Crystal Crown

This project begins from the iceberg. It seeks to capture the same atmosphere a tugged iceberg achieves as it scoops ocean water, its transformative embrace effortless and alluring. The effect of the concept image translated to border. How could one design a physical threshold that emphasizes the interior, the transition, over the physicality of itself? The project first answers this question by imagining topographic intervention. This idea soon turns inside out; a simple box. The program is wrapped in separate boxes within, eventually pushed into the edge of the shell, the auditorium occupying the leftover middle space. Two corridors remain on either side of the central auditorium — private for performers and public for visitors.

In contrast to its rigid building shell, the auditorium is wrapped in curtains. Layering allows for interior environmental control. Curtains hide or reveal the auditorium space, extending performance to the entire building. The ceiling of triangulated glass panels fractures incoming light. The playful roof preserves the severity of the exterior box, the interior quality only revealed once inside. Inversions in the roof invite water collection. As the water level rises, a second filter is built; light through water, light through glass.