OVERVIEW
In so much as it imposes material limits on space, the envelope required to house the flora and fauna of habitats foreign to that of the site, always threatened to undo the project’s aspirations to boundlessness and fluctuation. Two morphological strategies aim to counteract both the size and fixity of its body; on the one hand its depth is reconceived as a multi-layered membrane, paper thin at its edges and swelling to contain an interior environment and its attendant mechanical installations. On the other its planimetric edges are soft and irregular undoing the objectness that accompanies orientation with its sense of fronts and backs. The entirety is conceived as a moment of suspended animation, just as a cloud’s body, composed of individual water molecules condenses momentarily to take on material embodiment.
Its surface is broken down by means of a process of recursive subdivision, the monotony of its expanse being counteracted by the fluctuations in scale. The panels, once divided, register the field of information in their subsequent specialization and differentiation.
FIG 2.56 AXONOMETRIC OVERVIEW OF ENVELOPE
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ENVELOPE