Layered Landscape

The building program, a college dorm, is generated through site geometry and urban context. An already existing layering within the surrounding city context sets up an order moving through the site while the historical significance of the old train tunnel passing through the site acts as the urban center moving through these layers. It’s in the reconnecting and interdependency of these layers that the program emerges. Above grade, dorm rooms are contained within a set of parallel layers becoming enclosed “bars” allowing for an efficient organization to maximize occupancy. The proximity of these bars sets up a dialog through layers and between building bars. This efficiency of organization is also meant to encourage the use of the communal spaces at either end of each bar. It’s within the living space, the levels of the communal spaces, that the interdependency of these layers is realized. The living space of each bar becomes the shared living space of the community. At the activities level the geometry of the site with the interdependency of the layers allows for the expansion and contraction of program.