The primary program of Surface Tension is an aquarium (with research and support spaces), however, by treating the program as a distributed field, and understanding the given site as a pliable surface with an active section, the site can be manipulated to accommodate multiple contingencies-daily users/ferry commuters, and visitors/tourists-and create multivalent relationships between user groups and program. The threshold between the aquarium and the public park then becomes a programmatic datum that allows certain elements such as the research and exhibition tower to transgress between adjacent realms. This act of programmatic transgression cultivates a sense of daily discovery in the park and produces moments of convergence whereby visitors inside the aquarium encounter images of the city and of aquatic exhibition at once. Beneath the programmatic datum, linked atomized and sinuous exhibition poche propagate a sense of osmotic engagement.

Surface tension

Project Info

Collaborators: JP Jackson
Yu Kono
Program: Aquarium, Research, Park, Transit
Location: New York, NY
Year: 2016

The public is an operative body with direction and magnitude. Sculpted thresholds instrumentalize the plastic qualities of landscape and program, animating the generous urban waterfront and fomenting participation in a multiplicity of civic, institutional, and recreational amenities.

Competition