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In Bed with Space

Part 2 Project 2014
Adrian Muller
American University of Beirut | Lebanon
The exploration of architecture without constraints lead me to abstract the relationships between building, site, and user through the means of simultaneously similar and different ready-made standardised elements.

Starting from an intricate analysis of plastic and styrofoam cups, how they are constructed, and respond and deform to touch, I recreated certain conditions between the two cups that were analogous to an architecture and site that have blended together and become infinite; ‘actively engulfing’ one cup into another.

spatial readings and analysis of the cups could be translated to physical conditions and guidelines for an architecture that is to blend and ultimately free itself from the site.

i translated these readings into conceptual models that prove architecture and site can be one and the same given certain conditions of structural autonomy, angle of viewing etc..

i finally began the design process on a continuous roll of tracing paper. working on the same roll through the semester, the project naturally emerges as an uninhibited, unadulterated stream-of-conciousness design process.

working in abstract and precise model-making techniques in parallel with relentless drawing, i let the design process, tools, and materials demand and essentially govern the introduction of architectural elements into the equation.

the project culminated in an installation revealing a process, rather than a final structure on its own. the final design structure is embedded in the cliff-face on the sea-shore in Beirut, facing the national icon; the Pigeons’ Rocks. Relating directly to the site and context, and the critique of the perception of the rock as an icon, the building/installation are designed to respond to determined specific differences in sea-levels as predict to rise to a final maximum level of +12meters over 100 years.

serving as a passive reminder and warning, the project ultimately sinks and lies dormant but accessible, suggesting that its real message as the monument it is designed to be, can never be perceived in its totality. It is born to purpose when it dies along with the icon it is built to represent.

Essentially, a monument to an event that has not yet occurred.

Adrian Muller

Tutor(s)

2014
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