thesis[FINAL]
Modernist values such as efficiency, intellectual and material transparency have encapsulated the curtain wall assembly for generations. Using the modernist curtain wall assembly in an expressionistic way produces a new system that does not concern itself with efficiency but rather redundancy both structurally and formally.
With the use of three iconic curtain wall assemblies; SOM’s Lever House, Mies Van Der Rohe’s Seagram’s building, and the most common unitized curtain wall system today this thesis aims to detourne the curtain wall with the effects of profusion and augmentation.
The process of multiple orientations, intersection, aggregation, and point and curve attraction will create effects that muddle the outline, thicken the envelope, create a shift from efficiency to redundancy and blur the perceptions of inside/outside, transparency/ translucency, scale, texture, and light.
An enigmatic effect will be produced from increasing the perception of depth through the accretion of the assembly. The irregularity of the systems doesn’t produce cohesion but rather an imperfect effect of multiplicities.