Multiple Singularity
Work/Live Hybrid
Location : Fifth Floor, Old Chicago Post Office, Chicago, USA
Studio : Undergrad studio 2 'Post-Office Life / Post Office - Life' by Andrew Santa Lucia
Date : Spring 2016
Built Area : 3,200 Sq. Ft.
Materials Used : Tensile Fabric, Dyes, Concrete, AeroGel, Wood, Glass
Keywords : Work, Living, Flex Space, Studio, Interior Urbanism, Adaptive Reuse, Fluid Spaces
Multiple Singularity is a work/live hybrid domestic setting that re-imagines the architecture of work and living spaces to better suit our contemporary lifestyle.
Through architecture, this project explores the dissolving boundaries between work and leisure while attempting to increase the permeability between these historically separate worlds enabling a seamless transition from one to another.
User Profile
Users : A design-build duo of an Architect & a Contractor
Millennial Workaholics.
Absolutely love their work. Look to work all the time. Spend a lot of time on their laptops. Constantly move around in the studio and seek flexibility and fluidity in their architectural environment.
Project Description
Multiple Singularity is an exploration of a new kind of architecture that responds to the changing work-life dynamics. It proposes an alternate scenario for the live/work dichotomy where both these worlds begin to overlap. It explores the dissolving boundaries between work and leisure while attempting to increase the permeability between these historically separate worlds enabling a seamless transition from one to another. The title is also a reference to the context of this project within a huge floor plate of the old Chicago post office that houses similar work-live studios, creating a new urbanism of interior spaces.
To meet the demands of a fluid, flexible and seamless lifestyle of the users, a traditional rigid living room has been replaced with with a huge hammock that spans over the entire space. Traditional furniture has been replaced by extruded shapes of to complement the hammock. The shapes interact with the hammock giving rise to a new utilitarian landscape - 'Hammockscape'.
These shapes of various sizes and materials function as storage spaces and drawing or projection surfaces on the threshold level. On the hammockscape level they act as auxiliary working surfaces allowing for more flexibility and options for users.
Together they explore the potential for a new architecture that responds to the changing work-life dynamics and helps integrate them better.
Floor Plan
Ground Level
Floor Plan
Hammockscape Level
Section
Looking East
Section
Looking South
Site Model
Aggregation of multiple hybrid units
The studio negotiated space and adjacency of each individual project.
Detail Model
Showing previously highlighted area
Casting the slab of the 1 inch = 1/4th foot model.
The pillows were design and fabricated with help of Sabrina Yang.
The hammock's pattern was created by heatpressing hand painted dye onto fabric.
To recreate the aged dilapidated interior condition of the post office, the columns and floor were cast in a mixture of concrete, perlite and moss.
The existing columns injected with resin to resemble aerogel used to reinforce the structure while also maintaining visual integrity of the space.
Modular, adaptable shelving units double up as translucent walls to provide privacy.
Also called frozen smoke, aerogel is a light weight, lowest-density solid with high load bearing capabilities.
Aerogel is a material that is 98.2% air. As a result, it is almost weightless and appears transparent for the most part.