The PS1 Urban Beach, realized in 2003 in the PS1 Contemporary Art Center courtyard, was based on 2 distinct but interrelated systems: the Cellular Roof and the Leisure Landscape. The landscape integrates various programmatic elements such as long lap pools, furniture for sitting and lounging, and promenade catwalks at different heights. Also, at key points, the landscape begins to adapt into structural supports for the roof. All of these behaviors are integrated into a coherent gradient of use, spilling out rhizomatically into the courtyard, parsing the space into microclimates and passageways. The design for the Cellular Roof is based on creating a long-span structure through the use of a non-heirarchical structural patterning of small, interlaced units, or cells. The location and geometry of each cell is determined by local shading requirements, by its required shear and moment reactions, and also by the behavior of neighbor cells. The interconnected cells operated in alliance, enabling large, clear spans and forming a kind of structural ecology. A crenellated second skin wraps these elements into a singular multiplicity, a unified shade structure. At night, however, this provisional body transforms back into an atmospheric light-emitting swarm.

One of the driving goals of this project was to integrate issues of fabrication and erection into the design process. As a temporary event roof which had to be designed, manufactured, and installed in just two months, the project team was forced to jump directly from conceptual design to shop drawings-- a feat which was made possible by computation. The key was to avoid designing a fixed shape and concentrate on creating an iterative system which could evolve-in changes in structural requirements, scope, and existing conditions. All five hundred skin panels were generated algorithmically as single-curvature elements making them easy to develop, water-jet cut flat, and transport. The project would not have been feasible or economical had it been defined with traditional construction documents rather than with adaptive geometry and mathematical logic.