Architectural Association Diploma 14, 2018-2019
Tutors: Pier Vittorio Aureli, Maria Scheherazade Guidici
The project looks at the development of gardens as an integral feature of commercial space, beginning from its modern inception with the pastoral landscaping of suburban American corporations. A rethinking of the atrium garden could embrace the pastoral escapism displayed in its corporate and commercial instances as means by which to create a new space of communal life. The proposal appropriates the typology of the atrium garden, separating it from any adjacent spaces of production and consumption. The resulting structure becomes a new common interior; part greenhouse, part big box, part community center, part lobby. The project seeks to subvert and replace suburban destinations outside the home, such as office parks, shopping centers, strip malls, and theaters, replacing them with spaces that create a more localized and de-commodified life within suburban sprawl.
