Robert De Santiago Wall Project

My original intention for this design was to have everything exist for a reason. I began by playing around with the grid and dividing the 32’x20’ space into 11’, 9’, 7’ and 5’ horizontally and a similar, but less complex pattern of 10’, 5’, and 5’ vertically.
From there, I wanted to explode the grid in a way that creates the habitable space, and the pattern works in a way that contracts towards a single corner. In addition, the “pattern” leaves the first level at a human scale of 10’. I know that the pattern isn’t exact, but I could not come up with an easy pattern like the 32’ one that works with 20’.
The steady contraction leading to an explosion of mass creates an illusion of relief at a very human scale. I worked on several patterns to create an “explosion” and finally settled on 7’, 5’, 8’, 3’ and 7’, 8’, 4’, 6’. The scale is the number of feet that each beam extends out from the patterned base frame. Once again, this is not an exact pattern but it begins with a mixture of odd numbers and tries to invert that pattern in a way that creates chaos. From here, the two patterns repeat, but are pushed back 4’ each and the final column is another 4’ setback of the first pattern, creating the pattern of 1, 2, 1, 2, 1 in elevation.
Also, I worked with the thickness of beams and decided to make the base frame of moderate thickness at 4.5” for structural support, but not make it obvious that it’s the base frame. As for the rest of the beams, I made the bottom, or structural beams, the thinnest at 3” and the traditionally “less structural” beams 6”. The 3” beams can still be strong enough if they are made of strong material, but the inversion of structural thickness plays tricks on common sense.
Finally, the panels of transparent, translucent, and solid material are placed in a way so that the solid panels are facing downwards in a sort of overbearing way. In addition, the panels are oriented so that the habitable space receives the most sunlight.