- Discipline
- Architecture
- Semester
- Spring 2008
- designer
- Dinnen, Stephen
- Location
- Columbus, Franklin, Ohio, United States, NA
- Description
- This was a student project by Stephen Dinnen for Robert Livesey's ARCH 442 course, Winter 2008. The form of the Swoop expresses the idea of spatial fluidity being used as both a boundary and an organizational device. The Swoop mixes the definite boundary of the coastline with the land and the sea, creating a harbor and a main entrance. The water becomes an important organizational device that separates program into the private spaces of the animal hospital and the public spaces of the aquarium. This water tank spans the length of the building and establishes a level of transparency between both programs. This aquatic transparency informs viewers of a spatial existence on either side of the tank. However, the water correspondingly smudges the image of that space, blurring the boundary between public and private. The ability of the Swoop to expand and compress allows for the building to encompass movement and static zones. The static or collective zones are created where the figure of the swoop bends. These zones provide large programmatic spaces that collect people for specific activities which do not require a fluid movement of circulation. The narrowness of the compressed spaces only allow for a path-orientated circulation which was developed into the form of a loop. The loop starts and finishes in the same place and leads a person through a specific progression of spaces from beginning to end. The idea of a museum/aquarium path leads the viewer along such a route in which information is learned and accumulated. -- Stephen Dinnen
- Notes
- Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture Student Archives Collection