Year:

Feb 2023

Client:

Public Art, Facade

Location:

El Cerrito, California

Status:

Completed

Located alongside a pedestrian corridor and a neighboring rapid transit station, the project looks to engage this new residential building façade into the cinematic process of pedestrian arrival and departure at this San Francisco bay area transit hub. Conceived as an optical assembly of visual transformation, reflective elements undulate within a view-optimized surface calibrated to site specific influences. Like a planar sundial, reflective elements of the art façade track the passage of time throughout the day, gathering, diverting and projecting the changing light patterns. The precisely angled pixellated reflectors are intended to merge and transform reflections off the nearby neighborhood and dramatic topography with transit and pedestrian flows. Within the undulations of the facade, the reflective elements of varying reflectivity weave in and out of a simple corrugated rainscreen surface, creating a playful game of hide-and-seek with viewers depending on the angle of their view. As viewers move around the building, the reflective elements create shifting patterns of light and shadow, continually redrawing sightlines and perspectives. As the reflective surface bend angles increase, the angle of the reflection bends substantially and the reflection becomes increasingly distorted and abstract, intended to create effects of melting and liquefying. This effect is celebrated, and can be particularly pronounced when viewed from certain angles, and in certain lighting conditions.

Using the elevated viewing platform of the Bart train car as a horizontal datum, the geometric forms of the façade are calibrated to the arrival and departure sequence.

Rather than translating design ideas into rigid rules, as is common in many computation-driven projects, we took a more artistic approach, akin to painting, where reflective effects were shaped through visual tests, gradient density maps, and projection direction experiments. Gradient densities were continuously refined and adjusted for each region of the facade. The reflective and refractive panels were layered along the path of movement, similar to how musical instruments are overlaid in a composition, mixing, blurring and pulling environmental elements together.

The goal was then to realign the perception of the building through this intervention to offer a unique engagement to the pedestrian viewer.

One of the unique challenges this project posed was that, put simply, the building was conceived as having a front and a back treated unequally. The design emphasis and build budget focused on the front elevation, fronting the streetscape, yet the rear elevation fronts a bustling pedestrian greenway and a rapid transit hub that supports one of the largest ridership numbers in the Bay area. The goal was then to realign the perception of the building through this intervention to offer a unique engagement to the pedestrian viewer. Another challenge is the marked change in building scale this building introduced to the neighborhood’s single story mixed use scale. Given this new 7 story tall building’s presence was a concern to many residents, the need to find a sensitive strategy to a concern of scale and newness was paramount. Early concepts which carried through the project evolved around notions of dazzle camouflage and disruptive patterns that fish use for protection, as analogs to readjust and engage with the pedestrian focused elevation. These patterns are accomplished by a resolution that would be hard to carry out using non-digital tools and computation. Rather than creating a kind of signature for the project and the neighborhood, through effects of dazzlement and camouflage, the project offered the residences a more non-narrative proposition to navigate and interpret as a means to reinterpret building scale. With the building well underway in construction documentation, negotiation of rigid parameters that focused on lightness of construction, thinness of the intervention and the performance goal of being integrated into the weatherproofing of the building was required. the challenge was to create difference, consistency and volumetrics within a three inch depth. The ability to pull this off was due to the high resolution of incremental surface change that computational systems allow.

4000+ reflectors are unique with a specific precise address position order and sequence of construction.

The reflectors were designed with a minimum and maximum bend angle based on the limitations of the magnetic brake bender. Common rules were defined: panel size, panel orientation and reflection angle. The same computational model was used for fabrication data. Fabrication first required digitally defining the reflective pixels mounting location on the panels on the corrugated rainscreen, as each of the 4000+ reflectors are unique with a specific precise address position order and sequence of construction. Once panels were cut, they were custom bent to achieve the desired reflective angle. The project was delivered as a design-build with the panels fabricated by our small team on site with no fabrication drawings neccessary.

During design we took artistic approach, akin to painting, where reflective effects were shaped through visual tests, gradient density maps, and projection direction experiments

With the building well underway in construction documentation, negotiation of rigid parameters that focused on lightness of construction, thinness of the intervention and the performance goal of being integrated into the weatherproofing of the building was required. the challenge was to create difference, consistency and volumetrics within a three inch depth. The ability to pull this off was due to the high resolution of incremental surface change that computational systems allow.

Design

Co-designed in collaboration with S/U/M

Gradient Matter team

Andrei Hakhovich, Jung Young, Dalal Alobaid

Computational Design

Gradient Matter

FABRICATION

S/U/M