16 Nov
This project is about a highly glamorized domestic typology: the urban bachelor pad. The client, a very young and successful Wall Street commodities trader wanted to create an entirely interior landscape away from the city and the outside world.
Architecture In Formation‘s response was to consider the experience of this primary residence as a daily return to Plato’s Cave; as the conscious exfoliation of exterior stresses through the creation of an enveloping abstract domestic landscape, where light and shadow could simply be appreciated for their beauty and mystery, and the outside world could cease to exist. The resulting completed project, Fractal Pad, is a sumptuous geometric oasis for a lover of mathematics and geometry. It develops from the formal logic of fractal geometry, bending space and light to create a seamless, harmonious experience. The crisp new interior installation contrasts starkly and elegantly against the loft?s original rough-hewn concrete columns and slab, and a rich, blood-red Santos mahogany plank floor, creating a desired effect that is at once akin to a futuristic private luxury aircraft and a primordial cave.
The two overriding initial inspirations for the project were:
- The existing faceted concrete column capitals that punctuated an otherwise perfectly homogenous orthogonal landscape.
- The extreme attenuation of exterior view and natural light across a very long, open space.
The original existing 3000 SF loft was quite simply, a ‘developer special’. While located within one of the most sought-after residential loft buildings in Tribeca, the existing residential space had serious issues: most significantly, there were windows at only one end of the 75feet long space, meaning natural light had no way of reaching the northern half of the interior. Ironically, that was the attraction to the client.
The most conceptually significant installation into the project was, go figure, the TV. Of course TV and internet would remain the primary window from which to reconnect back to the outside world from the residence, so we opted to create a virtual window, on par scale-wise, and spatially opposite the loft’s main window. The windowless back wall becomes image surface for a 12″ wide projection screen for TV, computer, and a video light sculpture commissioned by LA video artist Jeffrey Wells. These two windows, which book-end the 75feet long public space of the residence, produce two competing views, each totally controlled by the owner: one a view south onto the quiet Tribeca side street, and the other view, when not tuned to TV or the computer, is the blazing, open, cloudless, desert sky of Joshua Tree, CA, on an adjustable time-lapse, from dawn-to-dusk, capturing the western desert sunlight. The architect’s classic obsession with natural light and air is juxtaposed with the equally compelling desire for seductive image. And poised between these two windows, hovering above the kitchen, the ‘projection cloud’ becomes a futuristic light sculpture and focal point. The flat, floating western walls become the backdrop for an evolving art collection, which we have been intimately involved in developing with the client.
The entire project was ostensibly ‘carved’ around the existing structure, and could not have been conceived without extensive 3D and parametric modeling that allowed us to test a range of material possibilities within the confines of budget, light emitting characteristics (the shrink-wrapped PVC projection cloud and a range of back-lit Corian elements). The final product is an ambitious endeavor exploring the subtleties and complexities of urban domesticity. Polished and raw, sacred and profane, mechanical and artisanal, UV and DPI, art and life: these are elements at play in this carefully-curated domestic landscape.
