architecture >> diagram >> re-architecture

One of the strategies to visualise how the information received from the content-generators (i.e. the end-users), insofar as the Remapping LA project is concerned, can be mapped onto a system which can then in turn be translated into real architecture that is experienced through space and time.

The diagram above illustrates a branch diagram of how information is sorted out once it enters a central repository. It gets sorted out through four main 'channels' of what could define one's culture, before being distributed into a more specific 'bin', or 'tag'. Thus, for example, a

The above diagram is not meant to be definitive diagram, but rather, to be seen as a strategy as to how information (or its distribution) can influence, or be translated into, how the architecture is organised. Given the multiple variations that can result from such a method of charting information, the architecture would in some sense have to be able to adapt to change. It would ideally be portable, programmable, and easily assembled depending on the nature of the information system by which it abides.

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This, in a way, is a re-thinking, in that the architecture is predicated by the information distribution, rather than the other way around. It is a variation - and in some senses, a departure - from the originally-planned underground tunnel system, which was much more deterministic in its organisation. In that scheme, the nature of the pods (being partially or wholly underground) prevented for any variation in the information distribution system.

Yet, some common elements are taken through. The notion of journeying from one chamber to another via connecting wormholes still, very much, applies. The media chambers, whose walls act as projection screens, can still very much be employed.

The above is a set of spatial elements resulting from reading the diagram at the top of this post. Formal expressions aside, the entire park could well be formulated by a system of combinations of these elements.

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An idea that came up for the media spaces came from an accordion structure (not the 'piano' and chord button aspects of the instrument, but the membrane and ribs structure), wherein the membrane expands to literally allow for more air to channel through.

The media spaces would ideally have an ethereal physical quality, with a sense of temporalness and with the possibility of being adapted to other sites. The sketches below illustrate, at a fundamental level, how cocoon-like structures which can expand and contract can be employed. Each cocoon comprises a series of steel 'O' frames, variably sized. These frames are attached to one another via hydraulic pipes, which can be programmed to expand and contract.

Wrapped over these frames would be two layers of skin. The internal skin, made of a semi-transparent polymeric material, would form the projection surfaces. The projectors would in turn be affixed, in strategic positions, onto the steel 'O' frames, and data would be fed to it via Bluetooth or wi-fi, whichever the prevailing technology.


A high volume of media that (proverbially) enters each media 'cocoon' would cause it to expand; this expansion would be controlled by software in the central server that would send signals to the inter-frame hydraulic pipes. A "high volume" of media would, for instance, be when the central repository receives a high amount of user-recorded content on a specific genre, say, art-related activities in Chinatown.

Conversely, a low volume of media would lead to the software instructing the hydraulic pipes to shorten, thereby reducing the size (and thus media space) of the cocoons. Naturally, the speed of the cocoons constricting or expanding would be at a pace that is non-hazardous to the visitors.

An overall landscape characterised by constantly-shifting forms (of media cocoons), highly organic-looking and with translucent skins, and dotted with 'Telepods' (see future post), would indeed provide for an interesting park experience.