Tochi Mgbenwelu
Secret Phobia
Tochi Mgbenwelu
April 17th – April 25th
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 23rd
5:00pm – 6:30pm
Five modules defined by the fears of their inhabitants, this edifice is located under the Joe DiMaggio Highway, surrounded by the Hudson River Greenway. Its environment, just as intentional as the design elements that went into putting the modules together, incorporates the silence of the Hudson River and the never ending clamour of New York City.
My Senior Thesis is a lot more than a concept I had lingering in the back of my mind. My initial aim was to force these five individuals to inhabit one space that accommodated for all their fears without interfering with the fears of others – this proved to be further from possible to put together with the time frame I had. In altering my approach, I studied the fears and, based off of one template module, I redesigned spaces to, what I believed fit their specific fears. The placement of the windows, direction of the buildings, locations of the balconies, height of the walls and building elevation off the ground is all intentional. The veins that hold these modules together? Circulation. The way in which one may move from one module to the next defines how the building interact with one another, further illuminating what the fears of the inhabitants may be.