274_Seetharam Vallabhaneni and Mauricio Casian: Giga Village
Country/City: India/Hyderabad; Mexico/Mexico City
Website: http://seetharamvallabhaneni.com
Instagram Username: @seetharamv , @mauriciocasian
University: The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
About You: Informed by the dialogue between vernacular & contemporary, I look to design provocatively optimistic experiences that disrupt the boundaries of architecture, design, craft, and technology.
My work examines the current design norms and attempts to remix them to better suit today’s needs. With a design ideology rooted in exploring evolving lifestyles, I am passionate about facilitating meaningful exchanges between social & natural ecosystems.
Project Description: Giga Village is a modern day town center where people converge to exchange cultures, ideas, and goods. Inspired by the call for more pedestrian-friendly urban spaces, Giga Village attempts to create a walk worthy urban hub that provides as many possibilities as possible for unfolding human life - through pixels and plazas.
Giga village is a project that aims to provide innovative workspaces and services to the neighborhood by creating a highly walkable/pedestrian urban community center that offers unique experiences at the intersection of technology and culture. Giga Village packs modern technology and vernacular craft into the density of a pixel by combining the digital and the analog.
Occupying a unique site that bridges a modern downtown with nostalgia-inducing Chinatown, Giga Village attempts to merge the both for a fleeting second and explore the possibilities that come out of this complex combination. Technology and culture are often separated and polarized but we were curious to see the results of taking the experience of being exposed to new cultures and combining that with the connectivity provided by technology. What if, we take the slow pace of the analog life or the cultural life and the frenetic pace of the digital life or the city life and pack them into pixels and create a rhythmic experience through programs?
The project is composed of a collection of pixels and plazas. The framework integrates pixels that can be both built space and open areas (plazas). The pixels themselves are a microcosm of the entire project - a super dense combination of engaging programs and open spaces. While each pixel is thought of as an experience in itself, the combination of pixels creates more complex and often unexpected experiences that both stimulate, surprise and engage the user. Although the site is divided physically by existing transit infrastructure, Giga Village connects multiple levels through a three-dimensional grid that allows for a free flow between all four sides of the block. The east and west areas houses a higher density of pixels and are punctuated by plazas within, and they help funnel users to the center. At the heart of the site is a linear public park - a low-resolution landscape that through the change of material and infrastructure facilities a variety of activities - creating a new relationship with the ground.
