied agents without any plausable reality of the future.
THESIS:
Glitch Affect (Counter Universe): Serving as a glitch, the system will mesh numerous universes, depending on the occupants, creating a completely fictional outcome of the future.
Outcome A represents the counter factual variation deviated from the original path (B). Therefore, creating an alternative visual outcome of what could have been.
Outcome C represents the past experiences of the agent. Allowing to visually retrieve any information from the past.
Outcome D represents the merging of two parallel factual's and counter factual of different agents. Presenting an amusing combination of various outcomes.
Boris Leokumovich
STUDENT ARCHITECT