Anthony Mull - Urban Qualities and Materialities

The topic of object vs. unit was brought up during our last presentation and after thinking about it, I came to the realization that my workflow had a dichotomy of the two subjects embedded into it. What I mean by that is my building generation was operating on both scales and were often contrasting or informing one another. On the scale of the unit, I was always considering how it would stack vertically and its restriction to a bounding box. And on the scale of the object, I was always considering the limitations of the unit as a reference for generating iterations of mass. Although the unit is the primary driver, I believe that working on both scales, without one dominating the other, can inform one another and produce peculiar results. These are some samples of how I have been aggregating the unit structure on the scale of the object. By testing on the scale of the object, it is much easier to produce multiple results with more variation while understanding how the unit sys...

Demonstration of an additional step added to my tower aggregation (still working it out). Vertical Stacking Twist Deformation - Expression of a diversity of living experiences, views, and unit layouts Lattice Deformation - Response to the site outline, nearby buildings, and program density

Looking to introduce additional architectural elements into the cell to further develop it at the unit level

Rem Koolhaas, in “Kill the Skyscraper” in Content, argues that the skyscraper, originally invented as a social condenser, has slowly devitalized social performances throughout history and ultimately lost its programmatic heterogeneity in the form of a high-rise model made up of the repetition of stacking of the ground floor.  Matthew Soules, in his recent Log publication, references 432 Park Avenue as the extreme endpoint of this condition, using Rafael Vinoly’s own term “constant object” to define the building as “an object as devoid of differentiation as possible.” Soules attributes the evolution of the skyscraper to finance capitalism, suggesting that it was amplified the asset function of architecture dramatically. As the asset of architecture grows, it displaces its initial intent of pure inhabitable shelter and a direct physical experience. The skyscraper has become a commodity because of its increase in land value, and therefore needs to be reassessed on how it can increa...

Dynamic Elevation Series: The vertical gradient and twisting of the units creates a heterogeneity in appearance and program distribution, disrupting the standardized repetition of floor plates in the current high rise model.