Incise, Laxe

Following the lighting competition, I began the design of a lighthouse and walkers' shelter for the peninsula adjacent to the town of Laxe on the coast of Galicia. I was interested in creating an artifice that seemed alien and introverted from the outside but would actually be punctured by a series of vectors to orient the occupant in the directions of various landmarks on the site. I began with studying how one-move incisions could change the interior condition of a massive container. These studies were first done in charcoal. I then began to understand the nature of randomly puncturing a mass by melting holes through blocks of foam and scanning the resultant sections. By drawing programmatic elements over the scans of the sections, I began to see how these vectors could become architectural elements. Through a series of models and drawings, I assessed the varying success of these once random elements. 

A hiker enters the mysterious shelter from below and looks around to gain his bearings. He realizes that each vector bears a unique function. There is an axis for dining, an axis for sleeping, and an axis for approaching the second tower, which he learns is a functional lighthouse. These axes are far more filigree in their construction than the utilitarian box they puncture, and all extend into the shelter’s surroundings.

Daniel Philip Toretsky