A new paradigm for urban landscapes
My cardboard architecture, SkyRoller, is purposed as a cultural landmark and tourist attraction in an urban setting. Since there is an increasing trend of buildings being built taller and more streamlined in order to accommodate space for city dwellers, I take advantage of this to design an architecture that would be set on top of a high rise and offer a unique look at the city skyline. I want visitors to engage in a thrilling experience and therefore, incorporate the forms of a rollercoaster, such as the loops, twists, and the vertical drop downwards. This is effective in producing the excitement because of the opportunity to walk through spirals at such elevation and drop straight down, and because of the visual association with roller coasters. I want to emphasize the architecture as a way for visitors to become a part of this human approach towards the sky while reconnecting it with the ground. For this reason, I design the architecture so that at a specific angle, the sun casts the calligraphy for the Arabic word سماء (in English: sky) in the shadow of the architecture onto the ground. The presence of the visitors becomes integrated in the shadow and the connection between the sky and ground.
The final cardboard model is a product of the application of a few design principles and concepts. The first of which deals with the dimensions of the model. I make a continuous cut in a flat piece of carboard and then extrude it into a model with height, one that can be made as complicated as desired by fixing parts of the cut to itself, bending and folding, texturing, and experimenting with the orientation of the piece. I specifically draw from the visuals of roller coasters to set the shape of the loops and the vertical drop down. Cardboard is most suited for this architecture because it allows for simplicity as I can easily create a single cut that I can continuously pull upwards into the form that I want. This also allows for quick and repeated prototyping to get the exact shape I want and a cohesive feel in the final architecture. The second principle I use adapts from Anamorphosis, which describes a visual piece that appears different when viewed from a different angle. For my model, I design it so that only when the sun shines on it from a unique angle, the shadow that it casts on the ground looks like a calligraphic word of my choosing. From any other visual angle, the design looks random.
Through this architecture, I want to explore how skywalks that are usually built in natural sites would be designed to adapt to the cityscape and what role they would play in it. One of my starting references for this “urban” skywalk was the ARoS Art Museum skywalk which gives a 360-degree vision with colored panels of a neighborhood in Aarhus, Denmark. My architecture aims to incorporate a larger and more wholistic view of the city and skyline as it will be built on a high rise and allow visitors to climb vertically. Another reference was the China skywalk built over a mountain. I wanted to bring into my city version the same thrill that visitors would feel walking over mountains and ravines in the skywalk. I realized rollercoasters were designed to create such thrill in an urban setting and therefore, manipulated their elements into a more interactive design that allowed visitors to slow down and look around. My fascination with the spiral, particularly its use in the continuous stairs down in the Vatican Museum also inspired the continuous spiraling form of my architecture. The additional theme of the shadow incorporating the sky into the ground serves as a commentary on current architectural and urban move towards the sky. The project pushes for urban skywalks to serve as a platform for introducing cities to visitors, changing perspectives of cityscapes, and sparking cultural debate on city architecture.
