Short Film
Overview
A self-healing building powered by algae where fitness infrastructure and data infrastructure share the same metabolic body.
Concept Metabolic Logic
"Fitness and data infrastructure share the same metabolic logic: both generate heat, require controlled atmosphere, and depend on continuous circulatory flow."
The section does not separate these programs. It forces them into a single structural frame where their shared biology becomes the architecture. The pool sits directly above the data center water becomes a ceiling, filtering light into the fitness floor while thermally separating it from the server infrastructure below.
Site Mapping
Diagrammatic exploration of spatial flows, density, and site boundaries to inform the building's orientation and massing. The site sits at a major convergence of transit, infrastructure, and pedestrian flow in downtown Los Angeles.
The site analysis radiates outward from the building's footprint mapping sun angles, pedestrian desire lines, and program adjacencies across the urban block.
Form Extraction
Conceptual volumes generated through translation and rotation of movement data into architectural gestures. The massing model begins as a cube the most neutral container which is then carved by the profiles of athletes in motion.
Plan Section
The plan section shows the full horizontal depth of the building pools above, data halls below, the building's mechanical core threading through both. The sectional cut makes visible what is usually hidden: the thermal exchange between a body training and a server cooling.
The mechanical core of the data center: cooling systems and server infrastructure occupy the same sectional zone as the pool deck above, making the thermal exchange between programs visible.
Massing
The building touches down only at certain, thoughtful points spiking through the equally suspended pool. The slight curves, still representing the inevitable movement of athletes, meet at sharp corners, forming both the massing and the water that flows through it continuously.
Physical Model
Starting with a cube with ranging pieces that interlock and slide into each other, to reconfiguring and morphing it into a new, complex massing model. The physical model makes the logic of subtraction tactile you can see the voids left by athletic silhouettes.
Additional Model Views
Kinetic Inspiration
Photographic abstraction of motion and performance used as formal inspiration for the building's tectonics. Athletic movement the stretch, the pivot, the suspended moment is translated into architectural gesture.
Beginning with moving sports figures, morphing them into abstract shapes became a method of cutting into one singular cube, forming new three-dimensional shapes from the original 2D silhouettes.
Short Film Interior Views
Rendered in Unreal Engine 5, the short film moves through three distinct atmospheric zones the pool surface from below, the data hall at depth, and the catwalk that connects the two programs at mid-section.
