TRI-PEAKS

Fall 2022

INSTRUCTOR: TOMMY YANG COORDINATOR: LAURA GARÓFALO IN COLLABORATION WITH BINA (BENNUI) GUO

In this eight week project, we created a culinary institute that takes three main factors into consideration: Pittsburgh’s urban population, the natural biome, and a chef’s philosophy. Our philosophy revolved around respecting natural resources, being adventurous with the ingredients, and connecting the community.

With the culinary institute’s aim to connect the Pittsburgh community together and educate people about the natural food resources, the site is located at Frick Park, where visitors and students will have chances to forage around the trees and the spices of the natural biome. To accomodate Pittsburgh’s cold winter, there are also a greenhouse and outdoor planters where students will be able to plant and grow natural ingredients and share them to the community in the farmer’s market. Since our philosophy was closely related to the outdoors, there is also an outdoor amphitheater and cooking area where students may have lectures and classes.

The three “peaks“, which are created with rotated pentagonal geometries, emulated the hills of Pittsburgh and served as the key gathering spaces of this institute. The geometries were inspired by an abstracted field drawing, created by breaking apart the plan of a vernacular malay house and stacking the parts together after rotation and reflection.

Through our model making progress, we also explored materiality and modelled actual construction techniques with reinforced concrete and wood framing techniques using chipboard as the reinforcement. The section model is cut at a corner demonstrating two of the peaks, the interior of the lobby as well as the lecture theater.

Project Overview