When some of the crystals are removed, loose-fit conditions are produced between the container and the bars within; these interstitial spaces are used for balconies or common spaces for the housing units. Some crystals and bars breach the container before being sheared off to create figural apertures on the facades. Occasionally, this shearing produces familiar ribbon windows; at other times, it reveals deep internal voids that scuttle the reading of the project as “housing.”

Seams and Patchiness
Metaseams and patchy materiality characterize the building envelopes. At times, metaseams emphasize building apertures or mass silhouettes, yet they also leap from building to building and establish visual coherence between the three buildings. While metaseams act as joint between zones of opaque and perforated material, they also freely move across surfaces. They are not tied to a hierarchical system-to-subsystem logic, but rather exist equally and sometimes at odds with other elements in the design. 

F-F-F-F-F
Instead of a landscape as a passive receiver of the three buildings, this project’s ground is a set of discrete courtyards that are themselves discernible figures. Rather than figure-ground, a figure-figure-figure-figure-figure condition is achieved. The result is a new ground that refuses sentimental ideas of Nature and alternatively treats ground, or courtyard, as delimited and not fused with the earth.