This was a student project by Beau Seyerle for Bart Overly's ARCH 844 course, Autumn 2005. The problem faced here is What is Universal. A Universal System was compiled through a series of studies dealing with various network maps and issues of time/scheduling, dispersal/density, and avoidance (all in comparison with another similar discipline). The synthesis then took these principles and applied them to the program for the Arts Center itself mainly looking at path and adjacency (i.e. what wants to circulate through or around certain programmatic elements etc.) From here the diagram evolved into a system of efficient (access/adjacency) and inefficient (non-access) way to experience the building. The tour path, or event hallway, is designed to connect to all the necessary events that a person would want to see, but not necessarily allow access to them. When a person moves along the path the relationship of the programmatic nodes changes as the tour path crosses over itself. The reasoning behind using such a device as the tour path is to begin to explore the notion of event and spectator. When a person begins the tour by watching the performers prepare they unknowingly become a part of that event, and every time the buildings behavior changes that relationship to the event becomes more complex until they realize (after exiting the tour) that they were in fact on display. -- Beau Seyerle
