Felipe Rey

The research is located between the natural and the artificial, moving from one to the other. It generates a system of opposites, private public, work life, natural environment, artificial environment. My hypothesis works with the idea of the limit between the natural and the artificial. Studying a natural context, I extract formal and organizational logics to hybridize artificial conditions. The work aims at the construction of an architectural system that changes the way we live. The life of the future points to a dense community that demands open and natural spaces. The construction of natural spaces and microclimates inherits logic and behaviors from the context studied.

Dichotomy proposes the construction of an architectural hybrid model. The research builds a work methodology based on systems of variables. From a natural context, ranges of maximum and minimum values are defined to regulate the capabilities of the model.

The first thing to do is to choose the natural context. This research works with Misiones, province of Argentina. Located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. It is a mountainous area built by peaks and valleys and crossed by multiple rivers. These natural conditions shape a constantly changing territory, which adapts according to climatic and artificial conditions, mutating and updating its organization.

The first system of variables that is generated in the investigation is the topography system. From the ground, a network of cells is built that adapts to the slopes. This network is transformed depending on the slope of the terrain and its location in height. Defines larger cells associated with valleys and smaller cells associated with peaks. By means of an algorithm the values can vary and regulate the sizes of the cells. In this way we can produce hundreds of possible artificial grounds. The algorithm works with 5 concatenated and dependent variables.
The topographic network is evaluated and analyzed. The variety of cell shapes and sizes is then cataloged and isolated. This results into a catalog of geometries and dimensions that are ordered from largest to smallest and are classified into three large groups. Work, hybrid and housing. The combination of these groups gives new subgroups and new forms emerge.

Download abstract