The project
While in prison, inmates often lose their sense of time and the natural rotation of the seasons. Their lives tend to become a continuous loop with little variation and few opportunities to start anew by learning new skills or pursuing higher education. Additionally, the social environment in these spaces is frequently governed by fear and violence, the same principles that led these individuals astray.
To restore their connection with the natural progression of time and provide opportunities for re-education, we have created a pavilion for each season. Each pavilion is situated at a specific location on Alcatraz Island and serves a unique function in the re-education of prisoners.
These pavilions are virtually accessible year-round, allowing inmates to choose activities and seasons that best suit their needs:
Winter Pavilion: Located at the highest point of the prison complex and during the coldest time of the year, this pavilion is reserved for cozy experiences. It combines saunas to warm up and plunge pools to balance temperature, allowing inmates to relax and meditate on the significance of their extended stay.
Spring Pavilion: Symbolizing birth and renewal, these towering structures allow inmates to tend to plants in a vertical orchard with views of the sea. This not only restores their connection with nature but also teaches them practical skills.
Summer Pavilion: This vast park floats in the oceanic waters of San Francisco Bay. Here, inmates can learn to swim or dive, or even play on the beach, helping them regain confidence in socializing and interacting with nature.
Autumn Pavilion: Associated with the start of the academic year and new resolutions, this pavilion is designed as a library with endless bookshelves and maze-like corridors. Each leaf cell serves as a reading spot where inmates can dedicate their energy to expanding their knowledge.
Design tools and process
To represent each season, the pavilions are associated with symbolic geometries of mathematical or geometric significance. Different tools and approaches were employed to create each one:
Spring Pavilion: This pavilion was created by generating a pattern resembling a flower and applying it to a morphed surface.
Winter Pavilion: This pavilion takes the shape of snowflakes, with their geometry described by the Koch algorithm. The implementation of this algorithm within the parametric definition was achieved using a Python script.
Autumn Library: Symbolized by a falling leaf, this pavilion was created using multiple nested mesh relaxation definitions with the Kangaroo plug-in.
Summer Pavilion: Representing the foam bubbles left by the waves, this pavilion was generated using a mesh inflation definition combined with an elastic behavior definition, both utilizing the Kangaroo plug-in.
The initial attempts led us to refine the definitions and select the variations of the geometries that best suited the final purpose of our project.
The diagram below illustrates the main steps of the design process:
Spring Flower: This starts from a hexagon mesh, creating tessellation that is morphed to the surface.
Winter Snowflake: The primary challenge was the Koch algorithm, which we used to create multiple snowflakes.
Autumn Leaf: The parametric leaf mimics real cell distribution using Voronoi cells.
Summer Foam Bubbles: These are created with Kangaroo inflation.
For each pavilion, the process of creation is shown, starting from the base inputs such as points, lines, or boundary curves:
- Spring Pavilion: The towers are placed within the boundary, with their width and height chosen randomly from a limited domain.
- Summer Pavilion: The bubbles are attracted to the seashore while their initial positions are randomly generated within a boundary curve. The initial and subdivision radius, as well as pressure strength, represent the defining variables.
- Autumn Pavilion: The leaf structure is generated starting from a single line, from which different branches stretch outwards, defining the skeleton of the relaxed mesh. This mesh is then subdivided into individual reading cells.
- Winter Pavilion: The Koch algorithm defines the shape of the flakes, which are then transformed into meshes and sorted by area. The larger branches are selected to be saunas, while the smaller ones create plunge pools.
Forms’ iterations
Final images
Winter:
The snowy bath is thought to let you forget about your troubles, meditating on the fortune of the little transient flakes out in the open, while the saunas offer cover for the reclusive types.
Autumn:
The leaf library is designed to be a refuge and a maze, to let time pass either in comfort or in escape. Its cells are reading alcoves, while the glass curtains leave room to stare at the horizon.
Spring:
Tower gardens are imagined to restore the connection with nature by practising the noble art of botany. Their shape reminds of a shrub of thorns or of a soft flower. Tower pavilions tend to sky, bubble are in the sea, snowflakes are in an enclosed area, and leaf landed on terrain.
Summer:
Gigantic foam bubbles have been devised to form a variable play scape. In the end, there is no better escape to hot summer days than a plunge into the salty oceans waters.
Section views:
