Asphalt landscape after all : residual suburban surface as public infrastructure

Abstract

The thesis proposes a hybridized commercial retail strip inserted into a residual suburban condition as a manner of investigating the latent potential of suburban logic, both its constituent elements and its formal rules for composition. It then addresses a larger urbanistic issue of proposing a new formal aesthetic for the American suburb. The project is a critique of presently underutilized surfaces in the suburban condition: both physical buildings surface such as walls and roofs as well as land surface area occupied by asphalt infrastructures. The residual figures on unused land as well as redundant and excessive asphalt surfaces are the selected base condition which are then transformed through a series of operations. The interjection of a collection of surface-intensive buildings which are blended together as one composition in addition to the layering of circulation and logistical systems defines a hybrid public surface intrinsic to the suburban condition.