Orange Barrel Media HQ
Location: Columbos, Ohio
Project: Academic/Research
Advisor: Tom Wiscombe
An unconventional office building, ignoring the architectural element of slabs and columns, this building uses circulation that penetrates and revolves around the core to produce the required office spaces.
The Orange Barrel Media HQ proposal revolves around various architectural ideas. The typology of office spaces is plagued with a stiff and entrenched way of producing office spaces, the open floor plan that allows for flexibility rarely used, or the segmentation of a slab into smaller rooms, both tried and proved to have its flaws.
This project looks at the office building, not as a stationary situation, but acknowledges that the office building has a constant flow of moving people, from going to a meeting, leaving for lunch hour to a client visiting.
The idea that the office building mainly serves the stationary office work is resisted by eliminating the stationary architectural elements of columns and slabs and betting entirely on the circulation to bring forth the space required, the core serves its function for vertical transition, and the long ever-flowing arms that penetrate and exit the core serve as both the office space and the primary circulation method.
The three elements utilized in this project consist of the box, the core and the arms, all of them consisting of subparts. The project uses the idea of the model kit to produce rapid transformations and enact on the idea of the building as a kit of parts.
The arms exist as components that are layered with structure and texture; it is in the arms that the office space exists, inside or outside, the regular office worker might find himself on top of the arm he used to reach his desk. The total and complete elimination of the column leaves a project that has no structural grid and thus finds other methods of construction.
The idea of the arms as components is further pushed by acknowledging the new methods of construction where the arms are built in a controlled manufacturing site and later transported to the site for full assembly. The core serves as the only structural element in the project, thus being a full massive mass of concrete where the arms, penetrate, attach and rest.
The last element is the box which contains the architecture and provides a closed and safe environment. The box is cut for the addition of an auditorium in the first floor, and on top for a rooftop with a view to Columbus downtown.
