VERTICAL DRIVE
Competition : eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition
Vertical Drive imagines a glimpse into the future of architecturally integrated transportation systems. In this scenario, urban "high-rise" living is represented as a typical suburban block, simply turned vertical. The seamless navigation between horizontal street-scape and vertical sky-boulevard is made possible by a new liquid nitrogen / superconductive navigation vehicle & electromagnetic infrastructural track-system.
CULTURE
Our society’s obsession with digital technologies has become the prominent factor in social-cultural evolution. Wireless technologies & information-access devices have enabled a factor of mobility & spontaneity in the way people organize and schedule events, particularly in the high-density urban environment. Vertical Drive intends to nurture this new style of human interaction by providing a more integrated system for user navigation and dwelling.
SITE
This concept was inspired by Bertrand Goldbergs Marina City Complex of 1964. Vertical Drive intends to build off the idea that architecture should manifest itself as an infrastructural extension rather than an isolated instance.
PUBLIC / PRIVATE
Traditional high-rise architecture has developed gravitationally deformed. Programmatic arrangements within these buildings were treated immiscibly, as public & private realms were separated through newly invented spatial buffers. These buffers, including elevators and public corridors, have desensitized user’s values of proximity and formal interaction. In addition, these synthetic filters have prevented innovative potentials for new origins of vertical-architectures.
This proposal intends to resolve these issues through the reintroduction of formalities in a vertically oriented format. Events such as the “Driveway” and “Foyer” are positioned so that there is no sequential break in the private-to-private experience of leaving a vehicle and entering a home. These transitional thresholds once held significant value as gateways between public and private realms, but have lost meaning in the application of the low-contrast, gradient-like urban domain.