Stacking city

Flexible Living Object in Philadelphia

Personal Acedemic Project
Instructor : Simon Frommenwiler
August-December 2014

From bottom to top, the structure system, program, and circulation system continuously change.
The lower part of the structure is very chunky and rigid; however, the upper structure becomes very thin and ephemeral. This change happens continuously by splitting the bigger structure into the smaller structure. In this structure system, there are two different schemes to achieve the flexibility of the building. The rigid and chunky part is designed to resist to increasing loads in the future. The thin and numerous columns in the upper part can rely on each other so that some of them can be removed when there is a programmatic need.
The beauty of this structural system is that this functional purpose creates the overall form of the structure similar to a tree, which has a trunk and branches.

Structure System

from bottom to top

This project aims to show one typology of a flexible building that can be altered its form and function when the need changes in the future. The answer for the flexibility of building here is the structure system. By combining two different structure system, this building is testing the two different types of flexibility.