Waxy Luxury

The focus of study for this project examined the concept of luxury in architecture and our daily lives. The studio examined what descriptive words defined luxury and how we can use those ideas to influence our designs. This project utilized selected qualities derived from an initial archival analysis of luxury as a driving force for a design process for luxury. The three qualities of focus are monumentality, sleekness, and ephemerality. Monumentality is the quality of singularity and conglomeration of the whole, sleekness is the smoothness and sinuous form that responds to a force., and Ephemerality is that which is fleeting. 

For the design, the quality of ephemerality was the driving force which influenced the form of the monumentality and sleekness. Through phase changing mediums, such as wax, a form can be constructed into a single monolithic object with smooth curves and glossy edges, yet this can only be manipulated in high temperatures. I experimented with was to study different forms that can be molded and created to define the space of the design. In translation of this process of form design, the function of the restaurant responds in such a way so that the circulation bends around the main foyer. The stacked restaurants reside within a single shell, combined into one monumental building. 

To achieve the send of excess and temporariness as understood in luxurious designs, the structure of the build would be formed from the wax itself. A superstructure would maintain the form of the building and support the platforms inside, but the shell of the restaurant is as temporary and ephemeral as a candle. Overtime, the form of the building would erode resulting in the the skeletal remains of the structure to be repurposed and reused for a new program.

Location:

162 Duane Street, NY

Type:

Restaurant

Project Date:

Fall 2017

Professor:

Henry Grossmann