| borden partnership |
|
|
|
|
|
USC data shop |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
| Lodged within the existing fabric of the USC School of Architecture in a turn of the century cast-in-place concrete and masonry building, the DATASHOP has the responsibility to condense the intensity of current digital technology by conjoining digital representational production with digital fabrication in one learning classroom. This facility sets a new agenda for the integration of media and design and develop a “high profile” central lab for existing and expanding digital hardware in a second story slot of space at the heart of the school’s two courtyards. Establishing the goals of using the technology that it will house to fabricate itself, each technology becomes a functional shape of its own process. A performative skin as an energy capturing blanket makes the heavy electrical load a neutral net gain and provides an interstitial space for the ventilation requirements of the lab. Extending from walkway to walkway, the scheme removes all existing lateral walls to produce a collective space that can be visually engaged by the passerby. The two ends assume functions directed towards the student community: mailboxes and a rotating gallery wall. Within are a series of materially and formally distinct pavilions each calibrated to the form making sensibilities of the technologies they house.
|