In terms of preservation strategies, armories are truly a difficult urban building type.  Once a place for military training, they are now becoming almost wholly obsolete:  Their vast interior drill hall and their monumental footprint makes them difficult to convert to any other urban program including housing.  Meanwhile, many of them appear on highly restrictive state or national historic registers.  This confounds developers further as surrounding land costs and thus development intensity has multiplied around these buildings but the restrictions placed on renovating them makes it impossible to increase their density and make the numbers work.

The Somerville Armory is one such building.  Nestled in an otherwise dense residential zone, it sat underutilized for years, slowly deteriorating.  After the building was courageously acquired by the Highland Avenue Trust, we worked with them, the Arts at the Armory, the City of Somerville, and the Massachusetts State Historical Commission to adaptively re-use the structure into a  regional, 30,000 sf non-profit arts center that houses a multitude of community oriented programs including NGO’s, artists, dance, and music studios and offices, galleries, arts education and after school programs, and a cafe/performance space.  The building’s anchor is the former drill hall which now serves as a multi-use space that host a variety of community programs, concerts, and educational venues.

A new undulating screen of recycled polyester seat belts engages traffic flows while providing new places for the experience of education and the arts. The screen itself has a dual purpose: The vertical straps produce a Moiré illusion by interacting with a silk-screened base layer. These Moiré patterns convey information at the same time they animate the space through their movement and distortion. Secondly, the screen acts as a flexible infrastructure for hanging student, faculty, and community work. The polyester straps can be mounted onto or pulled aside to reveal display cases and video art.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Moiré Study: Interference patterns between a revealing layer and a base layer result in an optical illusion of magnification and mirroring. These phenomena allow us to create a deep illusionistic space in the narrow cavity between the existing walls of the building and the installed screen.

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

The new programmed screen wall accomodates many aspects of student and community life.  The current existing lobby is a dark provisional space that one merely passes through.

Through configuring each of the seat belt profiles to accommodate specific functions, the new screen fluidly engages a continuous range of activities from personal to communal scales.

Polyester is the most widely used and produced polymer in the world making up around one half of all polymers produced.  Its advantage, the durability of the material, is also its environmental disadvantage.  In a landfill it will take most standard polyesters, such as those in seat belts, many thousands of years to biodegrade.  Although polyesters are in general highly recyclable, the process of doing so is energy intensive and releases new pollutants into the air and water.  In light of this it is important to not only re-use existing polymer based products, but to raise consciousness about their life-cycles.

The existing lobby, originally seen as left over space, is transformed into a linear sequence of events (plan above, unfolded elevation below).

PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
Jinhee Park AIA, John Hong AIA, LEED (principals in charge), Frederick Peter Ortner, Catarina Marques 

design detailing + fabrication
Loki Custom Furniture

structural engineer
Matt Johnson, SGH

RELATED PROJECTS:

conflux	boston harbor	big dig bldg

Most are familiar with Boston's ongoing "Big Dig." Few, however, give thought to the massive amount of waste that accompanies construction on this scale, namely the dismantling of the existing and temporary roadways. The Big Dig Building proposes to relocate and recycle these infrastructural materials as building components, adapting them to uses ranging from structural members to cladding. Furthermore, as these reused materials can withstand much higher loads than conventional building elements, the social ramifications of "heavy" in relation to "dwelling" can produce new and innovative results.

From Highway to Housing:  What happens to the millions of tons of discarded materials from obsolete infrastructures like Boston's Big Dig?  Destroying it costs millions to tax payers as well as wastes the embodied energy already stored in the materials.   Dismantled and relocated, concrete and  steel sections can become structural building modules adaptable to a variety of sites and programs.

Load Comparisons: Standard framing (left) can withstand 40 psf – only standard residential objects and programs can be accomodated. The existing highway overpass (middle) is designed for HS20-44 military loading and can withstand 250 psf. The Big Dig Building using salvaged materials could withstand 200psf – How might a structure that can sustain 4x the load of standard residential construction change the way we dwell?

Highway panels are shifted to create an elevation that reads as a vertical landscape.

Like a prefabricated system, differing typologies from low to high densities can be created from the same salvaged infrastructural materials.  In this light, should not all infrastructural materials be more strategically designed with the second use already in mind? This 'pre-cycling' of structure would save them from become obsolete (and thus regarded as trash) and would conserve their massive amount of embodied energy for the lifespan of the material.
 

Cross section:  The assembly of infrastructural materials provides advantages such as long span undergroung parking, the integration of water filled trombe walls, and the ability to incorporate full scale landscapes on roofs and balconies.
 

Because of the ability for the materials to carry heavy loads as well as span long distances, new programmatic freedoms can evolve.  Family playgrounds can be introduced into upper level units to provide immediate access to the outdoors (left), libraries and other heavy loads can be sustained within each unit (middle), and long spans making continuities between inside and outside can be achieved (right).
 

PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
John Hong AIA/LEED,  Jinhee Park AIA (principals in charge), Erik Carlson, Gentaro Miyano

structural design
Paul Pedini, Jay Cashman, Inc.

RELATED PROJECTS:

big dig house	soft lofts

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Within 2 days, the house is framed: reusing steel structure and roadway panels from the big dig has sped up this phase of construction from 2 weeks to 12 hours.
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To minimize fabrication time and expense, the structural pieces were reused as-is.

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construction sequence (left) and section through living and roof garden (right).
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Salvaged structural materials are left raw (left).  The roof garden connects to the living room and utilizes harvested rainwater (right).
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Window walls in conjunction with double height spaces bring natural light deep in the space while exterior overhangs shade summer sun.

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PROJECT CREDITS:

architect
John Hong AIA /LEED, Jinhee Park AIA (principals in charge), Erik Carlson, Sadmir Ovcina, Chris Minor

structural design & construction
Paul Pedini, Jay Cashman, Inc.

structural engineer
Weidlinger Associates, Inc.

water management design
Cristina Perez-Pedini

RELATED PROJECTS:

big dig building	mass art	valentine