Project Details

Lynchburg as a Conjugating Topography

6 weeks

Lynchburg as a conjugating topography is a system that will serve to bring residential life into the city’s untenanted downtown, which currently has an abundance of buildings that are for sale, for lease, or abandoned altogether.  The new topography will become a community, composed of residences, public space, and other basic necessities that are accessible in suburban communities, without compromising the commercial and industrial resources that the city comprises today. The surface is defined by a network informed by the existing telephone poles as a source of data and the visual and literal connections between them.  Its form will be manipulated to allow the collection of runoff water, which will be used to water the “pergolas” that are imbedded within it.

The new and existing topographies will not act as one stacked on top of another, but rather one that undulates and separates from itself to accommodate the needs of the community and to offer a transverse experience allowing one to travel throughout the city to satisfy a variety of social necessities. The surface will create new, experiential spaces above the city and also act to repurpose what exists below into parks, farmers markets, small vendors, etc.  The beauty of the surface lies in its ability to evolve and expand as it “stitches” in new spaces that become available. Lynchburg as a Conjugating Topography is a solution to creating mixed-use development without sacrificing the history of existing structures, or the desires or accessibility of modern day communities.