KTC 234: Knowledge Trade Center

Building upon the urban exploration of vacancy proposed in The Available City project by David Brown, nine Chicago-based teams present their own responses to the issue at stake. Employing drawings and models, each project investigates the architectural possibilities of vacancy, with a specific focus on the role of collective spaces and the relationships they can foster. Diverse in their location, scale, program, and aesthetic sensibility, these projects ultimately demonstrate that we can leverage vacancy to generate new architectural scenarios that have the potential to address current social and economic issues.

A Place without Currency, Multinational, Objectless, Systematic, Self-Sufficient, Lightweight, Prefabricated, and Fully Energy Integrated.

The collective space is limitless, inside and outside each of the 10′ x 12′ x 36′ prefab self-sufficient cells. As they interlock, they create a place like no other, in which knowledge is the main form of currency and its exchange the primary function of this community.

Energy, water, and waste technologies are embedded in 50% of the high tech (mother cells) that support the low tech (surrogate cells).

13 layers, 18 cells per layer, form a total of 234 units, that once grouped create a nonhierarchical system of interconnected spaces. As the clusters stack, they generate vertical linkages and new spaces emerge, reinforcing the idea of a community in which the values of real estate assigned to height and orientation are proven obsolete and neutralized by Function.

Knowledge will conquer all frontiers; it is the only form of FREEDOM and true disengagement from a society in which image reigns.

KTC 234 — The Fall of Designed Cities and Rise of Organic Communities.

Concept and Development

Francisco Gonzalez-Pulido.

Constructability Concepts WS

Werner Sobek.

Model

Joe Madon and Maria Miller.