after us
This project is an ecological research residence where natural science researchers are granted funding and time through the NSF to set up and manage earth and water focused biological and chemical projects. Researchers are given independent living quarters as well as access to and reservation of a designated area of the laboratory infrastructure to set up and analyze their medium- and long-term research. The project’s timeline mirrors the ecological reclamation of the quarry, as natural processes ultimately dissolve the architecture into the site, and human activity recedes.
The programmatic goals, as well as the architectural foundations of the project arise from geological and ecological analysis of the site and its larger environmental contexts. Located in the lower Hudson Valley, the surrounding area is rich with geologic diversity, as layers of rock and stone and ice and biological material have coalesced over time.
If we take a closer look, we begin to understand the rich biodiversity that comes with this geologic history. We, like all life on earth, are carbon-based, and we see carbon at the center of these historical cycles of life and geology. The layers of rock produce layers of biological history, and just as these fossilized layers contain embedded information and energy, so too shall the fossils of the future, those of humanity and its creations. This project reflects upon this idea by proposing an intervention that will both study these conditions as well as place itself among them in the future.
Zooming into the site, we see the quarry as a sort of perimeter condition, across which there are multiple different relationships between sunlight, wind, water, rock and earth.
The architecture responds to these elements by producing a ring around the quarry that extends over the water as well as embeds itself into the rock. Earth and water-focused lab frameworks connect to research and living areas along the path of the ring.
This ring traverses the site horizontally and vertically, connecting various strata of the quarry while minimizing its overall footprint and impact.
Labs extend over the water, arranged in a grid, and varying in size and scope as needed by researchers. Earth labs allow for diverse and specific planting, cultivation, and analysis. These labs also aid in the reclamation of the site by accelerating the processes by which rock converts to fertile soil. Living quarters are located near the labs and are embedded into the earth. These living areas are positioned to be isolated from one another, but not from the natural aspects of the site. A central research station provides the most robust functionality for analysis and collaboration. This center provides more flexible interior spaces, and the programming is organized through ‘general and flexible bubbles’ rather than hard and discrete walls.
The project aims to foster medium- and long-term projects that seek to investigate change over time in the natural biome, as well as to study how specific interventions will produce new conditions across generations. Researchers may stay up to three months of the year, rotating with other research teams, and may utilize designated laboratory space for projects ranging from a few years up to multiple decades. Here we see how the ‘program bubble’s might be inhabited. These are diagrammatic indications of program, and the spaces themselves are not necessarily circular.
The project is designed to naturally disintegrate over a long period of time to ultimately become a part of the natural reclamation of the site. Different elements will deteriorate at different rates, allowing long-term research projects to extend beyond the functionality of other parts of the site. Ultimately, the project will allow researchers to study long-term natural processes, and then retreat from the site as it is overtaken by nature.