The Continuous Enclave: Strategies in Bypass Urbanism
For his final student project presented last month at Rice University, Viktor Ramos produced The Continuous Enclave: Strategies in Bypass Urbanism.
The project explores how new forms of habitable infrastructure might be extrapolated from a geopolitical agreement -- in this case, materializing architectural form from the legal interstices of the Oslo Accords.
The result is a fantastic example of architectural speculation: genuinely massive -- and impossibly cantilevered -- bridges used as transport links, aerial housing, and skyborne agricultural complexes, all in one.
I can't help but admire the sheer utopian audacity at work here; I'm reminded of the vertiginous landscape of K.W. Jeter's "Farewell Horizontal" or even the megascale splendor of Niven's titular "Ringworld."
"Ultimately, this thesis questions the potential absurdity of partition strategies within the West Bank and Gaza Strip by attempting to realize them."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad this line was included, as I was starting to get worried that this was a serious project. As it turns out, we're looking at an architectural 'modest proposal'.
Lovely, nonetheless.