STUDENT WORK / The Fortress of Protest
Monday and Thursday are studio days. On these days in particular, the third floor undergraduate studio is filled with a frenetic energy of design, research and exploration. Students can usually be found talking excitedly with design professors and classmates in a habitat saturated with trace sketches, study models and empty coffee cups. Every Monday we’ll share a completed project, churned out from this energetic studio environment.
Arch 393 / Dereck Revington studio coordinator
Proteus Moves
Project by Andrew Ashbury / 3B
Design Statement
“He who one day is to kindle lightning
Must long remain a cloud.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted from Gaston Bachelard, Air and Dreams
The Fortress of Protest invites citizens to ascend into the ominous turmoil of public demonstration. New social movements emerge from a heterotopian forum of charged dialogue and uprising political energy. While functionally sheltering and amplifying dissenting voices, the durational spaces of the Fortress effectively fuel rebellion through atmospheric transformations of light, volume and matter.
A series of study models were initially inspired by footage of volcanic plumes and their induced lightning. This refrain of ominous, churning ascension evolved into an architectonic expression where space and event interact in dynamic transformation.
UNFOLDING UPRISING: Provoked into action, individual citizens seek empowerment and identity among allies in a realm of instability and possibility. Mobilization takes form as a churning rise into darkness as crowds swell into assembly spaces and discover their combined strength. Transformed individually and collectively, the uprising emerges to unleash its new found expression in the political space of the metropolis.
FERMENTING REVOLUTION: A series of interconnected assembly spaces serves as a breeding ground for emerging social movements. A range of atmospheres are tuned to catalyze an escalating sequence from solitary reflection to open rebellion. As momentum builds, versatile meeting spaces become nodes for the study, celebration and expression of dissent.
LOOMING THREAT: The Fortress of Protest stands as a dark beacon above Place Émilie-Gamelin, an active rallying point in Montreal. Within the centralized hub, social movements gain direct access to new partnerships and new strategies of protest. The rippling screen of perforated steel panels broadcasts the diverse activities within.
“In the realm of the imagination, air frees us from substantial, inner,
digestive reveries. It frees us from our attachment to matter. Thus it is the
matter of our freedom.”
-Gaston Bachelard, Air and Dreams
