Renzo Lopez and Richard Jaffe from Miami, United States; “I am a sixth year M.arch student at Florida International University with a constantly evolving and increasing passion for transforming fiction into fact. I believe in architecture that transcends the vain realm of aesthetic effects and rather creates an experiential narrative and rationale that ties the physical social and cultural realm of a project's context into a cohesive dialogue.”

University: Florida international university

Professor(s): Eric Goldemberg, Alfredo Andia

Instagram Username: @renzmdt

Name of Project: Sensorial Ambiguity

Project Description: The marketing and presence of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics largely overshadows the public perception and interest in its sister event the 2020 Paralympics which takes place just one month later. Despite this long running inequality of marketing and promotion, during the 2016 Rio Olympic season the Paralympics broke worldwide audience records by eclipsing the audience of the main, heavily marketed Olympics by 500 million worldwide viewers to reach a total audience of 4.1 billion. Given this condition along with the hidden, underappreciated nature of the Paralympics, it is the goal of this Project to create a spatial experience which will promote and enhance the public perception of Paralympic athletes.

Essentially, transforming their perception from inferior handicapped individuals to super-humans. Though the notion of disability and struggle as a vehicle to augmented senses and “powers” has been fictionally teased in comics and pop culture its underlying principles remain a fact. Through adaptability when any individual’s senses are impaired the remaining are heightened. This project takes this reality and uses it as a vehicle to generate a dialogue through a series of spaces which deny and isolate the users senses while at the same time heightening the ones remaining. This essentially sets up a condition of sensorial ambiguity which is analogous to the chaotic yet paradoxically peaceful organized movement patterns of people crossing through Shibuya station in Tokyo where the project is located.