Project Team: Andrew Batay-Csorba, Jody Batay-Csorba, Andrew Holder
Type: Design Study
Year: 2004

“Engineering Enmeshed” is a project for the UCLA School of Engineering, which is in the midst of a major building campaign to improve and dramatically expand its existing facilities. As part of this campaign, the School will build an exhibition and conference center to serve as an interface between students, faculty, the Los Angeles public, and members of other research institutions. Conceived as a kind of “plug-in” to be inserted in the relatively conventional architecture of the School’s primary buildings, the center will generate a physical identity for the School and become a showcase for advanced engineering research.

In response to the ambitions of the School, “Engineering Enmeshed” mobilizes structure as a medium for information flow between the complex set of constituents the center is intended to serve. Structural and information systems are collapsed as a single responsive network. Columns swell to accommodate the horizontal transfer of load, creating nodes for the display of exhibits. Pod-like projection screens on the ceiling stitch together the steel framing of the floor at key increments, increasing the capacity of horizontal diaphragms. The transmission of information becomes immersive, ambient, and intrinsic to the logic of the building.