Site As Thesis

Site as Thesis_Undergournd

While thinking of ways of optimizing thermal comfort in architecture, I started to question that instead of trying to embrace all the climatic variables, what kinds of spatial condition can be disengaged from these variables. That is underground. In the history of mankind, regardless of the east and west cultures, the concept of underground was often described as death, darkness, disconnection, and seclusion. In many cases, underground spaces were used either as catacombs or military bases. However, with the advent of modern city and technological advance in construction, the underground spaces started to be utilized in many other different ways from the ones in the past. As modern city continued to grow in size and density, more intricate network was required to satisfy the basic needs of its inhabitants. For instance, while the walls and columns support the city’s buildings, bridges, and towers, the cables, pipes, and tunnels carry life-sustaining elements such as water, electricity, and gas. Larger tunnels burrow through the underground, linking places on the congested surface more directly. Through them high-speed subway carry the large numbers of people who live and work within the urban community. Furthermore, the emergence of the notion of mega city and the inevitable human desire of creating a permanent shelter from extreme climate conditions resulted in the idea of underground city. Today, these underground cities are located in many different places around the world. They are certainly providing new ways of understating and occupying the underground space. Unlike today’s underground city largely dependent onto the above ground structure or system, future underground cities would completely substitute the existing perception of cities. What if this new notion of the underground city is foreseen, how we as architects should response to this new urban typology? What kinds of additional or different spatial and environmental quality do we need to consider in designing inhabitable spaces under this circumstance?