A brief description of the building:
The building is a dynamic, sculpted car park using the roofs of the car park to create a landscape of flowing green lawns which partially encircle a redefined plinth of a majestic old building. These lawns hint at an outdoor urban amphitheatre, with the plinth of the existing building becoming the stage for large performances of 10 000 people but this is not its only function. The park has been designed to inspire adaptability. When there is a large concert, small concert, flea market or park it will be a different experience.
Site lines and lack there of have been used to create areas of viewing, dancing, movement routes and chill out spaces so as to assist the spaces already created by people in crowds
There is loads of research that I did for this project but I will not bore you with it all now. Instead I'll "wow" you with some images. Thanks Carson for rendering these.
Below is the video. I would like to sincerely thank Carson Smuts for all the work he did in making this video clip, 3D renderings and general encouragement through some hard times. I would also like to thank Sibot from the Real Estate Agents for the backing track.
I am fascinated by the way a crowd at a festival will flow, swarm, gather, eddy and pulsate to music in a contained space.
In the beginning of this clip I have tried to show how I have used this pulse to animate an otherwise inanimate form. I like to think of the grass planes being like a dress flowing over a dancer’s body: An inanimate object (the dress) being animated by the body beneath it which is in turn being animated by music.
The second portion of the clip is showing how people arriving at the site will activate it and then swarm out of the building to activate the rest of the area
The last bit is a fly through of the building.
The site for the building, in case you were interested, was the park in Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa. You might recognise some of the existing buildings if you know the area.
They have recently turned the park into a parking lot but with no lawn so bang goes this idea. Too bad for the kids wanting to kick a football around.
