JOSEPH LICO
This single story warehouse building is on 23 Mile Road in Shelby Township, MI and houses a sports bar and restaurant. The walls are constructed primarily with concrete block and accented with two different styles of brick. There is a set of three garage doors on the southern facade that open up to a covered pavilion. The main entrance is on the east side and the parking lot is located along the north end.
The interior is divided by sections of prefabricated walls that partition the space into three different primary occupational spaces. A large wall separates the space into a north and south half while smaller spaces are created near the main entrance along the east side. The southernmost space opens via three garages to an outdoor brick pavilion.
This diagram shows the building as a kit-of-parts including two styles of brick, concrete block, corrugated metal, steel trusses and columns, mechanical ducts, LED light rods, square ceiling light frames, garage doors, doors, window frames and awnings, and AC unit.
The Car Map explores four main facets around the automobile industry: Production, Safety, Technology, and the Environment. Initially, I was curious about the rise of electric vehicles and its implications on the environment compared to its gas-powered counterparts. Given their lack of CO2 emissions, it makes not only the ownership of one greener, but the production and disposal of one too. I also investigated the global chip shortage and its effect on the automobile industry, not enough chips are able to be made to meet demand. And these chips are necessary now more than ever due to the increasing reliance on software driven safety features. In particular, as we are in the early stages of developing fully autonomous vehicles, our need for advanced silicon and software is important in ensuring our safety. It is suggested that autonomous vehicles could be dramatically safer, however there is debate on how these systems could ever make life-death decisions — and how much control we should really be giving to them.
In the Media Map, a very broad topic, the four topics I decided to cover were the Technology used, Entertainment, Social, and News. I initially was curious about the overall usage of digital media and how reliant we are towards our multimedia devices for us to carry out our daily lives. This got me interested in learning how data is managed on our devices and how it’s fed to us — looking at how algorithms are used to feed personalized information to each of us. This raises questions of privacy and how much data should be ultimately be collected from us. In terms of entertainment, there has been an exponential increase in streaming content, both in terms of video and music, creating tensions in industries that relied otherwise. Streaming has also helped fuel many social media outlets as of late and has created an addiction to content that brings instant satisfaction. In terms of news, social media has also introduced an influx of various news outlets, some of which can spread false information. This leads people to find an overall lack of trust in todays news and skepticism to anything they find online.
The main relevant connection I believed is one of trust and control. We already subliminally trust our phones and whatever media we are fed. Soon we might have to trust our cars entirely with our lives. But how much liberty should be giving up to AI and machine learning?
My design includes car stuff and media stuff assembled by framing in a gridded organization. There is a single grid from which all interior structure is derived from. The centralized hubs for which stationary media consumption and charging activity occurs is surrounded by an orthogonal path of circulation designed for autonomous vehicles to navigate. This directional path terminates in a car wash to complete this one-stop autonomous vehicle charging and rest stop.
In plan, the concept of gridded media bays becomes apparent. Designed to accommodate autonomous electric vehicles, they enter into a set of garages along the eastern facade. The vehicle then navigates through the maze to an available bay where it will then charge. Since electric vehicles can charge to 200 miles in less than 45 minutes, each bay is equipped with a projector and a screen for each individual vehicle to enjoy a personalized media experience — essentially a private drive-in theater where tailored media is presented to each vehicle. As with all media experience today, each individual vehicle is tracked and recorded by various security cameras located along each corner and within each media bay. As the charged car navigates out the southern exit, it runs through an automatic car wash.
In this parallax animation, we traverse the space from north to south. It is clear to see the disorienting effects of the gridded structures. Each vehicle is nested in an individual media-viewing nook and can only be navigated by the autonomous vehicles’ plethora of spatial awareness sensors. Each bay is fenced along the sides to increase visibility of open and occupied bays. This animation ends on the southern ends where all three car washes line up and organize the flow of exiting vehicles.
The spatial experience is largely defined by what a person can see verses what an autonomous vehicle can see. Ideally, a person’s perception of the space takes place entirely in a vehicle that is directing them in a particular bay — which from there, the user remains in the vehicle and looks at the projector screen while the vehicle is charging. From outside the vehicle, the large arrangement of gridded bays creates a disorienting environment, further solidifying our reliance on the technology in our vehicles. It creates a secluded and isolated space that is always being monitored and completely out of the user’s control.