Architectural Argument
This Project is a high end fashion Boutique for Thierry Mugler, which will be located in Soho, New York on the corner of Canal and Hudson Street. It is a project that caters towards the new age in Fashion and Architecture Culture. It looks forward to the new styles in fashion through Thierry Mugler and the revolutionary building materials that are available at present. Even though the building uses Carbon Fiber and ETFE Glass for the building materials, it does not only look towards the future, but reflects on parts of the past and really presents itself in a new way.
Precedent
The site for this project is best described as a courtyard in between two buildings; therefore my Project formally can be identified as an object in a court similar to Bramante’s Tempietto which is a perfect position within a courtyard. It describes a flow within a site that invites one in with multiple tactics. One is brought from the exterior to the interior under these strands that serve as a canopy and public space. This area can be explained as “middle ground”.
The exterior shell takes precedent from the Art Nouveau movement in terms of the figural sensibility and ornamentation; this produces an affect similar to Bernini’s Baldacchino. One can gaze upon Bernini’s Masterpiece for hours and continue to find new and interesting parts to it, due to its ornamentation as well as surface articulation. It is almost as though one is underneath this “Baldacchino” and can stare at the interior of this shell for hours and continue to see different things about it. Every step that one takes inside, there is a new sensation that one feels and a new experience that they get by looking at the interior.
Affect
The exterior shell is based on a previous prototype design, but instead of interweaving the strands to itself, they strand to multiple prototypes. Each “main body” is strategically placed to form the shell of the building. The web of strands conform the entirety of the project and wraps around the program of the project. In every place that one goes, they experience a new affect that complements the fashion that is being sold.
The project, while inspired by the Art Nouveau sensibility, in turn it misbehaves and becomes bad and hardcore. The strands that make up the shell can be referred to as “Straps” recalling the idea of “bondage”. This body is explained as the archaic form of Architecture that holds up this new form of building material. This archaic form is really being strapped down and bonded to the ground. These straps are tightly bound around a now void thus the form of the outer shell. This archaic form of Architecture is denied existence and is now only used in the construction portion of the progressive movement of architecture. Many people believe that as one life dies, another begins and replaces the old one. This explains the death of the archaic form and the beginning of the way architecture will be in this new form.
Within the strands, glass has been placed strategically to create multiple affects. It is mostly transparent, but due to the variance in thickness, it creates a translucent feeling. This way, the glass is really making a painting that is alive, continuously moving and changing. This gives a sensation of curiosity to those who are on the exterior of the building. They are able to experience the fashion on the inside in a different way at first and this makes them want to know what it really looks like. The distortion of the fashion gives the affect of intrigue and the interest moves one from the exterior to the interior where the painting of the glass takes on a whole new meaning and purpose. It creates privacy and protection from the exterior since the distortion of the glass allows one to not fully understand what they look like from the exterior.
Architecture as part of the Celebrity Culture
The coloration of the interior is meant to reinvent the red carpet feeling, and to produce an integration of the culture of architecture to the culture of fashion via the “red carpet” ground. Architecture needs to be integrated to contemporary popular culture and this strategy becomes a vehicle and a commentary on how to and the importance of achieving it as well as gain this sensation of importance. However, this sensation is temporary and normally dies once they enter the event. This project addresses the idea that we can continuously reinvent the red carpet feeling by recreating it so that it runs throughout the entirety of the project. This idea also helps in the way that because they are important, they will buy clothes that are also important and highly fashionable. If the red carpet idea stopped at the door, then why would the clothes be important if they are after the entry, away from the red carpet? On the bottom floor, one is engulfed in this idea of the red carpet, where they are not only walking on the carpet, but really walking in the carpet itself because it surrounds them and creates a canopy like structure. The red carpet or ground condition flows upward and creates a journey to the top. The pleats that make up part of the ground condition allude to a carpet that may have been bunched up, but instead of giving when one steps on it, they stay stiff and rigid.
The red carpet feeling does not only cater towards how people feel about themselves, but also to how this building plays an important role in the history of Architecture. The aggressive strides it is taking to be very different in a city where almost all the architecture is in the archaic form of building, it stretches to makes itself different, obviously by materials, but also by this idea that the red carpet flows throughout the entirety and does not just end at the footsteps. This creates the impression that it must be extremely important on its own.
Interior Rendering - Entrance
Interior Rendering - Couture Showroom and Lobby
Interior Rendering - Cafe
Interior Rendering - Gallery Two
Aerial Render
Rendering Placed on Site One
Rendering Placed on Site Two
Floor Plan One
Floor Plan Two
Section One
This project was my final product from my ARCH 205 Fall Semester 2011 Studio while at Texas A&M University. Obviously there were many programs used, but the main program that was used to create the bulk of the project was:
Autodesk Maya 2011
Other Programs used:
Rhinoceros 4.0
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Other Projects from this studio can be viewed at the website below and continue through the Mugler Pavilions. There were 13 that were posted, so be sure to check them all out!
http://www.theoremas-gabe00fab.blogspot.com/2011/12/mugler-pavilion.html
