Louis Kahn – Movement diagrams, Philadelphia Planning Study

Central do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro

FIELDS:

A FIELD is any formal or spatial matrix capable of unifying diverse elements while respecting the identity of each.

FIELD configurations are inherently expandable, (…) no single focus, no unifying geometric schema, (…) the overall form is an ellaboration of conditions established locally.

Stan Allen in his essay, Field Conditions

 A New Bus Terminal for Rio de Janeiro

The proposed Novo Rio Bus Terminal in Rio de Janeiro’s Portuaria region is located at a vulnerable point along the Northern axis of the city with access from the Via Perimetral along the city’s coastline.

The bus terminal’s proximity to the neighbouring canal and highway junction, and the fact that the city wants to increase the terminal’s intake of passengers, as part of an overall city plan to expand the city’s’ transport networks has brought on a proposal to transform the current bus terminal into a revitalised hub for the decaying region. The original impetus for this was the 2007 Pan – American Games, but now the plans are motivated by the upcoming 2014 World Cup and potential 2016 Olympic Games).

My project is to speculate how a hybrid architectural infrastructure could alleviate the environmental, transport and cultural bottleneck that currently occurs at this key junction, as mediator for the myriad of cultural, economical, transport, circulatory and environmentl flows converging at this point.

FIELDS MEDIATING FLOWS

Informal Occupancies:

 Currently the city is considering a generic ‘modern’ proposal that neglects the flows of informal economies and events that inhabit the infrastructural contexts, both along the highway and station. Deriving from Italian NeoRealism, the rising Brazilian cinema of the last 10 years, with films like City of God and recently Linha de Passe, focuses in the vivid depiction of raw cultural events. Observing the informal economy and culture depicted in Central Station my project aspires to reconsider the role of cultural inhabitation in a building subject to informal occupancies.

Field-Frames:

As a critique to the existing interchange architecture and ellaborate canopy articulations currently in place, my structural strategy focuses on the development of a habitable truss system that would reconsider the spaceframe as a dynamic and adaptable component that could accommodate the degrees of intensities of occupancy an emerging bus terminal recquires. The structural grid is contingent, expandable, open ended, allowing for an indeterminate growth strategy.

Micro/Macro Environments:

Sensitive to the environmental context, the new terminal takes advantage of sea breeze positioning and acknowledges the neighbouring buildings within its macro ventilation strategy. Responding to the new ventilatory, acoustical and shading micro environments generated by the new Bus Terminal’s Field-Frame, the terminal is actualised to further accommodate the surge of passenger and degrees of occupancy throughout the year.

FIELD INTERCHANGE

Continuing the discourse of the Field and its application in architecture, this project speculates on the implications of a field-infrastructure. This new interchange follows the principles of INTERVAL, REPETITION AND SERIALITY, testing them in a highly volatile fabric of fluxes and surges.