Reimaging Concrete
Group Work with Qingyi Duanmu, Zekun Fan
Instructor: Mark Jarzombek
In order to reimagine the conventional image of concrete, we propose a design intervention for Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin designed by Eisenman Architects that got built-in 2004. It is a project with a grid structure composed of about 2,700 concrete blocks, or stelae, with heights varying from zero to 4 meters. Eiseman used the negative space shaped by the concrete blocks of 95-centimeter spacing to allow only individual passage going through the grid - a personal experience with no start and no end. Intentionally creating a confusing atmosphere, the field condition utilizes the material's characteristics to represent an ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.
Our redesign strategies can fall into three categories: replace, refill and recast. Together, they critique the conventional concrete image to suggest a newly defined concrete characteristic that is anti-monumental and anti brutalism. Furthermore, to emphasize the unconventional methods of producing concrete structures to achieve locality and anti-commercialism purposes. The project is represented as a museum of concrete, documenting the history, present, and the future of the material, meanwhile, to create destination and nodes among the concrete labyrinth that encourage people to slow down, stay, and gaze at the concrete blocks and to evoke one's reflection on the material itself.
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Bonus scene: how an architectural proposal can be translated into a jewelry stand?
