Urban Porosity:
Innovative Workspace

2nd Year Spring 2018  \\  East Liberty, Pittsburgh, PA

The aim of this project is to use the operative term of porosity to explore the relationship of our constructions to the local conditions and those within it through the production of form.

Porosity operates across scales from the urban realm to the material conditions of architecture. It serves as a means to interrogate fundamental architectural conditions such as the relationships between a building’s interiority and the exterior public realm, the vertical spatial connections between floors, or the mediation of the environment through its enclosure.

Focusing on the concept of urban porosity by utilizing steel and concrete, I start with using steel strips to generate different number of openings in various sizes to create a transition from openness to enclosure by allowing different amount of light to go into the building. The light transition also reflects the use of the building: area around entrance is louder and more welcome to the public, while the rest of the building is exclusive for the people working there. Moreover, given to the characteristic of steel, which can be easily bend and, my design contains the strips from the roof and facade to create the interior stair and the pockets and platforms in the working spaces that the workers can relax and look at the outside.

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