Embrace/Grow
Pluriverse Design in the Ramble
Parsons School of Design M.Arch Year 1
Through a design of interweaving planar surfaces, Embrace/Grow creates intentionally solitary moments of connection between the human and natural world, encouraging contemplation and heightened observation in it’s human occupants. The structure’s small alcoves focus the occupants’ experience to moments of transition: understory to canopy, walking path to river, and built structure to living organisms.
The structure itself practices reciprocity with the site and it’s nonhuman communities by encouraging the growth of local mosses on it’s exterior and interior surfaces. This enables the structure to act as a gathering site for nest builders such as squirrels and birds as well as a food source for aquatic life. Through these actions, the intervention provides a bridge across the imagined divide between nature and culture, creating a shared space that intentionally prioritizes both human and non-human communities.
Thick plan of the intervention and its surrounding landscape, including sun paths and local flora and fauna
Thick section of the intervention and surrounding landscape, demonstrating various spaces of occupation as well as simple sun diagrams.
Exploded Axon Drawings of iterative model making leading to the final form of Embrace/Grow.
A contextual exploded axonometric detailing seating locations as well as locations for various moss species to grow.
Mapping moss growth on the structure over a human lifespan from right to left.
