Seth Riseman and Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer
Submission 0173
BCA: South End Cultural Fulcrum
Building upon the mission of the BCA, the South End Cultural Fulcrum creates
a terrain that redefines the interface between culture, community, and commerce.
The dialectic between inside and out, as well as between the reified locus
of cultural production (the dedicated arts facility) and surrounding communities
is blurred. At the South End Cultural Fulcrum, a hybrid topography is forged
wherein the practices of community, commerce and culture collide to stimulate
a terrain of interactivity, creativity and diversity – essential for
creating a vital and viable 21st century urban community – one critical
node in a network of cultural fulcrums throughout the city, each inextricable
linked to their diverse communities.
Strategies of Design / Tactics of Occupation:
The design of this terrain blurs the dialectic between reified urban form
and temporal event, challenging the ability of static physical form to respond
to, and even stimulate, the fluidity of human action, creativity and desire:
collapsing art into life as well as cultural production into urban space.
In this space of interaction, the diverse voices and actions of community,
culture and commerce are inscribed upon this new terrain.
Design Goals:
-Create a flexible and fluid space of interaction conducive to the diversity
of the community, the everyday, the seasonal, the temporal, and even the unanticipated
and unimagined.
-Allow the activities of the inside and outside to inform each other, enriching
the experience and practices of both.
Design Strategies:
-Develop adaptable and flexible armatures of interaction with paving patterns,
street furniture, landscape, event spaces and light.
-Light used to animate the inanimate and make interactive that which is normatively
static.
Interactive Design Elements:
Design elements respond to the movement and behavior of users. Elements, including
paving, streetlights, benches, signage, projections, sculptures, and landscape
will be collaboratively forged with artists and the community
