Desire + Doubt

In collaboration with Georgina Gutierrez

This integrated building studio questioned how architecture can engage a community built on modernist desire and expanded with mannerist doubt. This oscillation between concepts of autonomy and idealism on one hand, and specificity and pragmatism on the other guided the work toward solutions that exhibit a conceptual depth and a tectonic tone. We worked to envision a new museum that acknowledged that art and life should not be considered separately, but as inextricably linked. 

The original central campus plans show a strong axis that derives from the the center of the main park and circulation ring, extending outwards towards the city of Irvine. In the original UC Irvine campus buildings were raised on a plinth to open the space underneath. Our design opens up to access points one from the ground level, and one from the 2nd level bridge that connects to the campus. The bridge connects one from the campus to city.

The building location is a strategic point between the university campus and the city, one of the concepts for the original design of UC Irvine was that it was built as a utopian city, our design uses that concept in order to open the possibility to expand the museum outwards to the city.

The original UC Irvine museum was designed under a utopian parti that raises a tower block over a plinth. Similarly, our design has a raised plinth but the tower block is separated and grounded.

Our concept derives from the metaphor museum as Bridge + Tower. The bridge represents the connection of a the arts within a campus to its surrounding, ever expanding metropolitan area. The tower represents the monumentality of a cultural institution within the grounds of the University of California at Irvine. The bridge is light, luminous, transparent, elevated; the tower is imposing, monolithic, tall, grounded.