Project 05 Sao Paulo, 2024

Future Ruins

Type Film / Visual Studies
Subject MASP Museum, Sao Paulo
Class 2B Visual Studies
Site Downtown Los Angeles (relocated)
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Short Film

Future Ruins

Overview

A short film depicting a hypothetical post-apocalyptic environment focused on a designed, not accidental, ruin of the MASP museum.

Precedent
MASP Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Lina Bo Bardi)
Event
Nuclear blast displacement + partial collapse
Approach
Choreographed decay every detail deliberate
Site (relocated)
Downtown Los Angeles
Drawing Type
Section + Plan of the Ruin
Film Stills
4 atmospheric scenes

Concept Designed Decay

"The ruin is not accidental but designed. Every element of decay was choreographed to reveal how the building would fail."

The project takes Lina Bo Bardi's MASP as its subject a building already understood as a suspended object, held aloft by two massive red concrete beams. The nuclear event does not destroy the building arbitrarily; it exploits the building's own structural logic, rotating it by the force of the blast and collapsing it inward along its weakest axes.

The Event

A Nuclear
Displacement

The building has been displaced from its original footprint, rotated by the force of the blast and partially collapsed inward. The shadow cast across the surrounding urban fabric marks the extent of structural debris making the scale of destruction legible from above.

01 Building displaced from original footprint by blast force
02 Structure rotated the long axis now diagonal to the street grid
03 Partial inward collapse the suspended floor descends at one end
04 Shadow of debris marks destruction radius across surrounding block
Section drawing collapsed MASP structure showing blast displacement
Plan of the Ruin Site Plan Fig. 01

Still 01

Interior
in Collapse

The interior of the MASP in collapse. Structural members have fractured and tilted, debris fills the floor, and a faint blue glow from residual radiation illuminates the space from within. The building is recognizable but irrecoverable.

The famous exposed red beams Lina Bo Bardi's most iconic gesture are fractured at mid-span, collapsing toward the interior. The glass walls have imploded inward.

Still 01 interior in collapse, fractured beams and blue radiation glow

Still 02

Subterranean
Core

Beneath the ruins, the subterranean core of the building is submerged in radioactive fog. The circular colonnade, still formally intact, glows against the surrounding decay suggesting that the most protected part of the building outlasted everything above it.

Still 02 subterranean colonnade glowing in radioactive fog

Still 03

Aerial
Reclaimed

An aerial view of the MASP ruins after a nuclear event. The structural skeleton of the building remains partially intact, reclaimed by overgrowth, while radioactive residue marks the ground around it. The ruin is not accidental but designed every element of decay was choreographed to reveal how the building would fail.

Still 03 aerial view, structural skeleton reclaimed by overgrowth

Still 04

Exterior
Frozen Mid-Fall

The exterior of the ruin at ground level. Vegetation has overtaken the site while the building's façade tilts at the angle of impact, frozen mid-collapse. The green glow of radioactive contamination reads against the darkness, making the cause of the catastrophe legible without depicting it directly.

Still 04 exterior facade tilted mid-fall, vegetation and green radioactive glow

All Stills

Still 01 interior collapse
Still 02 subterranean core
Still 03 aerial reclaimed
Still 04 exterior frozen mid-fall

Structural Logic of Decay

How a Building
Chooses to Fail

The MASP's structural system two red beams spanning 74 meters with no intermediate supports makes its failure mode legible. A blast from the northwest would torque the suspended floor, breaking the connection at its most cantilevered point. The building does not crumble; it pivots.

This structural logic informed every decision in the rendering: where the glass breaks, where the beams crack, how far the floor descends. The ruin is an argument about structural honesty the MASP's architecture always revealed its own vulnerability, and the ruin simply makes that legible.

2B Visual Studies Post-Apocalyptic Structural Logic Choreographed Decay Lina Bo Bardi Nuclear Event

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