AKASH DHANTURI
This single-storey building is located on El Dorado Parkway in McKinney, Texas. The exterior walls of this building are made of concrete reinforced with steel bars and covered with red-brick cladding. The facade of the building is composed of two large arches that span the southwest corner of the building and house banners. Under the arches, there are uPVC windowframes and doors that serve as the main entrance to the building. The roof of the building is composed of a corrugated sheet of metal and contains two outdoor HVAC units.
The interior of the building is completely open with exception of a plaster wall that creates a narrow corridor along the north-east region of the space. At the end of the corridor, the plaster wall splits adjacently to the east wall into a shorter and thinner wall to create two small rooms. The ceiling throughout the structure is 20 feet high and is spanned by 16 rows of warren trusses along the width and 4 rows of intersecting steel bars along the length. Two HVAC ducts and a sprinkler system spread out from the central axis of the building and are attached to the trusses. The interiors are lit by rows of tubelights attched to the trusses. The east end of the building houses a fire exit, a mechanized shutter and a pump that connects to the sprinklers.
The Knolled diagram above lays out the various parts of the building. This includes the steel trusses, intersecting bars, shutter system, drinking fountains, window frames, doors, corrugated roofing sheets, sprinklers, tubelights, HVAC ducts, outdoor units, pipelines, pump, checkered tile flooring and an assortment of walls.
The ANT network map above begins with two broad themes: Pool stuff and Landscape stuff. Narrowing down on the archetypal swimming pool, the first segment explores the many environmental considerations and factors involved in the ownership and maintenance of a pool. Starting with energy use, water consumption and chemical use, the map goes on to explore various circumstances like the lock-in effect that is currently preventing widespread adoption of renewable energy despite plummeting prices and the surprising parity in water use between seemingly harmless everyday tasks like flushing and the overtly wasteful practice of pool ownership.
The Landscape section hones in on the widespread practice of lawn cultivation in America. Beginning with the history of lawns as a colonial import, various other actors such as the Ammonium nitrate surplus after the second World War and historically prevalent policies are investigated are found to play a role in the growth and sustenance of lawns as a staple in the American household. A study is also made into the role of the lawn as a symbol and a by-product of the overtly discriminative regimes that have conquered America in the past and the hyper-consumerist environment that exists today.
With the insights gained from the ANT diagram, the design is populated with ‘pool stuff’ and ‘landscape stuff’ using ‘drawered’ assemblies in a confetti-based organization. The center of the structure is excavated to create a pool in it’s crudest form and the walls of the building are punctured to create drawers all around the building at various heights and in different shapes. The drawers are filled with turfgrass and populated with objects such as fertilizer, pumps and vacuums that are deemed to be essential to the proper upkeep of pools and lawns. A confetti of these objects is scattered across the drawers, the floor and the bottom of the pit pool. The corrugated metal roof and the parts of the building destroyed by the excavation are replaced with an aquatic shell that connects to the pre-existing trusses.
The animated plan above details the various pool and lawn accessories scattered across the building and highlights some of the key elements associated with their manufacture, use and ownership such as price, materials, substance consumptions, noise levels and marketing jargon. The objects are scattered across the floor, the drawers and the surface and bed of the pool. An array of solar panels are arranged on the outer walls of the building. The north-east corner of the building houses a utility room that contains a pump and filter system. The ‘shell’ of curved glass and metal encloses the structure and the excavation on the mass of land that contains them.
A pallet of fertilizer, a lawnmower, a chemical sprayer and many other objects fill the floor and the drawers near the west wall. A tall shelf composed of a rectangular grid is overflowing with large rolls of sod. The wall that parts the middle of the building is supported by four rusty columns and punctured by drawers filled with more grass, sod and objects. An inflatable flamingo floats on the surface of the pool while a pallet of fertilizer, a spreader and a lawnmower lie sunken at the bottom. An outdoor shower is placed at the east end of the pool near the pump that connects to the sprinklers. A wallpaper depicting the grand canyon landscape covers the curved wall of the pump room on the north-east corner of the structure.
The excavation at the center of the structure creates a circumambulatory corridor and therefore, a linear narrative along the west, north and east walls through which the space can be perceived. The area that connects the west and east ends, however, can be open or closed based on whether the drawers around it are arranged inward or outward. With a glass and metal shell replacing the south wall and ceiling, the interior of the building is flooded with sunlight, making the array of tube lights redundant during day hours. As seen in the exterior perspective, the structure is situated on a self-contained mass of land.