The Dome City
Studio, Spring 2017
Instructor: Lluis Ortega (Illinois Institute of Technology)
Collaborator: Junfeng Mao
Site: Panama Canal, Panama
ABSTRACT
The international shipping industry carries around 90% of the world trade, bringing benefits for consumers across the world. However, seaborne process remained invisible and imperceptible to most people. Our target nomads, tourists coming to see this spectacle, will encounter seafarers traveling on the cargo ships and local fishers passing the area in their temporary settlement at the Dome City.
As opposed to traditional zoning, the locations of each urban program in the Dome City are decided by form generated by a series of operations. Then programs are put in according to the dimension, form and edge conditions with a hierarchy from water infrastructure and logistic circulation to living components. Terraces of 0.2m to 8m function as stairs, wading pool, water collection pool, water purifying landscape, theatre, market restaurant, living units and storage for supplies. Various living conditions give characteristics to the units, forms different types of communities, which in return shapes the form of the Dome City. By doing so, rich hybrid conditions of urban living will be created for this fantasy of infrastructural spectacle.
CONTEXT - Global Shipping Industry and Panama Canal
PROGRAM + USER - A Place for Temporary Living
DOME STRUCTURE - From Ship Berth to Inhabitable Space
The structure of dome is designed to accommodate New Panamax in the center with human-scale space on the surface. The configurations of multiple domes are generated by the stopping route of ships. Domes are connected by sharing either one side or one foot. The sharing of sides will create continuous canopy of inhabitable space. Due to the constraint of turning and stopping circle, not every Panamax-sized dome houses New Panamax. The sharing of foot can generate voids within the cluster, which loosen the tension of the mega-structure and allow light to come inside.
PLATE GENERATION - Distributing Population by Random Walk Model
INFRASTRUCTURE - Sculpted Form
COMMUNITIES - Fractals and Typologies
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