The project seeks to provide alternative environments in Downtown St. Louis. The site sits at the collision of a saturated and expanding entertainment district (BPV), a civic center (Kiener Plaza), and a symbolic monument (Gateway Arch). Downtown lacks a consistent vibrancy and instead, hosts a population of transients. The proposed architecture acts as a machine to facilitate these environments and the movement through each of them.
Superimposed in between two Hilton towers, and above a grand lobby, the building is confused about its position in the city. It doesn’t know if it is being watched by the city or watching over it. It is unsure if it is a part of the existing structure, or if it acts autonomously. The architecture is robust, yet insecure.
The model acts as a stand-in for the building, allowing someone to escape the mundane reality and immerse themselves into an event that I have constructed. The events taking place are a snapshot in a moment of time. One can give them meaning, life, and intention as they please. These interpretative scenarios display a spatial circumstance that occurs within the project, not determined by me, but rather by the users and occupants of the space. This fluidity of space creates an unexpected encounter for anyone who wishes to straddle between reality and the suggested fantasies that occur elsewhere.
The transitions from the mundane hotel lobby into the unexpected CIRCUMSTANCES, EVENTS, AND SPECTACLES are facilitated through portals that meet the ground. Allowing one to encounter the opportunity to engage with these ALTERNATIVE ENVIRONMENTS, or simply to BYPASS them. Modifications to the existing ground floor had to be made to create a more porous envelope, allowing for a greater volume of public, pedestrian EXPLORATION to occur.
The building is clad in a thick scrim, causing the interior environment to APPEAR blurred from THE EXTERIOR OF THE BUILDING, and giving the inhabitant only a vague understanding of their placement in the city with a silhouette of downtown St. Louis. The building is both projecting its presence onto Kiener Plaza, but also accepts projections FROM THE CITY onto its skin. This shifting identity reinforces the buildings ambiguous nature and it’s precarious position in the city. There is an embedded anxiety that the architecture presents TO THE OCCUPANT AND WANDERER, both spatially and in its relationship with the existing hotel.
“architecture will define the places where reality meets FANTASY, reason meets madness, life meets death.” -Bernard tschumi [manhattan transcripts.”]
