Knots, Crossings

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  • Jordan Berta, M.Arch. 2016
  • Hometown

    Grand Prairie, Texas
  • Class

    ARCH 5113 Core Design Studio III (fall 2013)
  • Instructor

    Assistant Professor Jenny Sabin
    Visiting Critic Andrew Lucia

The typology of a knot is the number and order of its crossings. After an analysis of Vittorio Giorgini's Liberty Center as well as urban, the knot emerged as both the organizational and generative strategy for developing a skatepark/theater at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Initial studies were produced with partner Luke Erickson. This project's intent was to engage the potential of bottom-up material study in developing new surface, programmatic, and structural languages.

Represented is an investigation of the potential for a knot to imbue spaces, surfaces, and programs with crossings. In this scheme, the knot functions as framework in a reciprocal relationship between organization of program, knot orientation and geometry, while maintaining the topology of the knot. Similarly, geometry developed from studies of knot surfacing and minimal surface generation between knots in a sequence.

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