plane’s nest

Ithaca, NY

fall 2016

The concept for this aviation museum proposal was driven by the belief that like birds, planes also belong in the sky. The lattice of cantilevering and spanning beams become a nest for the metal birds, while pulling them off the ground and providing the visitor with a sublime backdrop of the sky as they escalate through the core. As the visitor meanders vertically they are provided with glimpses of the metal birds from myriad vantage points. The elevation of the large exhibition space on the top minimalizes the footprint of the structure and curates the ground level as a park. 

The lattice of heavy CLT beams not only create the skeleton of the structure, but also extend into the hollowed out spaces within, and become parts of different programmatic elements, ranging from seats of the ground level auditorium, to steps of the staircase and the support for office desks and shelves. 

The model was made out of 452 pieces of individually table-sawn pieces of oak,  each piece cut to a unique length as dictated by the tri-axially changing geometry calculated by the spanning and cantilevering coefficients of CLT beams. In the process of designing the massing the beam lengths were generated through Grasshopper plug-in. 

Advisor: Leslie Lok