GRABHUB                      A Vending Machine, A Billboard, A Monument       

Date Spring 2022
Location Syracuse, New York
Instructor Daekwon Park
Collaborator Chenhao Luo
Awards
First Place / 2022 Syracuse Integrated Design Award
Silver Prize / 2022 Asian Design Awards
Honorable Mention / 2022 ACSA Steel Competition
Exhibition 2022 Shenzhen + Hong Kong Urbanism/Architecture Bi-City Biennalé 

We gravitated towards interrogating the intrusive inundation of material transactions that facilitate and perpetuate the overstimulation of the urban experience, which was informed by the programmatic and infrastructural absence of a significant commercial node (in particular grocery stores) that anchors the population of Downtown Syracuse and the Connective Corridor. We looked towards the vending machine as a metaphor that signaled such sitelessness and omnipresence which puts materialism and our blasé consumerism on display as a mass spectacle.

Our proposal takes the conventional linear supply chain and the enfilade of spaces (unloading, back of house, floor space, storefront window display) collapse their relationship and processes into a series of planar moments. So much like the vending machine, the window display, the inventory behind, the transaction interface, and the projected social bubble all exist within a thin slither of space. Each programmatic element takes on multiple agendas: doing your groceries is also a social opportunity or a recreational moment.

Occupants engage the cores (transactions) through kiosks where they can browse, select, and add to their carts that track them, the same way one would shop online. When a specific product is summoned, pallets in the core would bring the storage unit from the display window, meeting the occupant at the kiosk, which could also extend out to form countertops or kitchen units for local eateries to set up pop-up spaces.

In addeesing the passive systems, we noticed a large gap in solar gain throughout different seasons as well as relatively significant prevailing breezes. We therefore propose a double skin enclosure. A dynamic façade and summer balconies let air pass through and up the outer skin. The flaps on the façade can be locked in place via electromagnets during winter and an ETFE screen can be drawn out on the roof to shed rain and snow. There are also independent hydraulic pistons that allow for specific flaps or windows to be held open to meet specific interior microclimates.

The exterior dynamic façade are polycarbonate flaps held in 11x11 frames that have thin rods running through and stoppers in front. As the prevailing breeze moves along the façade, it would cause the entire skin to flicker, thereby turning the vending machine and the people inside it into moving art of different transparencies.The polycarbonate also have different opacities depending on the amount of annual glare the façade receives. The result is basically a gradation where pockets of the interior are more visible to let more daylight in.

These cores are functional, tectonic, and structural and the entire project branches out from them. The cores are columns tied in bands that allow for the interlocking floor truss to run through and cantilever outwards. The exterior façade is hung from the roof truss and drapes down both sides of the building. The circulation of people and goods also take place in and around these cores, with a series of escalators bringing people up and down the interior.