TIME, TRANSFORMATION, AND CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURAL RUIN ON THE GOLDEN COAST (2009)

Cornell University AAP Architecture Thesis
Goodwin Sands Medal Recipient

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA

The seacoast fortifications of California’s western coastline were chosen as a site for the tension that exists between the horrifying speculations that spawned their construction and those fictional events that never took place. The primary questions of the project: how does one question not just how an architecture lives and functions in the present, but changes and transforms over time? How does one design a building to outlast the temporality of its program, and become a catalyst for future architectures? How does such an architecture begin to interact with the past, applying its transformations and operations to its site, its narratives and fictions? 

The original gun batteries at Fort Winfield Scott are proposed to be reprogrammed to house a peace exposition crafted to measure the human experience in space. The final stage of transformation, which arises out of the decay of the exposition program, are instruments that measure beyond the architect's ability to control - the passing of time, the elemental nature of the site, and the project’s own physical mortality and decay.