tetrizone

urban culture center

atlanta, ga | spring 2024

instructor: christina shivers

Derived from the Fun Palace Project by Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood, Tetrizone is an urban complex proposal situated along Atlanta's Beltline trail across from Ponce City Market. It consists of a variety of "zones" that encourage social interaction and diverse systems of engagement— containing spaces such as a digital media gallery, a bicycle repair workshop, a rock-climbing wall, and more. The process embraced interpretation and experimentation, beginning with precedent studies and assemblage drawings, then a guided AI exploration, and finally physical modeling studies before beginning the official architectural process. Through these exercises, a core concept emerged: a structured grid system that could accommodate dynamic zones of interaction. Within this matrix, each piece of program could push and pull at its confines and boundaries to form unique but tailored spaces. Yet, these spaces remain a part of the cohesive whole— similar to the spatial relationships of the game “Tetris”. Each zone functions independently from the others, allowing for distinct stylistic expressions in response to that zone’s needs. This creates a visually interesting street-scape, drawing in potential occupants to investigate the changes of look in different components. Each stylistic change is inspired both by the contents of the program as well as imagery generated through prompt-based experiments using Midjourney, an AI image generation tool. The result is a project that is structurally unified, but formally and visually diverse. Connection between these zones via their separation creates a unity among diversity of space, bridging different areas, bridging the Beltline and Ponce de Leon Avenue, and ultimately bridging together the people of Atlanta.