liz richardson
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ideas
making
the space between
charlotte latin school
comprehensive educational facility
Encompassing an entire semester, this comprehensive investigation began with an extensive site analysis of property owned by Charlotte Latin School, a private K-12 institution in the southern region of the city. The severely sloped, extensively wooded site was to be the location for a new classroom building as an addition to the academic campus located to the north. The structure was to serve as an environmental science facility, and was designed according to sustainable practices [specifically, rainwater collection and thermal mass storage] in order to provide the students with an intimate experience with such environmentally-conscious ways of living.
Particularly interested in the break down of the built-form and its dispersion across the landscape, the project quickly became focused on the development of a formal language that would communicate this notion of fragmentation. The final solution included a path of transparency leading from the entrance, through the structure, and into the landscape along which the built-form began to decompose and eventually bleed into the surrounding forest area.
bridging university city
pedestrian bridge
Working within the context of UNC-Charlotte's quickly expanding campus, this project for a pedestrian walkway is to extend from an adjacent neighborhood to the new main campus entrance. Due to the fact that the bridge was to be located at such a major intersection, I became interested in the various external forces that would be at work in this location. The continuous vehicular traffic in combination with heavy pedestrian traffic, served as my conceptual form builders. The bridge subsequently becomes a synthesis of a series of aluminum ribbons that are bent and formed in response to the approaching traffic. A secondary ribbon of folded concrete is representative of the pedestrian path of travel and dictates the walkway form.
rethinking grand army plaza
ideas competition entry
This project was completed as an entry in an international ideas competition for the redesign of Grand Army Plaza, one of the most under utilized public spaces in Brooklyn, New York. Acting as a pivotal player in the fabric of Brooklyn, Grand Army Plaza is marked by the potential to act as a space of centrality and connection to the composition of the larger urban fabric. The frequency and intensity of the folded landscape planes is derived from the mapping of open spaces that serve as collection spaces for members of the community throughout Brooklyn.
This sense of interaction and collection is currently missing from the Grand Army Plaza site, but begs to be cultivated through the activation of the inner plaza and outer berms. A series of folded landscape planes frame the existing fountain and ascend upwards to a dramatic amphitheater space looking towards the historic arch. With the re-activation of the berms in combination with a central plaza that promotes chance encounters among members of the community, Grand Army Plaza will become the dynamic urban space it was intended to be.
